The cut cloth: Quilt cupboard

When I was a little girl, I used this tiny cupboard for all my little treasures. It was painted in a rather garish pink colour and had golden plastic handles, but I thought it was wonderful. Somehow, it has survived many house moves, two little girls of my own and a few ruthless purges of "stuff". Some time ago, in my folk-art phase, I re-painted it in a much kinder blue colour, replaced the gold handles and added some deformed cherubs and flowers.

I never did master the art of folk-art painting as you can see, but I got very good at these little graduated dots which I used on everything.

I filled my little cupboard with tiny pieces of fabric to resemble quilts and dreamed of one day having a proper cupboard just for quilts.

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I love reading home and garden magazines and I have lost count of the number of times I have seen pictures in these magazines of a beautiful piece of furniture which is casually described as a 'junk shop find'. Usually all I can find in junk shops is junk so I was delighted a few months ago when I spotted this cupboard in our local junk shop and I knew I had found my long dreamed for quilt cupboard.

Of course, nothing comes easy and yet another major renovation job was called for. The bottom of the cupboard and drawers had been lined with all manner of tacky material, from linoleum to newspaper which featured some very attractive fashion from 1965.

Removing these revealed a long lost sweet wrapper and two tram tickets.

As Perth has not had trams operating since 1958, I knew my cupboard was at least 54 years old and, judging from the quality of the wood, I think it would probably qualify as a piece of depression-era furniture.

I removed the rather ugly handles and, as I didn't have the stamina (or the equipment) to sand it back to the bare wood, I gave it a light sand with sandpaper and then applied two coats of sealer/primer.