Home Decoration : Part 2

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 8 of 44)

Make a mattress for this, or, if you wish to avoid that trouble, you can get a nice mattress for the sum of two dollars, made of cane-shavings or husks. Cover this with a green English furniture print. The glazed English comes at about twenty-five cents a yard, the glazed French at seventy-five cents a yard and a nice article of yard-wide French twill (very strong) is from seventy-five to eighty cents a yard.

With any of these cover your lounge. Make two large, square pillows of the same substance as the mattress and set up at the back. If you happen to have one or two feather pillows that you can spare for the purpose, shake them down into a square shape and cover them with the same print and you will then have for pillows for your lounge - one at each end and two at the back and you will find it answers for all the purposes of a sofa.

It will be a very pretty thing, now, to cut out of the same material as your lounge, sets of lambrequins a land of pendent curtain-top, as shown in the illustration, to put over the windows, which are to be embellished with white muslin curtains. The cornices to your windows can be simply strips of wood covered with paper to match the bordering of your room and the lambrequins, made of chintz like the lounge, can be trimmed with fringe or gimp of the same color. The patterns of these can be varied according to fancy, but simple designs are usually the prettiest. A tassel at the lowest point improves the appearance.

The curtains can be made of plain white muslin, or some of the many styles that come for this purpose. If plain muslin is used, you can ornament them with hems an inch in width, in which insert a strip of gingham or chambray of the same color as your chintz. This will wash with the curtains without losing its color, or should it fade, it can easily be drawn out and replaced.

The influence of white-muslin curtains in giving an air of grace and elegance to a room is astonishing. White curtains really create a room out of nothing. No matter how coarse the muslin, so it be white and hang in graceful folds, there is a charm in it that supplies the want of multitudes of other things.

Very pretty curtain-muslin can be bought at thirty-seven cents a yard. It requires six yards for a window.

Let your men-folk knock up for you, out of rough, unplanned boards, some ottoman frames, as described in Chapter II; stuff the tops with just the same material as the lounge and cover them with the self-same chintz.

Now you have, suppose your selected color to be green, a green lounge in the corner and two green ottomans; you have white muslin curtains, with green lambrequins and borders and your room already looks furnished. If you have in the house any broken-down arm-chair, reposing in the oblivion of the garret, draw it out - drive a nail here and there to hold it firm - stuff and pad and stitch the padding through with a long upholsterer's needle and cover it with the chintz like your other furniture. Presto - you create an easy-chair.

Therefore can broken and disgraced furniture reappear, and, being put into uniform with the general suit of your room, take a new lease of life.

If you want a center-table, consider this - that any kind of table, well concealed beneath the folds of handsome drapery of a color corresponding to the general hue of the room, will look well. Instead of going to the cabinet-maker and paying from thirty to forty dollars upon a little, narrow, cold, marble-topped stand, that gives just room enough to hold a lamp and a book or two, reflect within yourself what a center-table is made for. If you have in your house a good, broad, generous-topped table, take it, cover it with an ample cloth of green broadcloth. Such a cover, two and a half yards square, of fine green broadcloth, figured with black and with a pattern-border of grape-leaves, has been bought for ten dollars.

In a room it covers a cheap pine table, such as you may buy for four or five dollars any day; but you will be astonished to see how handsome an object this table makes under its green drapery. Probably you could make the cover more cheaply by getting the cloth and trimming its edge with a handsome border, selected for the purpose; but either way, it will be an economical and useful ornament. We set down our center-table, therefore, as consisting mainly of a nice broadcloth cover, matching our curtains and lounge.

We are sure that any one with "a heart that is humble" may command such a center-table and cloth for fifteen dollars or less and a family of five or six may all sit and work, or read, or write around it and it is capable of entertaining a generous allowance of books and knick-knacks.

Here are thirty dollars' worth of really admirable pictures of some of our best American artists, from which you can choose at your leisure. By sending to any leading picture-dealer, lists of pictures and prices will be forwarded to you. These chromos, being all varnished, can wait for frames until you can afford them. Or, what is better, because it is at once cheaper and a means of educating the ingenuity and the taste, you can make for yourselves pretty rustic frames in various modes.

Take a very thin board, of the right size and shape, for the foundation or "mat;" saw out the inner oval or rectangular form to suit the picture. Nail on the edge a rustic frame made of branches of hard, seasoned wood and garnish the corners with some pretty device; such, for instance, as a cluster of acorns; or, in place of the branches of trees, fasten on with glue small pine cones, with larger ones for corner ornaments.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.