It's curtains for me

At the beginning of last week I trundled off to Budleigh Salterton, by the sea, to spend some time with my Mum making curtains for their new Bed and Breakfast business. This has been a dream of theirs for so many years and they have waited so patiently for the time to be right... well, now it is and they have the most amazing house right on the beach!!! 

The sun was shining with all it's might as I rounded the corner at the far end of the beach on Monday morning, and this is what I saw:

... the beach stretched away before me, the colours, sounds and smells assaulted my senses and I drank it all in... WOW!! ...  also stopping to take a few pictures. Isn't it beautiful? Pebbles - the name of the B&B -  is about the 2nd or 3rd house along from where you can see the houses begin:: those boats and beach huts are directly in front of it... who wouldn't want to stay there?

Here is Pebbles....

This is the view over the garden wall, looking onto the beach and away to Exmouth  at the far end of the bay

Looking over towards Sidmouth.. over the brow of the hill .. (notice the pesky seagull?? more about him later!!)

I have to let you into a secret now.. both Mum and I have been sewers for most of our lives, my mum teaching me how to sew clothes for my doll on her Singer hand sewing machine when I was about 7 (I still have the doll and the dresses!!)... BUT we both hate making curtains!! No matter how many times you work out your fabric lengths and how many you need, or how precisely you match the seams, the fabric just seems to take over and one length is longer than the other, the straight line you thought you'd carefully measured and cut ends up being all over the place... it's a nightmare! Grr... Fortunately though, we had each other to moan at and we spent a lot of time laughing at our incompetence and how cross we were getting!!

Here is mum working out the measurements for yet another pair of curtains!.. do you think the calculator is big enough???

... and she's off...

This is where it gets tricky - 3 widths of curtain fabric and 3 widths of bonded interlining each 2m long and mum starts to disappear!

But.. what a view from our 'workroom'... across the lawn and out to sea. This room will be the breakfast room.. I wouldn't mind getting up to that every day. However, make sure you carry an umbrella with you in Budleigh.. I was standing at the door of the conservatory, having a well earned cuppa, when all of a sudden there was a squawk and I felt something land with a 'splat' on my arm... followed by an exremely fishy smell.. see where I am going with this?? Yes, you are right, a seagull decided to 'dump' on me, and shower the floor of the conservatory too. And as if that wasn't enough, as I was loading the car that evening.. yes you guessed it.. it happened again.. all down my back.. yuk!! I should have turned around and come home then... 

You have been warned!!

The view through the Front door... across the walls and out to sea...

In 3 days we did manage to make 3 pairs of curtains and 2 throws for the sofa from some fabric that we picked up at the local recycling centre.. that was a real find.. its John Lewis fabric from the 70's, about 12 m and we paid £2!! What a treasure!!!

These are the throws.. not a brilliant picture, the sofas aren't in situ, they are waiting to be moved once the decorating is finished

After all that curtain making.. pictures of the finished ones coming soon.. I needed to get down to some beady business. I must have decided to use these beads as I had been inspired by the colours of the sea at Budleigh..

Daisy simplicity...

I love the heart on this. It was a bit of an experiment with my silver plated wire, but I think It's turned out really well.. I think I will make more - what do you think?

Closer still...

Well, that's all for now folks.. the not so little people are returning from a 3 week holiday in Australia with their dad today so I must go and bake a cake in celebration.

Have a great day ... x