Design: Fabrics

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Purple Passion

I don’t know whether you’ve seen this house in England that’s making the rounds, but someone’s got a passion for PURPLE! In Baltimore, we take our passion for purple pretty seriously, as that’s one of the team colours for the Ravens. But I think that this might just be too much, even if we do go back to the SuperBowl (doubtful this year!). Take a look!

Thank goodness for the white accents!

50 Shades of Purple

The purple carpeting is climbing up the sides of the tub!

That chair looks very uncomfortable.

Wait… the dining room opens onto a bedroom?

Purple carpeting in the kitchen. {Shudder}

The funny part is that the house looks pretty normal from the outside!

Yours for a mere £400,000!

My Latest Project

I don’t watch television and although I have one, friends laugh at it because it’s so small. Instead of watching TV, I like to have a project or two going on. Or else I like to read.

You might remember from a year or so ago, all of my sweaters got chewed on by nasty evil moths. Of course, they go for the nice yummy cashmere ones instead of the old wool ones. Since I couldn’t bear to throw them all away, I started cutting them up and making scarves. See here. When I ran out of my sweaters, I started trolling thrift shops for more. I’ve got a wonderful cashmere throw, which I love, but I kept thinking how fabulous it would be to make a cashmere blanket! I’ve been hunting around for the perfect technique to use to make it, because I don’t want it to be too heavy or too thick. As I hunted around, I found a blog post from someone in Lebanon who made a cashmere sweater blanket.

I pulled out all of my sweaters in shades of pink and orange, along with a few in pale purple and orchid. I cut out 121 8x8 inch pieces and stacked them up. The finished size of the blanket will be about 77x77 inches and 11x11 rows.

My next challenge was how to lay out the pattern. I had between four and twelve pieces of each of 16 colours. I hunted around for a random pattern generator and finally found one that was for tiles. I needed a program where the number of colours and the number of each colour were variable. So after naming all of the colours and counting the number of pieces, and then transferring that to an excel spreadsheet, I got my pattern.

I stacked all of the squares by colour, numbered each pile and then started assembling the rows.

As I finished each row, I put it in a ziplock bag and then numbered the bag.That way, once I start and finish a row, it will be in the right order for the pattern – although, since it’s random, I guess it doesn’t matter too much! It will just keep me a bit organized.

The one thing I’ve been stewing about is how to finish the edges, because unlike wool, cashmere does not felt. Luckily, the blog from Lebanon had the solution - modified pojagi seam! It’s a Korean technique and when I saw it, I knew it was perfect.

Basically, you sew two pieces together, right sides facing each other. Then you press your seams open. Next, you run a zigzag stitch down the raw edge of the seam. The actual pojagi seam is a little more complex than this, but this will be fine. On the right side, the zigzag stitches create a nice pattern in the material.

And on the wrong side, the stitching acts as a seam binding, holding down the raw edge so it doesn’t unravel.

I have finished one row of the blanket and am quite pleased with the way it looks. I know a couple of the colours will be a bit jarring together – especially the fuchsia and the orange, but overall, I think it will work.Stay tuned for the finished product in a week or so!

Bienenstock Furniture Library

On my way out of High Point, I stopped for a tour of the Bienenstock Furniure Library, one of High Point’s year-round treasures. The library was founded by the owner of Furniture World magazine in 1970 as a personal collection of books. The collection includes contemporary books as well as some of the classics, including an original copy of Thomas Chippendale’s furniture design book.

I was lucky to get a personal tour of the library and its collections from Director, Karla Webb who loves books as much as I do! One of the fun collections at Bienenstock is the old copies of House Beautiful, House & Garden and many auction catalogues.

We had a chance to check out some of their rare books,

I loved seeing Chippendale’s original drawings for furniture, some of which was actually built, and some of which was designed on spec.

I love this table – it is as contemporary as anything else I saw at High Point!

One of my favourite books was one with small swatches of old fabrics, which looked as bright and fresh today as the day they were woven!

My visit to the Bienenstock was a great way to end a terrific trip to High Point, and I would recommend a visit if you’re close!

High Point: It’s a Wrap

I took more than 1,000 pictures during the 2.5 days I was at the High Point Furniture Market! I had 18 appointments over that time and saw many more showrooms. It was a jam-packed couple of days, to be sure! Follow along for a quick wrap up of what I did!

William Yeoward, just love everything he does!