Vintage Textile Finds

Spent an afternoon yesterday wandering around Brighton enjoying the sun and going to lots of lovely interiors shops. Found these lovely French textile patterns.... don't want to say where I got them cos I want to go back and buy them all! (Well maybe not all - but a few more!)

On the back is some lovely scrolly pen and ink writing, dated 1851/ 1852. Some of them say they're designs for taffeta. Don't know if they really are as old as they say, they could have been painted at a later date in the style of 1850's textiles I suppose...

Keeping with the vintage theme, here's some charity shop finds... some vintage textiles I've found...

Top left: William Morris curtains (2 pairs)
Bottom left: one 1960's/ 70's curtain
Right: old dress from M&S (Bit wild for M&S, but that's what the label says!)

Planning to use them for sewing projects... just not sure what yet... although it's a shame to cut up the William Morris curtains.

More 'vintage' stuff below - a friend's shed - I like the phrenology bust and the arrangement of odd plates and glasses... organised chaos..! Sweet cat too :-)

Not really related in any way what so ever - but here's a couple of pics of a lantern that my boyfriend bought yesterday from a shop in the laines in Brighton that sells Turkish rugs, lanterns and jewellry - great colours!

 

It's been a while....

It's been a while since I last posted anything... well I have been busy doing some sewing... but mainly been busy doing my cross-stitch designing.

But here are some of my new stitching things that I've been making recently...when I find the time..!

The main body of this owl is from a vintage dress, which looks like it's from the 60's or 70's. It inspired me to make a very colourful owl in yellow, orange, purple and green.

























I also bought this old tea towel whilst on holiday in Wales a while back - it's made of lovely linen fabric and reminds me of some of the places I visited on my holiday. I love the style of the illustration and the colour palette is really nice :-)

 

Well eventually I got around to my plan of making it into a cushion cover! I made an 'envelope' style cover - you just fold it over to the size you want it to be and stitch up the sides - really easy :-)

Here's the 2 cushions together:

 

















I also started a patchwork bed cover, which just grew and grew.. now its large enough to cover a double bed :-) Again the colours were inspired by some vintage fabric that I bought which was had a turquoise background and yellow roses, (a bit 50's style, I thought..) The bright turquoise inspired me to make it in really strong colours, e.g. blues, purples and pinks etc...

 
Now I've just got to quilt it on the sewing machine and add a border, then it's finished, hooray!

It's the first 'proper' quilt I've made, so it's all a bit 'trial and error' - but hopefully I'll like it when its finished!