Style at Home February 2014 - Finally Shared!

Better late than never

As the children are at home this week on their half term holiday, I've not been sewing.  Instead we've been going on fun day trips, in return for one boring day spent in the house tidying......but look what we found;

A copy of Style at Home magazine which featured our family room. It is the February 2014(!) issue and when our copy arrived it was duly read but then found its way into a coffee table drawer where it has languished for the whole year.  

The feature was in partnership with B&Q with an emphasis on storage products and warming colour tones

The room is a great size with a vaulted ceiling and lots of glass.  It has a different feel to the rest of the house with natural wood finish windows and Venetian blinds, creating a harmonious flow into views of the garden.  At least that was the idea, but the 'look' is somewhat spoiled by what's usually in that big empty space......Mr. Larkin's road bike fixed up to a turbo trainer!   

The photos were taken just before Christmas 2013, which explains the string of green and red tartan bunting hanging above the French doors. The leather chair was later moved to make way for our Christmas tree, the high ceiling means we can accommodate a nice large one. As the pictures were taken in winter the light is quite subdued,  but in summer the room is absolutely bathed in sunlight.

It's been lovely having the children at home, although I'm looking forward to having more time next week to write and post some tutorials.  I have done quite a few lately but they all seem to have been guest features for other blogs, it's about time I did some for this blog!

Cushion Love

I'm back in 'Style at Home' magazine!

This month's Style at Home magazine is all about cushion love and it's available in store now...

....and I designed and stitched one of the cushions featured in its pages!

 Jennifer, the editor, had asked me back in the summer if I might be interested in being involved with the issue and my answer was, of course, a resounding "Yes, Yes, Yes!" .  Well, the very next day, I received an exciting package in the post;

It contained a plain faux silk cushion cover, return postage and some very lovely and extremely generous 'Hobbycraft' vouchers.

I immediately got busy designing and making my cushion cover.  The woodland theme remains very popular this season and so keeping this in mind, I came up with a Stag's head silhouette but added a modern twist with a "Hello Deer" pun on the reverse.  

Style at Home have also featured my design on their Facebook page, so do pop over and have a look;

https://www.facebook.com/StyleAtHomeMag

The design brief took me out of my usual comfort zone as I don't normally work with faux silk as I really prefer linen, cotton and wool.  However, conveniently enough, the pair of linen curtains which I recently bought from the local car-boot sale to upcycle for my tea cosies and journal covers had wide faux silk pin-tucked borders in various colours which proved perfect for this project.  In fact, I have now been converted to the pleasures of 'silk' especially with Christmas coming up and I have a couple of projects in the pipeline which I will be blogging in the form of tutorials over the next few weeks.  Keep coming back as they'll be fairly straight forward to sew and perfect for seasonal gifts!

Finally, don't forget to treat yourself to this month's Style at Home, it's perfect value at just £1.99

Style at Home magazine

How to spend a snowy few hours....

As I have already mentioned I treated myself to a magazine this week called 'Style at Home'.  I don't normally buy them as they can be quite expensive, but this one was just £1.99 and I had been given a Sainsbury's voucher for my birthday and I didn't want the whole lot to be spent on potatoes, bread, eggs, washing powder, bleach...........etc...etc!

Anyway, here is the super new publication I chose;

It had a great article on Chloe Owens, author of "All Sewn Up", followed by a piece on 'How to Blog' and so here I am having a go at blogging!

Now these two articles alone would be worth the £1.99, but there was lots more to interest me, including some super makes from a new book by Eline Pellinkolf, with the chance to win a copy;

The five projects which Style at Home featured in this month's copy are all very pretty and spring-like, so what else to do on a freezing cold snowy day than stay indoors and make a little birdie!  

Here is mine feeling very glad to be inside looking outside;

I made a couple of small changes from the original pattern, the first was sewing up the end of the tail.  In the magazine he had a frayed tail and being made from linen looked super-cute and very shabby chic!.  As mine was stitched in cotton, this seemed less appropriate.  I also used two small seed beads for the eyes rather than working them with thread.  The final slight change I made was to put a couple of shaping stitches in the beak, which makes him look slightly more duck-like, although whether this is an 'improvement' or not is a matter of choice!