A home that is attractive and well kept feels warm and inviting. Decorative pieces such as embroidery and knitted fabrics can transform a room from cold and unwelcoming into something homely – seat covers, tablecloths, throws.
Textiles do more of this work than almost anything else in a room, and they are the part most easily made by hand.
Why textiles change a room
Hard surfaces – floors, walls, glass – reflect sound and light and read as cold. Fabric absorbs both.
A room with cushions, a throw and a rug feels different from the same room without them, before anyone considers what they look like. That is the underlying reason handmade textiles have such an effect for relatively little work.
Where to start
Cushion covers. The best return on effort in the house. Small, quick, and they change a room’s colour scheme entirely for the cost of a ball of yarn.
Make the cover slightly smaller than the pad so it sits taut. An envelope back means it comes off for washing, which is the difference between a cover that stays in use and one that gets replaced.
Throws and blankets. Larger and slower, but a folded throw over the arm of a sofa is the single most effective piece of soft furnishing there is.
Table linen. Runners, placemats and cloths. Embroidery suits these particularly well, and a plain bought cloth with hand embroidery added is a good halfway house.
Choosing colours for a room
The usual advice about matching everything produces flat rooms.
Better to pick up a colour already present – in a painting, a rug, a book spine – and repeat it two or three times across the room in your handmade pieces. Repetition is what makes a scheme read as deliberate.
One strong accent against otherwise quiet colours does more than several competing ones.
Practical choices
Washable, always. Cushions and throws live where people sit, eat and sleep. Anything requiring hand washing will quietly stop being used.
Consider the light. A cushion sitting in a sunny window will fade. Acrylic holds colour far better than most natural fibres in direct light.
Think about wear. Seat covers take real abrasion and want a firm, hard-wearing fabric. A throw that is only ever draped can be as soft as you like.
Embroidery on ready-made pieces
If a whole tablecloth is more than you want to take on, embroidering a plain bought one gives most of the effect for a fraction of the work – a corner motif, a border along one edge, initials.
It is also a good way to rescue something with a stain.
