This post is really for me so I can see what was missed in my blogging hiatus. Sorry it’s a bit dull!
I have surprisingly few photos from the past year.
I’ve been working away but mostly sewing curtains and when I have been doing more interesting work I’ve not taken many photos (lovely choice of curtain fabric above).
There has been the constant ploughing through open work (will these purses EVER be finished!) as well as some new things,
and we’ve also had our fair share of drama, starting with Birdie attempting near death.
She burst a lung falling from a height, basically, and I was told she was moments away from dying when I found her and rushed her to the vets who were amazing, and with emergency surgery, saved her life.
She’s fine now, although she rarely leaves the house these days, I think there are too many male cats around with 5 boys living on the short terrace who like to kick off a bit, she prefers a quieter life sleeping indoors.
We had lucky timing and bought some new chickens just before COVID as mine were all quite old and not really laying any more and then in a rather devastating moment lost the lot overnight when a fox in and ate them all.
I was gutted, we’d had some of the chickens for many years and we treat them all as pets, including a few I’d hatched from eggs. We managed to replace them eventually and we currently have 9 hens; a mixture of pure breeds, and two hybrids (who never lay any eggs!) who live separately and with my remaining cockerel.
Next came a bit of a shocker. Pre-COVID we found out that my youngest son’s long term back ache wasn’t from carrying heavy school bags (as the doctor – and to be fair, I – had thought) but rather he had spinal tumours. It was originally diagnosed as Fibrous Dysplasia (VERY rare in that part of the spine) but a later CT scan to monitor the FD showed it to be ABC (Aneurysmal Bone Cysts) that needed to be removed as they are aggressive growing.
C had the ABC removed over the summer and his spine re-enforced with a graft from his hip. It involved a stay at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, whose specialist care he is under (during Lockdown). It went really well and although he can’t carry heavy bags or do sport, all is good at the moment. The children’s wing of the hospital is full of beautiful murals taken from The Book of Lost Words by Jackie Morris.
Some of the sewing I’ve been doing has inevitably been masks, above a bundle for me and the boys.
I will add these to the shop in the next week or so, although I don’t plan to stay open too much longer, I’d like a proper break for Christmas.
I’ve also been doing a lot of DIY. We were in isolation most of Summer, as we had to isolate before C’s surgery, which got cancelled two days before, then isolate again for the next operation date so it’s been Lockdown, isolation, isolation again, Lockdown 2 and now Tier 3 for us! One great thing is I’ve finally tackled the studio with an Ikea Billy Bookcase hack so that’s one to photograph and share when I have some time.
Despite is all sounding a bit bleak, we have no complaints. We are healthy and happy and just getting on with it, like everyone else. Onwards and upwards!
They were very typical of my taste at the time and of how my Christmas tree looked.
But as happens, my taste has changed slightly and we’ve gone a bit more gaudy these days with ‘trash tree’ and it’s odd assortment of broken plastic deer, santas and 1980’s foil decorations.
It seemed like a great opportunity to make new mice, something I’d always planned to do, but more fitting to our ‘new’ (to us!) decorations (well I say that, quite a few came from a trash bag Mum once started in the attic and I rescued them, like the sad little hoarder I am 🙂 ).
Then I remembered my promise not to buy new fabric when I have plenty to use up. Boring. Oh well, orange and purple is not so bad and still fitted the brief. The orange silk is lush, it has a gold and hot pink crossweave, I will be very sad when it is all used as you can no longer buy it.
And I decided a little boy was needed after all, leading to a total inability to chose what colour he would be which went on for some days (as I carried on stitching the girls).
Until I had a little girl mouse army going on.
Then I bit the bullet and went for pink for the boys (I tried green and blue but that didn’t look right).
After which followed more looooonnnng days of hand sewing. These mice take a really, really long time to make. Much longer than it appears.
But I managed to binge watch all of Stranger Things (or re-watch, actually, as I’ve seen it all once) ready for a fantastic day out at Secret Cinema whilst drinking lots of peppermint tea from my new festive mug. Wild days. I know how to live.
The final little touches!
And a day of trying to photograph, edit and list them and they are finally done – hurrah!
I bought a box of Quality Street especially for photographing them with but they looked better with Lindt chocolates…I think it’s the round shape, it just seemed to work better…I may have eaten a few.
You can find them 
For packaging the mice I had bought some cupcake boxes about 5 years ago (when I made the first batch of these!) and I decided to go ahead and use them, depsite the plastic I would never buy these days. I feel terribly guilty, the same way I do when using bags for flower brooches or sending things in jiffy packaging, but these things were bought in bulk in the early days of The Linen Cat (I have been selling and making since 2009 now) and I will use up the plastic I already have but won’t buy more. The alternative is to throw it away and that seems more wasteful.
The originals were made as a big Halloween themed bunch of designs back in 2014 (see 
The applique pieces came already beaded and were slightly 3D in style; the whole purse was based on Victorian mourning dress, specifically inspired by an antique dress I own.
By the time I made the second batch in 2015 I couldn’t get the same applique, so I bought a new design and beaded them myself (this made sense as I had to double stitch the beading on all of the first ones anyway, I was paranoid they might come off otherwise).
I was always a bit sad that they had an orange red lining as in my mind they needed blood red, hence the ‘Vampire’ purse name, but I had quite a bit of the silk to use up. I still love them though and I kept one for myself, it is by far the most used item from the shop.
This time, I got to indulge in my need for that blood red lining.
Yum. I love it!…..I may need to keep another for myself.
Gluing in the frames nearly killed me – I’d forgotten how much I hate that job.
But they are done and are listed 
Gosh, they went quickly! Some have already sold as I was writing this post.
Another re-make but one that’s always popular are the red rose brooches,
they are back too.
The witch mice from the original Halloween makes never sold well 😦 and the last couple have gone into the 
There’s a single vampire boy left too.
Whilst I’m in the mood, I’ve started on new spider purses for next year. I’m just re-drafting the pattern and annoyingly I will need to polish up the acrylic bodies of the spiders as they’ve turned up a bit scratched, which just won’t do.
After a lot of thought, I fell in love with the idea of a glass display cabinet, ideally full of rows of my shoes. Yes, shoes again. I have a lot of them. To be fair I’ve been collecting them for years and years it’s very rare these days that I spend any money on myself, but the joy of my liking retro style heals is they never go out of fashion (as they are rarely in fashion!).
I spent a lot of time hunting on eBay for the perfect piece at the right price. The big problem is obviously no-one is willing to deliver glass so I got very excited when I found a cabinet on a charity auction site with postage costs and at a very reasonable price. It was in a bit of a state so was going to be a gamble, but the low price meant it wouldn’t be disastrous if it didn’t work out.
It was delivered by Parcelforce (I’m not kidding!) wrapped in a lot of bubble wrap and cardboard but survived intact. The wrapping was genius, if I remember correctly.
The first job was to try and revive the very scratched woodwork. For this, I went old school, and rubbed it down with an oil and vinegar mix and wow! 
What a difference it made. It was an almost miraculous recovery. It was so long ago that I’m not fully sure, but I think I then gave it two coats of Danish Oil before hunting down some old lock escutcheons on eBay. They were very cheap and once they arrived, I liked the bakelite one best.
As the door stayed shut nicely, I just added a modern brass rabbit knob instead of trying to find a replacement key for the lock….just look at how pretty the wood looks in comparison to the top eBay sale photos.
There is a matching rabbit used as a knob on the eaves cover just to the left. I used up all my leftover brass furniture handles and knobs on the eaves doors, so it’s quite nice as they are mostly mismatched, which I like; it was coincidence these two ended up near each other.
I love this piece of furniture. It cost very little and works really well to fill the dark space as it allows light to pass through, is quite shallow in depth and, most importantly, I get to put pretty things on display!
The light on top came from 
These were the original pictures in the space, but I’d promised myself that one treat when the room was complete would be buying new images as pay off for all the hard work (these ones have gone somewhere else – the wedding photo was my 18th birthday gift from my Mum, she found it in an antique shop and knew I’d like it, the tapestry was stitched by my Gran and used to be in my bedroom when I was a kid).
The two framed photos are from 
Vogue Early September 1960 by Don Honeyman
and Felt and velvet mandarin hat by John French. They would really be nicer as larger images but I had to stay smaller to fit in the space.
The final thing to go on the wall is a little frame with some of my vintage brooches on.
It’s just a cheap photo frame from Sainsbury’s taken apart and a chunk of cork board covered with white linen put back in where the glass should be. It allows me to display my brooches but also take them down easily to wear and the sparkle from the stones is really nice in the darkened corner.
It was very exciting at the time (nearly 14 years ago, I guess).
All the plaster in the house was sprayed white at the very beginning and that’s pretty much where it ended in the bedroom. Even the blind was one I’d removed from the old house and adjusted to fit. The room didn’t even get skirting boards.
Come 4 years ago and it was very much on my hit list to be done. I’ve become quite handy with basic woodwork so I put on all the skirting, sanded and oiled the remaining flooring (most had been done but there were a few patches still to do) and then moved onto the painting.
One of the joys of being single is I get to do whatever I like to the house. I love that. After 10 years of all white, I was getting a bit bored and was in the mood for some colour. I took a lead from this fabulous vintage barkcloth fabric which I had in my stash (and hoped to use for the blind) and a notion that I really wanted to introduce some green to the room.
After lots of tester tins, I went with 
The floating bookshelves are Umbra Concealed Floating Bookshelves (you can buy them on Amazon) and the watercolour is a vintage one by Yorkshire artist Angus Rands. I liked the colours in the painting (it’s one I inherited from Mum) and it’s propped there so I can use the colours as inspiration. I often do that, base a rooms colours on some fabric, or a painting.
The problem was, I struggled with the new paint colour. It felt slightly cold (this was back in March 2017, I think, – oh yes, that’s how long it can take me to finish and blog a project!) and when I’d been searching for fabric for blinds, I’d fallen in love with this amazing original barkcloth on Etsy. It nearly killed me to buy a second tin of paint and re-paint the wall, partly due to the cost of Farrow & Ball paint, but I changed it to Breakfast Room Green and ordered the new fabric and then took that as my colour lead for the rest of the room. I am dying to use Arsenic somewhere in the house, but it didn’t go with the new fabric, sadly.
The other walls were painted in Slipper Satin, which I love and use a lot.
I had the added complication of needing to make a blind for the internal window that overlooks the studio (this was me creating the paper pattern). There wasn’t enough of the lovely floral fabric to use it on its own
so I paired it with some dark green linen and some amazing Robert Kaufman Essex Yarn dyed linen/cotton which has a gold metallic thread running through it in Dusty Rose.
The blind is attached with gold hoops stitched on with gold thread and hooked over gold capped mirror screws. It’s hard to explain but it folds back on itself and then gets hooked up onto the wall to ‘open’ the blind. If I’m honest, I rarely open it as the room gets quite good light from the windows and velux and I’m too lazy, even though it only takes a moment.
The gold thread in the top pink fabric makes it hard to photograph as it reflects the camera flash and yes, that is some of my extensive Chie Mihara shoe collection. I refer to it as my ‘shoe shop’ corner, complete with a seat ready for trying on – ha ha.
I’ve owned the chest of drawers for years – it’s from 
The dressing table is also quite old now and originally came from 
The little vintage vanity case is another of my favourite things and I keep my makeup in it as well as the ‘B’ case which came from 
I especially like having some sentimental pieces around and this one was Mum’s – she gave it to me when I was a teenager and I’ve had it ever since, I believe it’s from the 1960s.
I have certain things that I always intend to make (but never get around to) and for years I hunted for a pattern for vintage ‘gym’ style shorts until I found the one above. The size is actually a little big (I usually buy a pattern vintage 18, which is around a modern 14 but with a smaller waist) but I was willing to adapt it, I just couldn’t decide on the fabric.
And then – hurrah! – I didn’t have to because 
They aren’t cheap but personally, I spend very little money on clothes and the ones I do buy last me for many years. I prefer quality over quantity. I wanted to mention this as they have just re-stocked and introduced some new colours and I bought a new pair in red with some Birthday I was given.
I own this skirt that I have had for years and years and years. Anyone who has seen me on my daily school runs will know that I wear it so often it’s almost like a uniform. It came from Cath Kidston. I don’t really buy her things often as they can be a little bit too floral for me (in a Cath Kidston kind of way) but I loved this barkcloth fabric so much that I bought the skirt in beige, black and a dress version too! 
Something I originally hated about it was the elasticated waist, which then turned out to be the thing that I love! As long as I wear it with fitted t-shirts and little 50’s style cropped cardigans (which I own a lot of) you can’t see the elastic but gosh, is it comfy.
So when my poor skirts began to fade and die, I thought the answer was to make some of my own (as CK don’t make them anymore).
The fabric is all Outback Wife by Elaine Gold, which I first saw on 
I added some rather jazzy gold elastic and pockets (which the original skirt also has).
Mistakes? Yes. I put more fabric in than the original and that was a mistake, it’s almost a bit too full and hints at 5-year-old going to a kids party when I wear it but then I’ve never cared much about how I appear so I wear it anyway. Also, with so much fabric it bulks up a bit too much on the elastic waist and so the elastic is a bit stretched and might need to be re-done in the long run.
New buckles for a beloved coat my Sister gave me – how lucky to find EXACTLY the same ones on the internet! What did we do before online shopping?
And another great internet find, imperial size cover buttons so I could repair my vintage jacket (it’s only been in the repair pile for about 4 years or so now!).
The winner was comment 12, (Jan, I’ve emailed you directly for your address). Thanks, everyone that took time to say ‘hello’ and for all your lovely comments.
As I’m doing DIY during school hours, I have to hand sew in the afternoon and evenings (when I’m multi-tasking with Mum duties) and I was trying to get a new batch of double red rose brooches finished in time for Valentine’s Day.
I’d normally be photo editing and updating social media at this time, hence the slip on blog writing etc.
Then I remembered that I rarely sell to men/partners anyway….as in pretty much never….so I don’t think worrying about Valentine’s is really the right focus, I should be making more Linen Rabbit Egg Cosies as they have all gone!
The plan is to keep going on the bathroom this week, then I’ll flip back to sewing during the day next week and get my evenings back for internet stuff. Maybe I’ll actually get on with the new tweed rose bags I started over 6 years ago…..maybe 🙂