Weaving/Guest Room Project

I had a project about redesigning an interior. I chose my old room at my parent’s home, which serves at the moment as a guest room, but mostly as a weaving room (and storage room). The room is pretty small, but there is a loom inside. Besides, there is also lot of my loom and rag rug supplies, mom’s books and a bed. The room is really uncozy with lot of stuff and mess. Walls have ugly yellow wallpaper and lemon tree board. 

View from the door

Slanted roof and narrow niche

Shuttles for weaving

The problems with this room are the lack of storage space, ugly interiors and the mess. I need more space for my weaving supplies. I love to make rag rugs, and I have lot of beautiful rags and cut stripes for that, which I would like to store in clever way. There is also lot of loom equipement, like sticks, beams and shuttles. They are now placed in the floor.

The roof is slanted. The other end has only 90cm/3feets tall roof. Since you can't move there, using that area for storage is smart.

The bed is used to rarely, that I desided to get rid of it. Instead, 
 there would be a guest bed, which you can fold. 

Elfa storage

For storing the elastic stripes and rag, I planned to get elfa shelves. They are basicly baskets in shelves made by metal wire. So you can see through them. They are also popular, so you can get them second hand pretty easily, and also sell them if you don't need them anymore. They are not pretty, so that's why people usually put them inside closets or other ways out of sight. I thought that attatching a curtain would be easy and cheap way. Ikea had similar idea:

To the niche, I will attatch narrow shelves, which will store the weaving supplies, such as beams, shuttles and sticks. Here are beautiful narrow shelves that I found online:

I made a plan with a software called floorplanner. It was funny to learn to make the slanted roof and the loom from the tables.

The guest bed is hidden behind the curtains next to the elfa storage shelves

Here is also a version of the same room, to show how the furniture is moved if there is some guest staying over. Basically the loom is moved in the corner.

I had an idea to make the room a bit gothic with black decorative details. I was thinking to attach painting frame around the smaller window, and maybe some mirrors to make the space bigger. The basic colors would be white, grey and petrol, with the brown shades of wood. The walls should be painted with white or grey. Here's some inspiration pictures:

Colors

Small Apartment Floor Plan Project

I took last fall super exciting course about interior design. One of the tasks in the course was to make a new floorplan to a small 48m2 sized apartment. Before we started the work, we had to decide to whom will the apartment be made for, and what kind of people they are. I decided to make a plan for me and my boyfriend. 

 

This is the floorplan that we had to redesign

We have a dream of a apartment, which would have space for both a loom and e-drum set. We need also decent kitchen and a dining table, because we love to cook and eat slowly. We have also agreed on buying an L-shaped sofa with a function of transforming it to a guest bed. There should be space for storing lot of cds, LPs and tapes, as well as craft supplies. In this project, these requirements would be really hard to fulfill, because of the size of the apartment.

I had to consider all minimum measurements in the floorplan. The distance from sofa to the table, the distance between dining table and wall, space for paths to move in the apartment and enough space to open the drawer and so on. I had to think about the amount of space I need for storage. I measured and calculated the amount of meters that our music collection needs, and the sizes of the furniture we have. I had to consider the fixed places of windows. We were not allowed to move water points more than 1,5 meters from their original positions. I had to think carefully how to place doors the way that they open functionally. I didn’t want to have these sliding doors, because I prefer traditional ones.

I made huge amount of versions, because I got so excited about this project. I used scale changing ruler to make everything in right scale. I had papermodels for the furniture that was hardest to place, and moved them on top of the floorplan. I had to make some compromises. There would be space to get up from the bed only from the other side. I’m used to that, because that’s the situation in our current apartment. I also thought a lot of the style and decoration of the interiors. For example I placed some antique drawers there and planned a nice display for my spinning wheels in the living room. 

My final floorplan

 

Small sketch of the entry

A sketch of the interiors in the living room

In the lesson we finally rewieved all of the plans that each student had produced. I found interesting all the non-square plans. I had tried those myself too, but I didn’t get any of them work. Maybe the square shaped walls are easiest to attatch to a small apartment in generally. We found out that garment rooms take usually quite much space, because there must be space for kneeding in the room. Kitchen-living room combos were popular, as well as large multi-functional bathrooms. I got really good feedback, and my teatcher was comparing my solution to a floorplan that one professional interior designer had made from the same flat:

A floorplan to the same apartment made by a professional

 

Another floorplan to the same apartment made by a professional

I find it interesting, how the different functions are placed in the floorplans in generally. Kitchen – Living rooms are popular now maybe because people don’t really cook so often. The reason for some people to dislike this combo is that they think that the smell of food is spreading everywhere. I saw in one magazine a room, that worked as a bath room and bed room. I showed this to my class mates, and it really made them laugh. In the traditional houses there has often been one “main room” which served for all purposes: kitchen, sleeping, dining, and for work and crafts. Storage rooms were separated. It was energy efficient to heat up only one room. 

Main room in Seurasaari museum (Pertinotsa): Huge oven, bed in front of it, hand washing point in the right side of the door.

Christmas presents

I wove 3 textiles for my friends and family for Christmas. I weave a lot, so and I try to make luxurious and functional items. I always try to consider the taste of the person who receives the gift. Usually it means that I try to choose the colours that the person likes. I also try to estimate if the person needs the item. 

 

This year I made three towels. First one is a kitchen/hand towel. The material is 25% linen, 75% cotton. I wove it with damask loom, which has 16 pattern shafts. The weave is satin, and the pattern is composed by altering the weft- and warp-faced satin pixel by pixel. It is done by pulling little wooden buttons. 

Designing the pattern was nice. I used typing software for achieving the decorative letters with the font Old English. The letter I used is K, which is the first letter of the receivers surname. I draw the decorative letter in the square pattern paper by placing it to the surface of the computer screen. I used WeavePoint software to make pattern designs. There is nice helpful tools in the software, for example the possibility to make easily mirrors or negatives from the pattern, and the copy – paste works as well. I have learnt to use that software well, because I find pattern designing really fascinating.

The two other towels were bathtowels, so they were quite large. The material is 75% linen and 25% cotton. It is common to use cotton or cotton mix for warp, because linen warp gets broken easier, because it is not elastic at all. If your shuttle scratches accidentaly a warp thread, it breaks easily. Also the safts and reed are wearing out the threads. 

The pattern

These two towels are woven to the same warp, which had 3 different greenish color sections and a 5 shaft waffle weave. I dyed weft yarns at home for achieving vivid and rich colors. For my female friend I dyed different kinds of reds, because that seems to be her favourite color. I also used thinner yarn for her. For my brother, I dyed the yarns with different army colours. It is surprising, how contrast colours fit often together in woven products. I tried different kinds of straps for the towel, and finally ended up making it a small decorative detail.  

Giving chrtistmas presents is a bit controversial. If you have to get something for everyone, you might end up giving something, that the person doesn’t want or need. People have too much meaningless stuff, and that’s often a  problem in their individual lives. Getting rid of unnecessary and unpleasant stuff is hard, due to our deep psychological reasons. Collecting is our natural urge, which has developped through evolution. I know few families, who have decided not to give any Chrismas presents. They want to focus on the good company and food. I like to give presents, so I try to five funcional or disappearing presents, like food and basic cosmetics, or unmaterial presents, like tickets to concerts or gift cards. Very often I repair my mom’s clothes and then give them as a present. This Christmas I repaired her wool jacket, mangle cloth and wool socks.