I’ve long been a fan of the super talented Lucy at Attic 24, in fact it was Lucy’s blog that inspired me a couple of years ago to teach myself to crochet. I loved her gorgeous blankets and wanted some of my own so set about learning how to crochet granny squares with the help of her blog and the wonderful YouTube.
My latest blanket, which I mentioned in my last post is now complete – it is more of a lap-blanket size, easy to fold up on the back of the sofa, and handy to snuggle under on damp dark days like today has been.
So, here it is…my latest creation…
Can you see one of my little dogs just peeking out from underneath…who just wouldn’t budge for me to take the photo? 🙂
I’m going to start on another blanket of the same size for my other sofa, but although I will be using the same colour way it will really be more for my lovely other half to use so am thinking it might need to be a little more masculine….perhaps with solid squares? I’ll see…maybe I will experiment and post a photo and see what you think?
On to our other recent project. I had a lovely oak dining room table and chairs, but the chairs were too modern for my liking (the dining set was bought several years before I moved to my little Victorian cottage) and really didn’t fit in with my current furniture.
(sorry not the best photo!)
We heard about a local household and furniture auction being held at the Ardingly Showground in Sussex not far from where we live and decided to go and have a look to see if we could find some suitable replacements. We were lucky and found 6 mahogany chairs with some rather ugly brown seats…we bid on them and managed to win all six for just £60!
Here is one of the seats before we started our makeover…
We used a Laura Ashley eggshell on the chairs after much sugar-soaping and cleaning and a light sanding. Next I needed to find some fabric and decided that it would be nice to use the same Laura Ashley fabric that I have on the scatter cushions on my sofa (all EBay finds). As luck would have it this was around Christmas time and Laura Ashely had an online sale on some of their fabrics so I was able to bag a metre for just £15 instead of £30! By careful placement and cutting I was able to cover all 6 from the metre of fabric…
Next we painted the legs and underside of the table, just leaving the top unpainted…
And voila!….our new table and chairs for just £90!….except it wasn’t….a friend’s daughter heard I was looking to get rid of my old dining chairs and gave me £60 for them, so in fact my six new chairs cost me just £15 (and some time!)
I’ve got a couple more frugal furniture projects to show you next time, would love to hear about anything similar you might have done..
Nikki
Life at Holly Cottage 