Home thoughts

T'other Jane and I met at art college and, although I ended up looking after other peoples' creations for a living, I have kept my hand in by making clothes and soft furnishings for my home which has always been full of a mixture of vintage finds and family hand-me-downs. I like to look around each room and to see pieces of furniture with a story to tell. My iron and brass bed was a junk-shop find which I stripped, painted and polished before cutting the base from a piece of wood salvaged from the attics of the first National Trust mansion I lived in. It's a French double (spacious for one, cosy for two) and I can't imagine ever changing it. One particularly comfortable sofa is symbolic of my place in our modern extended family, having passed from my step-mother to my mother (a reasonable swap for my father at the time!) and then to me. Each of us has re-covered the sofa in our own style and I wonder which of my nephews or step-nieces I might pass it on to next and what memories might be stirred as they unpeel the layers of fabric and family history as they re-cover it themselves?