Oh Boy, Charpoy

The entrance area of our apartment in Chennai, India — the India pied-à-terre — is mostly empty right now:

We got that cute low table with the little cushioned seats from an Indian online shopping site, Urban Ladder. It’s their Kivaha table. The table is supposed to be in the living room as a coffee table. But this entrance area was so woefully empty, and I needed to photograph this wall I painted, so I styled up the tiny bit of furniture available. The focus of this photo was mostly the wall, anyway! See how to paint a wall to look like this, visit my tutorial at Paint+Pattern. And click here to see how to make those hanging lanterns. Yes, these lanterns can be easily DIY’d!

I’m dreaming of our next trip to India, and doing more decorating and furnishing of the apartment. For this entrance area, we need seating for visitors. And I’m looking for a charpoy. What’s a charpoy? Check out a Pinterest Board full of ’em to see! It’s a wood and woven bench/daybed/cot. An iconic piece of Indian furniture. Here’s a charpoy you can get in the U.S. from Restoration Hardware:

My plan is to find a charpoy in India, vintage or new, on our next trip. Or I may have our carpenter build the wood frame and I would weave the seating myself. You can do that, you know:

Then, I would stencil patterns with white or light gray paint on cream color fabric, and sew a cushion cover and fill it with foam. It would look something like this, a cushion on a charpoy shown at HELLO Blogzine:

And of course, I would paint stencil designs on more fabrics to make pillows. I’d look for white embroidered chikankari fabric to make pillows. Maybe cream or light gray or white sari fabric or cream color sari borders too, if I can find such a thing in colorful India.

You see, I’m keeping the apartment light, like Scandinavian white in India, as shared here in a post years ago.

I know for sure one of the pillows will have sheesha mirrors sewed on similar to the John Robshaw sheesha pillow:

I have packages of Darice mirrors found at Joann, and yeah this pillow will be another DIY. Maybe I’ll sew the mirrors in rows over painted stripes. We’ll see!

The end goal is a charpoy with a riot of patterns, with quieter colors.

And oh yeah, here’s the mirror that will hang above the charpoy:

But this dang mirror! I bought it many years ago and since then it’s lived in our basement and a storage unit. It’s JUST a smidgen too big to pack for checked luggage on Etihad without incurring big extra fees. Ugh! And the mirror really can’t be disassembled without damaging it a lot. Believe me, I’ve thought of all ways to get this mirror to India. But I’ll figure out a way sometime, that’s for sure!

We’ve already hauled this rug to India to put in this space: It’s the Beaumont Adileh VII2 Talisman Rug from RugsUSA:

I thought that rug would look great with the charpoy, cushion and pillows.

Here’s another shot of the entry area:

Hopefully after our next trip, there will be a very pattern-full charpoy piled with cushions and pillows here!

And yes, you can paint on fabric to make your own designs. See links to a whole bunch of stenciled fabric projects I’ve done, in my post about how to be a fabric designer with paint and stencils.

And oh boy … in addition to looking for a charpoy, I have a lot of DIYs to do on our next trip, huh?