Berkeley Sprig revived - a memory board re-vamp

Ever since I saw this pretty chair in Nancy Lancaster's bedroom with this charming simple blue flower on a white background, I have had a hankering for this design by Colefax and Fowler , called "Berkeley Sprig". You can read about this design here and here.
Sadly, as far as I know, this design is discontinued..

                                                         

It seemed the perfect fabric for the re-vamp of a memory board.
I found one of those boards , rather old and worn, standing against a wall in the rain in an old street in Bath.
This is the before picture. Once upon a time it had been quite smart, but the fabric was faded and the whole thing was pretty dirty .

I took off all the nails, staples, ribbons ( braiding ) and fabric till I was left with the wooden board and the padding ( see below).

If you are not as lucky as I was to find a discarded memory board, you can get a piece of wood cut at your local DIY store and some padding from a fabric shop and you are ready to roll as well.

Next, I drew an approximate Berkely Sprig design, traced this on acetate sheeting, and cut the design out with a craft knife so I had a stencil.

And here is a detail- excuse the lighting !!

I then stencilled the Sprig design using blue fabric paint .You will need to iron it with  piece of cotton on top of
the paint so the paint sets and will not wash out.

Then I took the old brading and used this as a guideline for measurements for the new white braiding .
I pinned it in a lozenge shape to the board, then attached it by stapling the braiding to the back.Here is what I mean by lozenge shape- this is the pinned braiding which has not been stapled yet.

As a final touch I put a round-topped upholstery nail at every crossing of every lozenge.This gives you the option to tuck postcards and photo's in between the short bits of the braiding.

 And here is the finished memory board.You can tuck it full of cards and photographs like this-

or just a few cards like this.

 And you can always change it around so you have a changing display.Either way- I just love it.

Here is a detail of the corner.This is a super simple way to start upholstery- so give it a go! Happy crafting !!

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