curtains - upstairs Canberra

March of last year, 2009, I went to Canberra to make the curtains for the upstairs.  The process of the curtains started at least in November 2008.  These things take time to plan and develop.  Making curtains for someone else's house that I am not living in takes an amount of thought to design what will be beautiful and totally suitable for the rooms they will be hung in.

In this instance it was decided that the main part of the curtains would be panels made from silk brocade that my daughter's father bought for her when he visited Shanghai about 2000.  This bolt of material has been patiently waiting around until we found the perfect vehicle to use it.  This was it.  As this material was very dramatic, many metres of natural raw silk was purchased at Job's Warehouse in Melbourne early January, along with the sun block out backing.  We had not measured the windows at this point, this was flying on a wing and a prayer that what was needed was purchased.  Of course it was!  I made it all work and be enough.

The finished curtains - wall on the left had the gold brocade, edged in the red and the right wall had the reverse.  Looks amazing in the room

The thin gold panels were pieces left over from the gold shirred silk that my daughter's wedding top was made from.  The beads were old ones that I had and new ones purchased in Canberra.  

The wooden gold painted lions I had purchased in an antique shop in Malacca, Malaysia in 1995.  They were originally designed to hold up the name signs above the front doors on the wonderful homes of the Chinese merchants living and trading in Malacca.  

Maybe you can believe me when I say I had so much fun creating these curtains to work in a specific space and to be items of beauty.  Having the freedom to put together items that needed to be taken out of their boxes where they had been hiding for years and putting them into something that was useful and seen on a day-to-day basis -yes, this is pleasure.