Door stops

Last autumn I gave the bathroom an overhaul (new bath panel, new floor, a lick of paint, new towels and bath mat, and a new shower curtain). With a slightly different colour scheme, a new door stop was needed. The one from the study was a perfect match and so got moved to the bathroom, which worked perfectly well for the first six months since the study door tends to be kept closed when I have the central heating on.

However, the advent of summer had the study door being propped open with nothing too attractive and a mini flood in the bathroom last month somewhat ruined the door stop there - I can't remember what I had stuffed it with but, oh my goodness, did it smell when it got wet!

Fortunately, a rifle through the materials box unearthed some more of the same fabric - off-cuts from making the Roman blind for the study - so I was in business for an afternoon of crafty activity with the monthly craft club gang.

Each door stop used a piece of fabric just smaller than a sheet of A3 paper, which was folded in half and sewn across one of the short sides and the long side to make a pouch.  I then sewed diagonally across each corner to make a sort of gusset to give the pouch a decent sized base. Into the pouch I poured 1.5kg of cheap rice before turning in a generous top hem, popping in a fabric handle, and sewing across the top.

The rice filled the pouch about two-thirds full so the remaining fabric and handle just folded over. The idea is that you can grab the handle to lift up the door stop to put it in place and the simple sewn seam at the top will be easy to unpick should the rice need topping up, or even emptying entirely for the fabric to be washed. Well, I guess there could well be another bathroom flood to contend with.

I repeated the process with a second piece of fabric to make another door stop for the study.

This was all done in a few hours, which left me with some time to kill at craft club. Although both door stops were nice they did feel a bit plain. I had been considering some sort of adornments but couldn't make up my mind before leaving for craft club so had brought nothing suitable with me. My friend very kindly came to my rescue, putting the button tin that she inherited from her Mother at my disposal. It was a treasure trove of buttons and fixings from the 1940s to about the 1970s. In the end I chose a set of ten coat buttons for the study door stop. They add a bit of weight to the top, enabling it top to flop over beautifully. They also hide a less than straight line of top stitching!

As for the bathroom door stop, the walls of the bathroom are painted white with bits of silver glitter embedded in the paint, so I couldn't resist a bit of 'bling'. I chose a sparkly buckle which I just slipped over the fabric handle.

All in all, a very successful afternoon's work!