This plain and boring used jar has been transformed into a useful container for those bits ‘n’ bobs that were lying around. The cover has been crocheted using everyday string and trimmed with wool.
Crochet bits ‘n’ bobs jar cover
Edwardian tiled floor restoration
We live in an Edwardian home and when I pulled up the carpet in the hallway I was really excited to find the original black and white tiles there. I was relieved to find the majority of the floor was in good condition with only a few small patches that had been filled in with concrete.
The first job was to clean off all the carpet glue and paint splashed. We used patio brick cleaner and a lot of elbow grease.
The floor came up really well. The next step was to dig out the patches of concrete. This proved to be more challenging and required brute force and unfortunately this loosened considerably more tiles than we expected. The troubled patch doubled in size!
The loose tiles were easy to put back in place but I really didn’t want to use reproduction tiles to replace the missing tiles. After a bit of searching online I was fortunate to find someone on Ebay who had just replaced their outdoor Edwardian path and had literally thousands of the tiles for sale. These tiles were extremely dirty, with 100 years of London pollution ground in to them, but they did eventually clean up.
Once all the tiles had been stuck in place and grouted, I gave them a coat of sealer to finish them off. We’re really pleased with the finished product (and probably saved £100’s by undertaking this ourselves).
Knitted poncho & crochet trim
I remember wearing a poncho when I was a child, that my mum knitted for me, and I haven’t thought about them since. Until last year when I borrowed one to wear, as I was a bit chilly, and loved it and thought I’d knit one of my own. I started it in early 2012 and didn’t finish it until that Christmas (I was distracted by other projects) but finally, here is the finished piece.
I was planning to just knit it, but having completed it I thought the edges could do with a little finishing touch. Over the Christmas holiday my mum worked out a pattern to give it a curly edge. I played around with this and opted for three different stitch patterns, mostly to conserve wool as I was nearing the end of my ball of wool! It is so warm and fits perfectly.
Felted bag
Last Christmas I was given a felted bag knitting kit. It took me a while to get around to starting it and then it took a while longer to knit (but I was determined to finish it before the following Christmas!).
I hadn’t felted any knitting before, so the process was unfamiliar to me. The bag was knitted on circular needles and was quite large and flimsy when finished. I then knitted one long skinny handle (only 4sts wide). The next step was to felt the bag and handle. To do this I put them in the washing machine with a little washing powder and a large towel (which apparently helps with the felting process) and put them on a hot wash. When I took them out I was surprised how much smaller the bag had become and how much thicker the pieces were. The next step was to attach the handle and I also added a small button fasten to the top using a simple crochet chain.
I wanted to add a little finishing touch to the bag and thought of making some crochet flowers. I came across a crochet flower tutorial on Mollie Makes and set to work with some oddments of wool I had lying around; sewing a bead to make the centre of the flowers.
Chaise longue restoration
I was kindly given this chaise longue by my mother-in-law as she no longer had the room for it. I’ve always wanted one and thought it would be a good challenge for my next upholstery project. The fabric and foam were in a poor state (and had lovingly been used as a scratching post by the resident cats!).
I found the most challenging part was removing the old fabric and foam. It’s a repro piece of furniture and had literally been stapled within an inch of its life. It took me weeks to get it back to the basic shell. Luckily for me the piece of furniture was bolted together, so came apart easily leaving me with a base, back rest and arm rest – and thankfully no springs or buttons to deal with (I’ll be happy to tackle these skills later on but not for my second project).
I bought some lovely turquoise velour fabric from ebay and used the old fabric as a template. I bought some new thick foam (6″ for the base and 2″ for the back and arm rest) and rebuilt the chaise in a couple of days. Here’s the finished result.
This is now being lovingly used by our resident cats!
