Hope you had a great weekend. With family visiting us, it was  an extended one for us and I had the opportunity to visit a few home stores as well.  The sale at Home Town is worth checking out for ideas though they are at least 60% over priced.

Some of the readers of this blog have sent in design queries that I’ll be answering this week. Please feel free to pitch in your suggestions.

The first one in this series is “Should I buy ready made curtains or get them stitched? If stitched, why?” A superficially simple question, but interesting to answer.

A few factors that will help you go the ready made or the stitched way:

Apartment/house: One vital information that’s missing in the question is if it’s an apartment or a house.  If it’s a house, the chances of getting a ready made curtain are rather bleak unless the windows and doors are of a standard size. I recently visiting a house where the windows were 30 feet tall. Seriously. The windows in the living room ran across the height of the ground floor and first floor.  And, I don’t think you get ready made curtains for this dimension.

If you are an apartment dweller with limited money and time,  then readymade ones will suit you better.

Choice and color of fabric: The choice is endless when you get them stitched. Earlier, one’s choice of fabric was limited to cotton, but now curtains in synthetic/silk are available in most general home stores including Lifestyle, Fabindia, Home Stop, Home Town, and @ Home. And, don’t forget the numerous exclusive furnishing stores such as Linen n Drapes, Drapes Avenue or Just Linen (all these stores are in Bangalore).

Readymade curtains in any shop are very limited and may not suit the decor of your room.  It would be a tough task to find one with matching or contrasting colors for the wall paint or something that complements the furniture in the room.

Styling: The styling of ready made curtains is standard - either pleated or those big metal rings currently in vogue.

Price: Sheer curtains start at Rs.140 per metre. You have fabric starting from Rs. 150 per meter going up to as much as one can imagine. The stitching charges depend on the style. For pleats, it is around Rs. 5 per meter and for rings with support, it’s around Rs. 6.5 per meter. Again, the rates may vary from city to city.

In short, you can have the curtains that suit your walls and furniture by getting them stitched. You also have the option of mixing two fabrics for a single curtain (a plain top with a printed bottom) and such - just get creative and have fun.  Stitching is made easy as most shops have in-house tailors who take the measurement at your house and deliver. Of course, the only downside is the waiting time of a week otherwise it’s the way to go.

Sometimes I think the best things in the world are handmade; Shades of India reaffirmed the belief.  It was a pleasure to discover the Noida-based home fashion store that  supplies to leading international retailers around the world including Selfridges, Heals, and Harrods in London, ABC and Barneys in New York. What sets them apart is the hand oven textile using fine silks, cottons, and fabrics.

Shades of India is quite discreet about its collections. Despite registering, I’ve not been able to gain access to their website and take a peek into their 2009 collections.

I share some of my favorite cushions from their latest range:

Cushions from Shades of India

True to its name, isn't it heavenly?

As with all things hand or custom made, the collection is quite pricey as they are primarily meant for international market.

Images from Jasmine Hall, a distributor of Shades of India in Australia.

@home is running a 50% sale from 10th July until 16th August. I like browsing the Saturday paper to see what is on sale but I’m not the kind who would rush to buy something just because something is available at a discount.

Last weekend, I indulged in some balanced retail therapy. New cushions and covers for the sofa was long overdue. Can it get better if what you want badly is on sale?  With guests expected to arrive Sunday, I rushed to @home Saturday afternoon to buy some fancy cushion covers.  It helped knowing what I needed - synthetic; and what I didn’t want - nothing in cotton or silk.

And this is what I got.

Blue Embroidered Cushion Cover

Brown Self Design Cushion Cover

Embroidered Cushion Cover

In their final setting

Price:

1. A pair of blue cushion covers : Rs. 175

2. A pair of brown cusion covers: Rs. 200

3. A pair of 12″ brown cushion covers: Rs. 150

4. A pair of 18″ cushions : Rs.150

5. A set of 3 12″ cushions: Rs. 150

The pictures don’t do justice to how fabulous they actually are.

Portico Black Bed Linen

Good Morning! It’s Monday morning; the weather is perfect and my head is spinning with a set of fresh ideas to post this week. Let’s get started..

Do you live in a rented house? Does your house owner object to drilling holes on the walls? Are most of your collectibles and prized frames neatly packed in boxes and stored away in the deepest corners of your loft? And you see them only when it’s time to move again wondering why you ever bought them? Having lived in a rented spaces for a better part of my life, I’m familiar with this.

Over the years, however, I’ve learned that dressing up your walls is not the way to decorate a room. Curtains, elegant bed linens, the way one makes a bed or arranges a sofa in a living room makes all the difference. And none of these will put a hole in the wall

There are only a handful of good branded bed and bath makers in India : Portico, Spaces, Welhome, Bombay Dyeing, and Fabindia. My personal favorite has been Portico. For all you Fabindia lovers, read no further. Portico, the only one with a full-fledged website, showcases their collection in an organized manner that can you spend hours admiring the designs.

This post is a collection of my picks from Portico’s latest offering :

Read the rest of this entry…

After yesterday’s stimulating pictures of zebra print, let’s get down to do some dirty work today. Once I realized, it wasn’t going to be easy to get zebra stripes-printed cushion covers in Bangalore, I set down to painting one of my recycled cushion covers inspired by this throw pillow.

Zebra Pillow

Things you’ll need:

1. Pencil/chalk
2. Brush
3. A small cup/palette if you have one
4. Plain Cushion cover in any color, preferably old
5. Water
6. Some old clothes if this is your first painting project

A few tips before we start the project:

1. It’s better to use recycled cushion cover for this project because you wouldn’t want to paint odd looking stripes on a Rs.300 cushion piece and fret over it, would you ? I used one of the recycled covers from this project.
2. A plain cover of any color will be ideal for this project so that you will have a good background to draw the stripes on. Use contrasting colors for the stripe that gels with your decor. For instance, if your cover is white or ivory then use the natural black or orange or yellow.
3. Fabric paint can be washed with water. Ensure to read the instructions on the bottle and clean the brush using water after use. In order to preserve the colors for future use, close the cap tightly before putting it away.
4. If the paint is very dilute, then the results will be blotchy. More often than not, you will see patches on the back of the cover as excess paint from the top layer gets absorbed beneath. Get the correct ratio of paint+water by experimenting on a waste piece of cloth. As a precautionary measure, place a cutting board or something hard inside the cover. This will protect its rear side.

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Cushion covers are easily the most over-priced items on earth. Seriously. Every visit to a home store lures me to the soft furnishing section for want of possessing a good set of silk cushion covers: the ones in bright color printed with trendy design or the lovely, hand-embroidered ones or some plain yet elegant ones with wooden buttons or some painted ones with great detailing? But their price is a huge letdown. Something like these come in the range of Rs.150-Rs.300 per piece …

Silk Cushion Covers

Even the less fancy ones such as these are not worth the price if you are up for a little DIY project.

Cotton cushion cover in yellow and blue

If you’ve been dying for a change in decor for your living room or bed rooms, then the easiest thing to do is to change curtains or rearrange furniture. And if your curtains are a couple of years old, then it is perhaps times to replace and recycle them. If the cotton or silk curtains are in good condition, then this project might just be for you. There are a number of ways to recycle old curtains based on the material and purpose.

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