The Magic of Soft Furnishings - A talk by Jennie May

On 5 November we had the pleasure of welcoming Soft Furnishings expert Jennie May, from Montrose, Angus, who gave us a most interesting talk on how soft furnishings can completely transform a room and the process involved in creating the new furnishings. And there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. 

But first, Jennie explained what soft furnishings are, namely items made from textiles to decorate/furnish a home, such as curtains, cushions, blinds, throws, rugs, bedding. 

These can completely transform a room by adding colour, texture, warmth and personality. They can also be used to change the feel of a room depending on the season, for example by swapping out cushions and throws. 

Jennie meets her clients on site to get a feel for their style and tastes and find out their requirements, as well as take accurate measurements and note any potential obstacles and work out the best suspension system for curtains and blinds. 

Narrowing down the potential choices of fabrics often first involves eliminating what the client doesn't like, and then working out the most suitable types of fabric and the need for lining and interlining (a kind of thin wadding). Jennie can then order some samples for the clients to consider in different lights/times of day. 

Once the quote has been accepted by the client, Jennie can place the order. She takes delivery of the fabric and does a thorough check to make sure there are no faults before starting making the items. There is a lot more to this process than one can imagine, and each step is essential to ensure a top-notch result. And many of those steps are done by hand. Good quality curtains that hang just right, will give years or even decades of pleasure so it's worth spending the time and money. 

But, as Jennie pointed out, you don't necessarily need to buy the most important fabric for your soft furnishings. It's how they are made that's most important. 

Another interesting point that Jennie made was that if you are sticking to neutral tones, it's especially important to use different textures to avoid everything looking flat. 

Jennie really got us thinking about what soft furnishings could do for our home and the importance of top quality craftsmanship to achieve the best results. 

Thank you Jennie! 

Interlinings:

upholstering a footstool - workshop with Sue Macnab - 22/10/25

On 22 October 2025, we had the pleasure of welcoming Sue Macnab, upholsterer, who taught us how to upholster a footstool from scratch, or renovate an old one. The first step was sticking a thick piece of foam to the wooden or plywood base to hold it in place. This was then covered by a piece of wadding, then by a larger piece of Calico cotton, which was tightened and held in place on the underside of the wood with tacks on all 4 sides, but leaving the corners free. The cotton was then further tightened and retacked to create a smooth, rounded padded surface. With the tacks only lightly hammered in, it was easy to remove and reposition them. Then, once the tension was perfect, the corners were folded neatly and tacked into place before using a staple gun to fix everything down, removing the tacks we went. We then added our upholstery fabric, using the same process as for the Calico cotton, to first tack it in place, retighten, fold the corners and finally using the staple gun to hold everything in place. The underside of the stool was then covered with another fabric, stapling the folded in edges in place with a staple gun. Finally we added the legs and all our footstools were done! They were all different and equally stunning. Thank you to Sue for a fantastic class where we not only learned a lot, but amazingly all managed to finish! And we even got a bit of an upper body workout in the process!