It is the last day of February and have been working for 2 months making my patchwork wall coverings. When I started this blog I vowed to show the journey of the work that I design and make – to explain the problems and possibly the solutions……but this latest project has been keeping me awake and I am still not certain that I will get it sorted and onto the sitting room walls. I am suffering a severe case of Cold Feet!
After I had stitched a wall full of the original design I kept feeling that there was just too much going on – all those colours and stripes and collisions of patterns (all the things I normally love) just looked like porridge – multi coloured porridge – something had to go….What went was the yellow stripes – leaving me with Mauve, Blue and Green strips – this took quite a lot of grief and several days ( and nights) to decide to change things – somehow the well-honed critical faculty I use for all projects, professional as well as personal, has deserted me during lockdown. But once I had pulled apart the original piece and made another wall-full, things started to look possible. I made another design chart this time with repeating patterns built in – once a textile designer…….
Things get back on track by mid January – the first panel is on the studio wall padded and quilted using the new walking-foot on my favourite old Bernina sewing machine.
By February the work gets properly underway – a whole stitched wall – full – but still very uncertain about this entire idea.
I try these first panels around the room seeing how the whole thing will look – trying to imagine it without those brilliant pink walls is hard…and how will it look behind all our pictures – yikes – it really needs to accommodate paintings and other art works that cover every other wall of this house…I start to realise that what it needs is more GREEN.
Trying the panels on other sitting room walls – it needs more GREEN to reflect the garden
back to photoshop to play with a version of favourite “Green Blue” or is it Blue Green” by Farrow and Ball which is used throughout the house
I decide that if all else fails the patchworks will look lovely in one of the bedrooms. But this still leaves us the problem of the damp disfigured walls and meanwhile the rest of room is being demolished …. did I mention we are cutting and making verdigris copper tiles for the fireplace?
Janet Haigh : Her Work 
With so much thought and talent going into this project, it is going to be beautiful. I must confess to being most envious that you will have quilted walls. And it is surely inevitable that such an ambitious undertaking would give one cold feet. Put on your slippers and keep stitching! All will be well
well thanks for the encouragement but it suddenly looms as a massive amount of work so that even I who take on projects of 6 months and more feel overwhelmed – not good when you aren’t sure!
I’m lost in admiration for your patience, your skill and the beauty of you work. The pictures of your house remind me of Charleston, the house The Bloomsbury set turned into a living work of art. They, too, lived surrounded by work done to enhance their lives and it now does the same for those of us who visit long afterwards.
Oh gosh it isn’t quite that bohemian here…….in fact I draw the line at painting the bathroom pea green – my abiding memory of Charleston – so unflattering even when in the pink of health. Thanks but I’m afraid I may have bitten off too much this time – aiming for end of June to see it finished – or the spare bedroom gets it!
What an amazing and ambitious project! I’m really looking forward to seeing it finished. It should be fabulous and very unusual.