Here is the open door into my completed ( well just a few more pictures to put up) patch-work room, using fabrics from the Kaffe Fassett Collective. It has taken 6 months to achieve. I started 2020 during the last Covid 19 lockdown in England and we are still not entirely unlocked mid way through 2021.
I aim to take you around the room to see how it all has come together, here the door from the porch has a vitreous enamelled finger plate – now I want to make more of these for inside the room…the enamelled fireplace can be seen with our old furniture and carpets safely back into place.
turning left is the view into the small panelled room, our 2 Irish Terriers and the enamelled fire surround – see previous post for making this….luckily my much loved vintage Deco glass shade tones perfectly…now how did that happen?
Above are 3 views of the chimney corner with 2 different totally different Flag representations. the row of flags at the sea side is an old painting by Stephen Jacobson next to a ghostly silk organza flag by Nigel Hurlstone. this piece of work proved pivotal for me to see how the room could hang together using cooler colours
Once we had started to put the room back together our 2 Irish terriers, Maeve and Murphy took a particular if very relaxed interest in it.
I found on Ebay a beautiful discounted Zoffany silk striped fabric and bought enough to make 4 very large padded curtains for the big Victorian windows in the room. The fabric cost me about 4 times the amount I had spent on the rest of the room…but they work well once I had trimmed them with some vintage woven ribbon that I over – dyed to suit the colour of the paintwork – as you do! And then I found these mazing brass tie backs on-line at my favourite store for just about everything decorative, Anthropology.
Continuing around the room…
In the the corner between the windows hangs an old (and much loved by me) painting by my husband, Stephen Jacobson, of my father’s greenhouse that he built in my family’s garden on the Wirral in north west of England.
From the photographs I have posted so far it is hard to see that the patchworks are all padded and quilted, but it is evident that my ‘in the ditch’ sewing notbetter placed than my hammering in the copper tacks that fasten the fabric to the battens. On the tiled table is a flowery flower vase by Tean Kirby.
the opposite end of the room to the fireplace with the bay window looking out on the overgrown garden
one of a pair of window seats with an old canvas work cushion sample and the luxurious silk curtains and brass tie backs. Then to the other new thing I bought for the room – the glamorous mauve velvet mini chaise – from a TK Maxx sale!!!!!! Well I had to balance the spend on the curtains.
Coming Into Port – Stephen Jacobson
Above is ‘ Coming Into Port’ – I leapt on this for the room when it came back early from a “closed for Covid” exhibition and it fitted perfectly. Basically our house serves as a venue for our joint work. I made the large cushion especially – it uses all the major colours of the room, and in fact the whole house, in my wonky version of Flame Stitch; and I have been commissioned to make a design from this by Ehrman Tapestry so look out for it next year if you stitch canvas cushions.
So here we are at the porch door again – and the gingers are waiting for us – well actually for Stephen with the biscuits to get them to pose….
and that is it – at last after so long – finished enough for people to see it – with the doors and windows open and only 4 visitors at a time!
Janet Haigh : Her Work 
Hi Janet,
I’m totally impressed by this project. What an adventurous person you are. The final result is just awesome!
And what speaks to my heart the most is the creative combination of all the different elements that together make a very cohesive space to live in. Chapeaux bas!
Bozena
Hi Bozena, so good to hear from you again,
I am not so adventurous as pragmatic – I had of small pieces and scraps of beautiful left over-fabrics, a wrecked room and several months with restricted movement, basically locked down at home. I needed something – a project to keep me interested and physically and mentally busy – so this was the solution. I do admit that if it hadn’t been for the lockdown I probably would have put the patchworks in the small spare bedroom and ironed it to the walls.
This is the most beautiful and enchanting thing I have seen in a long time . Congratulations for all your hard work and perseverance . I absolutely love it all , especially the soft colours all together.
thanks Sarah, it’s the power of weak tea over bright colours for English light that you are admiring!
I think that the original bright colours of Kaffe Fassett’s fabrics would work brilliantly in another climate.
I only just saw that reply ! I agree , looking at my brighter quilts , my friend said , “You should be living in the Caribbean “! I do love the pastels best .
Janet, I am in awe for so many different reasons that this comment box might not be big enough.
The room is divine, every square inch of it is a treasure to discover.
The patchwork walls are exquisite and so very original that only you could have imagined, designed and created them! Your talent and your stamina are deeply inspiring.
Love, Ila
well thanks Ila, but the stamina is just about spent now – bit who knows what the next few ideas may be!
What a beautiful piece of work Janet. I love the feel the colours give to your room. Well done!
thanks Anne – Marie, i am in that period of sheer thankfulness i actually managed to finish it – as you can read it was touch and go for a while.
I know I will not find words to match my admiration and amazement. This is extraordinary. I wonder what it must feel like to live in a work or art. The room must surely sing with the energy from all those hours and hours of piecing, quilting and installing the fabric on the walls, stitching and padding those remarkable curtains, making the tapestry cushion, fashioning the fireplace surround. If this room was in my house I would not budge from it!!
I noticed those curtain “tiebacks” immediately — what a find. The Jacobson paintings are sublime. Your beautiful dogs are the perfect finishing touch!
Heck Maris, that is certainly some praise – thank you!!!!
I see you have missed nothing out of what I have on show – actually this a room we don’t use a lot particularly over the last year – it is big for just 2 of us so it is a book club /party room, well whenever we have more that 4 guests, and it’s also a spare bed – that sofa is massive; hence its neglect . But it is amazing how many people just get it! Initially I thought it was over the top – but as a colleague of my years as a textile design lecturer used to say to our students: ” whatever you choose to do – make it Very Very “
That is a truly astonishing piece of work. So fabulous to see after so much “designer” blandness that is presented to us as worthy of desire.
oooh, do you mean the good taste beige brigade? thanks for this it makes me grin
Your room reminds me of an old lady called Liz, who stayed next door to my parents thirty years ago . She was born in the early part of the last century close to Dundee, Scotland, now elderly she lived with two of her unmarried brothers. Their kitchen/living room ceiling was decorated with squares and rectangles cut from different colour and patterned wallpaper which was pasted onto the ceiling in geometric designs – it was fabulous and born from a culture of make do and mend. Liz wore her own hand knitted dresses and when the cuffs or neckline looked shabby she would unpick and re-knit them. She would hoard brown paper and sugar – just in case, and grew her own potatoes and kale. Visiting her was going back in time to a culture of buy only what you needed and look after it well.
Oh gosh we will all be like Liz if this pandemic lasts much longer – she would probably have been featured in a style magazine by now as a pioneer for make -do-and – mend. But I also hoard stuff specially brown paper and string and rubber bands among a lot of other things that end up crammed into my kitchen drawers – and I can never bring myself to throw it all out, just in case…..
As to mending I have just dug out of retirement an old wool embroidered cardigan I made around 1980′ and filled the moth holes by unravelling the frayed cuffs and using the bits of wool for the darning, then finishing the cut cuffs in
using blanket stitch in new tapestry wool…so I must belong to Liz’s tribe!
Hi Janet, I love hearing about people who both hoard and create. It always reminds me of my father who would make anything we needed in the home – especially anything mechanical or electric as he was an electronic engineer.
I can’t imagine anyone into traditional crafts who doesn’t have a stash of old ( and in my case damaged and therefor affordable materials ) I leaned to refine my stitching out of respect for these fabrics when I incorporated them into my appliques…
However talking of fathers – mine was the same, he was a joiner or woodworker, an apprentice at a shipyard for 7 years – he started by making his own tools….we still have them in the family; and he made all the furniture for my parents’ first house – I still have the oak dining table and I used it for for years as my work table as it had leaves to pull out as an extension .It now resides in some splendour in our summer house at the end of the garden overlooking the Bristol Channel – so is used constantly -as a dining table but I often sit and work at it when i just have a bit of fill in stitching to – it must be approaching 100 years old!
thanks for these memories!
I absolutely love and much admire your patchwork room . All my favourite colours . Thank you so much for letting us see it , and describing your process . I am looking at this again as it’s so beautiful . I’m sure you are enjoying using it .
well I must admit that as it is a large room we haven’t used it a great deal in the winter – except for when we have several people together – and within the covid regulations that wasn’t really so easy. But everyone who visits enjoys being in it and relaxes easily – it has a real atmosphere, not exactly cosy, but I think being surrounded by the fabric is comforting .