Curtains for the floor...

Progress on my second Canal House is slow.  But I suppose that is what happens if you don't work on it, isn't it?  Having said that, I did get some work done...

I wanted to have plain pinewood floor boards in the dining room.  Something which you often see even in the grander houses of the 18th century.  During my last private visit of the beautiful canal house on the Herengracht one of the caretakers of the house told me that pine floors were very expensive in the 18th century as all the wood had to be imported from the Nordic countries.  

I started making the floorboards from wooden slats from discarded blinds.  With some knots drawn on the bare wood the floor was starting to look like pine.   The wood did look a bit too new so I did several tests with different finishes to find the perfect used look...

I found the perfect finish to simulate an old, unwaxed pine floor.  Or so I thought.  On the sample it looked perfect.  When I applied it to the floor, my carefully drawn knots almost disappeared and the overall colour was too dark, too new looking.  So that floor is not staying.  I will probably sand it and start again.  Or put down another floor, using a different wood.  I don't know yet.  

I also started making the curtains for this room.  This time I used a fine blue cotton which I lined with  white silk.   For the roman blinds I hand dyed silk to match the colour of the wallpaper.  Getting the right hue on the fabric was a lot of work and involved several dye baths, drying the fabric in between each bath.  I dyed just enough fabric to make the three roman blinds for this room.

After a break of a few weeks, I wanted to get back to working on the dining room.  As I was setting up the room to decide what to do next, I just could not find one of the roman blinds.  I looked absolutely everywhere for it, but it was nowhere to be found.   Out of frustration I decided to clean up my workshop instead.  As I grabbed the vacuum cleaner, my eye fell onto something blue inside the dirt cup.  

Yup, the missing roman blind.  I just cannot understand how I could not have noticed that being sucked into the hose.  It's not exactly tiny like my poor little teddy bear from several years ago.  

After a quick rinse and dry the curtain was fine.  Thankfully, as I did not have any fabric left to make a new one, and with hand dying it is almost impossible to get the same colour again.

So, on with the windows and doors.  And the floor of course.