Twice in Country Living - well, once, but Twice, if you know what I mean!

Great news - our hugely popular Sewing Rolls (a pile of which are shown in this photo) are in the March issue of Country Living. Subscription issues hit doormats this morning - and, already, the response has been fantastic. The sewing roll featured in the magazine is in a particularly pretty raspberry red floral French cotton dating from about 1910 - and we lined it with an apple green vintage blanket. One of the prettiest so far.

As you may know, we are exhibiting at the Country Living Spring Fair in London in March, so it is especially heartening to have made it into the magazine just before we exhibit. Really looking forward to it (although, as it is the first time we have exhibited outside Scotland, also more than a little nervous!) - and if the reaction to the magazine is anything to go by, it will be a very exciting time for Twice.

Not as miserable about the Scottish weather as I was in my last post - have realised that there is good snow in the Highlands and, if the temperature doesn't rise too much before Wednesday, I am off to Glenshee to ski with Ellie (eldest daughter) who is on half term. It's possible to be on the slopes in under an hour from here - and when it's good, it's very, very good (and, yes, when it's bad, it's HORRID!).

Caroline

Beautiful shoe bags need beautiful shoes ....

As you may know, Twice makes the prettiest and most luxurious shoe bags available! Using soft, vintage blanket with an applique pattern in one of our gorgeous vintage prints, and closing with ivory satin ribbons, our shoe bags will keep your shoes in the utmost luxury. But do your shoes deserve it? They will when you get to know one of our great Scottish secrets and a great friend to Twice - Helen Bateman. Helen is a highly talented shoe designer with a very loyal following through her shops in Edinburgh and Inverness. Luckily for the rest of the country, her shoes are also available through her website at http://www.helenbateman.com.

One of the really helpful things that Helen produces is her Basics Collection - a range of classic shoes and boots which don't change, so that you can always replace that favourite staple in your wardrobe. I'm just about to replace my kitten heel black suede ankle boots as the current ones have been worn to death - and I love the fact that the new ones will be just the same.

So, check out Helen's website and then you know where to get the shoe bag that your new shoes deserve!

It is really miserable here today - horribly cold with non-stop sleety rain - and none of the snow that we were promised. Only one thing for it - a roaring fire and a good film!

Best wishes

Caroline

More is more!

This is such a good example of why I LOVE doing this! I have just taken a delivery from a dealer who specialises in French fabrics. Amongst the haul was this particularly pretty blousy floral curtain. While I was scanning it into the archive, I discovered one of those wonderful little idiosyncracies of these fabrics - in order to get a little extra length into the curtain, whoever made it all those years ago (this fabric is quite hard to date, but I would put it at somewhere around 1950) has added a lining to just the top 1" of the curtain - and this, as you can see from the photo, is in a really pretty cotton paisley. This illustrates so well our new motto for 2007 - "More is more"! - in other words, given a fairly neutral background (for example, the wonderful neutral Scottish linen that we often use) the more patterns and colours you put together, the better they can often look.

For those of you who are interested in following our fabrics through to their final incarnation, the archive number for this on is 152-07 - this will eventually be put on the label of any design made in this fabric. Do get in touch if you would like more information about this or any other aspect of Twice and our fabrics - email me at info@thetwiceshop.co.uk.

Best wishes
Caroline

History in the making .....

I have just finished putting some wonderful new cushions made from homespun linen onto the website and it occured to me that, like many of our finds, you might be interested in finding out a bit more about it.

All of these linens would have been made at least 50-100 years ago all over Central Europe. They would have been woven at home by the women of the household, who would spend their evenings weaving these amazing rolls of linen. It took the average weaver 1 night to weave 60 centimeters ( 24 inches) of linen. The full story of how they were produced defies belief in this day and age, when we just go out a buy any fabrics that we need - the linen would have been grown, cut and dried. It would then be put in water (maybe a pond) and left for three months in order to soften it for spinning. It would then be taken out, thrashed, combed and finally spun into linen yarn. This would then have been woven into these rolls of linen fabric, to be used as sacks or maybe cart covers. Many of these rolls were woven to be part of a marriage dowry and would therefore have been stored away carefully. This is one of the reasons that we can find them still unused after all these years.

Most of the linen has coloured stripes down the centre - a decoration that would have been added by the women weavers - who would have had to dye the yarn themselves to achieve the lovely colours that we now see. Reds, blues and greens are found and even purples and ochres. It can be difficult to know their exact country of origin, so unless we are sure of their provenance, we will stick to "European". The cloths can also vary from a fairly smooth linen to the wonderfully rough hemp linen of these cushions.

Whatever their history, they make extremely versatile and useful cushions. We have red stripes in stock at the moment and are about to add a navy blue striped cloth. Available, of course, from www.thetwiceshop.com!

Best wishes
Caroline

Fascinating Fabrics

I thought you might be interested to hear how we find and process the wonderful fabrics that we use at Twice. The first port of call for us when we are trawling for fabrics is antique fairs and auctions. Then we also work with dealers in the UK, on the Continent and in the States who specialise in antique and vintage fabrics. The variety of fabrics available at Twice is so wide that at any one time there will be gorgeous English chintzes that you might recognise from Granny's curtains to vintage Provencal prints to turn of the century American patchwork. One of the attractions of the Twice range is that it is so eclectic, but there are many fabrics that don't quite work for us, so we have to get the right feeling from a fabric before we will accept it.

Once the fabric arrives back at Twice, it is washed and ironed in our laundry - in addition to making sure that all our fabrics are clean and fresh when they get to you, this also means that we know that these old fabrics can withstand washing. If it struggles at this stage, then it won't make it any further. It is worth pointing out, however, that these are old fabrics which have already been used for another purpose before they are made up by Twice - it is likely that some signs of their previous life will remain after washing, but they will only be small and are part of the fabric's character.

We then review the fabrics to see which of our designs would look best in a particular pattern and we consider what uses it will be suitable for - for example, if it is a more fragile fabric, we will use it for products that will not need regular washing or take hard wear and tear. Every effort is made to ensure that fabrics are up to the job.

The fabric is then made up locally into the chosen design and finally makes its way to you from our headquarters here in Perth.

We've just added a few new designs to the range - drop into www.thetwiceshop.com and look at the Covered Baskets and Sugar Bowl Candles - both vintage Twice!

Best wishes

Caroline