Make: Curtain Wall (1)

Our new flat has a large, open-plan living room, where we tend put any guests when they’re staying overnight. There’s plenty of space for our futon and it’s without the scuffling noises from the guinea pig cage that’s in the small back bedroom.

The only problem is that, as it is an open-plan space, it’s a bit like sleeping in the kitchen at the same time… Also, it makes it difficult for Boyf or I to go upstairs to get breakfast, fetch pig greens or iron a shirt in the morning before work.

 

We didn’t want a permanent barrier, as we love the open space. We came up with the idea of putting a curtain pole up, concealed on the back of a beam that goes across the room. We could hang curtains from that pole, which could be drawn across when we have guests staying, but hidden away most of the time.

 

The design I came up with involves several black curtains to form the majority of the “wall”, alongside one red panel to form the “door”. These would need to be around 2.5m tall, to cover the space from floor to ceiling. A friend suggested button-down tab tops, which would make it really easy to move and remove the curtains as required.

 

 

Knowing that I would need to make at least five matching curtains, I made up a quick pattern for what each curtain should look like.

 

Then, I headed up to Walthamstow market one Saturday, to get hold of enough fabric to cover the huge space. I spent less than £30 on 18m of black fabric, 4m of red fabric, 30 buttons and some red trim. A proper bargain for over 5kg of fabric!

 

 

Make: Origami & Calligraphy

One of my very good friends got married on the August bank holiday weekend, and I had the honour of being one of her bridesmaids! This was my first time ever being a bridesmaid, and it was a lot a lot a lot of fun!

 

While I can in no way claim to have a detailed record of all the work that went into the nuptial shindig, I did help with a few of the creative bits – so I thought I’d share some of them here!

 

One of the most fun aspects were the handmade origami bouquets. A group of us went round to the bride’s house for an evening of pizza, wine and paper-folding. While initially we were all pretty sceptical about our origami abilities, we soon warmed up to the task.

 

 

Each bouquet had three purple flowers, three yellow flowers, and three leaf-groups. If I’ve done the maths correctly, that meant a total of 39 petals per bouquet – multiplied by four bouquets makes 156 in total.

 

 

Once they were all made, we arranged them into the 5-petal flowers and stuck them together with PVA and sticky microdots. Then, the purple ones were mounted onto some ribbon-covered dowling and doused in more PVA for good measure.

 

It was a delicate drying process, with methods including wine bottles, frying pans and curtain rails…

 

Meanwhile the yellow ones and leaves were glued into a kind of crown with a hole in the middle, which the dowling would later go through to form the full bouquet.

 

 

 

But the final results were pretty amazing! And definitely long-lasting – mine survived the wedding, the after-party, and the train ride home, to now sit proudly in a vase in the living room, and be the only flowers in my house that don't lament my lack of horticultural ability!

 

 

 

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I used another of my creative skills in exchange for another meal at Hen’s house later – calligraphy. If that’s what you can call a combination of neat handwriting and knowledge of swirly computer-style fonts. Which I am.

 

 

We came to a mutual agreement whereby lasagne and homemade ice cream was exchanged for table names.

 

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The final bit of tinkering was actually a few amendments I made to the beautiful bridesmaids dresses. I added a few stitches into the crossover v-neck, as a precaution against ceilidh-induced bouncing, and also moved the button on the back of the dress, to improve the fit across my narrow shoulders.

 

Et voilà! What a day it was! Much fun was had by all concerned, there were no imminent disasters – and everyone resisted the temptation to shout “I object” at an inappropriate moment. Hurrah!