As I mentioned here, my son was blessed with a lilac room for the first 3 years of his life.
This is what it looked like. You can see the almost fluorescent purple walls. Someone told me once it was like something they had as a child in the 1970s and I got the feeling that they didn't mean that in a good way.
Of course there was nothing inherently wrong with the room, although the almost white carpet was one of the more stupid decisions I have made in my life, and was completely filthy after 7 years of baby related activity.
My decision to give him more of a little boy's room coincided with the gift of a sewing machine at Christmas, so I decided to make as much as I could. I can't make carpet or paint, so I got the professionals in for that. The walls were painted white, and I had deep chocolate brown carpet put in, which I know is an extreme overreaction to the white carpet but I couldn't help myself.
The old chair, which I used for feeding and still use for reading stories, looked like this:
I recovered it using my trusty sewing machine. I bought some red spotty Kokka fabric from Kelani, and pinned the fabric to the existing cover to get the right shape and fit and sewed a slip cover. It ties underneath but I had to velcro the side sections so that I can get it off for washing. I then made a cushion cover, which was quite hard because of the rounded shape and those odd indents where the chair arms are. It worked out reasonably well in spite of that.
It now looks like this:
You can see in the chair photo that the curtains were taffeta lilac and cream stripe. Quite amazing and just like a ballgown. My mother is looking forward to taking them off my hands.
Because the curtain rod requires curtains which slip on tightly, rather than rings, I decided to make the curtains myself, which I did using a Warwick fabric, which photographs badly but looks like this close up. It is worth mentioning that due to high ceilings, these curtains are 3.7 metres in height and 2.1 metres each across:
I figured it had a lot of different colours in it, enough to last few years for when my son wants a brown room for his Bionicle stage.
I then put some shelves up, Ikea Lack (of course) and they are shown above. The main issue with this room is that it has two doors (one to our bedroom - I think it was originally - and mark my words, will become again, a separate wardrobe room) and one to the hallway. It then has a casement window and so only one untouched wall. My idea was to get as much off the floor as possible.
Then came the bed. I bought this from Parenthood after much price comparison. I wouldn't go so far as to say children's bed sellers run a cartel but it is certainly amazing the way they all seem to be pretty much the Same Price.
A little word about the blanket. The idea for this came from Kelly Doust's The Crafty Minx. It is a woollen patchwork. I got a whole pile of old jumpers, mine, and the children's (Seed shoppers will recognise that blue and grey stripey one), cut them into squares and patched them together with some backing. Sounds easy, but took weeks and weeks and weeks, to pin and sew and pin and sew. It is a lovely blanket though, very soft and pre-loved, with a lot of cashmere in it. I am so grateful for this idea as it enabled me to save so many jumpers with holes and tears in them.
So that's it.
It felt pretty good to do this myself. BUT two things I now know I am never ever doing again - making curtains (too much fabric!!! Too high risk!!!) and making a woollen patchwork blanket (arrggh, the time, the time).
One last thing to do is to put somewhere the compass decal which I won from the lovely A-M a couple of months back.......
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