FURNITURE restorer Lisa Louttit’s childhood love of sewing has helped her stitch together a successful Peebles business.

And recently she has worked on a bed reputedly slept in by Bonnie Prince Charlie and helped restore furniture in the National Trust for Scotland’s letting properties, including Melrose’s Harmony House.

Lisa is happy at maintaining a Borders tradition of working with fabric and said: “I always loved sewing in primary school at Loanhead.

“My mum Dorothy Rosenkrantz, from Hawick, with her two sisters worked in the mill, as did my granny.

“My mum was a hand sewer and she made the wee cashmere roses.

“When I was interested in sewing at primary school I would make stuff at home that was interesting to me, like doll’s clothes and my mum would tell about stitches.

“I was always in my mum’s sewing box.”

The ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ four-poster bed, belonging to Galashiels man Bob Main, looked old and Lisa said: “Bob wanted a canopy and fitted curtains with a track added.

“It was meant to have a solid wooden top but it was in one piece and he could not get it upstairs so it has made into part of his wall.

“Perhaps it should be in a museum.”

Lisa 46, with three children, aged 11, 12 and 16, has run the ‘Northgate Interiors’ shop for more than eight years.

She said: “When you are signing leases at the beginning and they want a 10-year lease you think, ‘Will I be here in 10 years?’

“It was a bridal shop before, the rent was ok and there was not a shop this sort of size on the High Street.

“Here folk get recommended and come in specifically for things.”

For more than 10 years, though, Lisa had a completely different job as a shift manager in the Bank of Scotland cash centre at the Gyle.

Lisa said: “I was made redundant, my children were much younger and it was either go full time or lose your job and I decided to do something in which I was really interested.

“By the point of opening the shop I had already done things like completely recovering everything we had in a static caravan and curtain making.

“I had started on the path of learning, I am mainly self-taught but for the upholstery side I have a guy, David Martin, who is retired with 50 years’ experience.

“For the years I have been here he has filled in all the blanks.

“You learn loads from stripping down chairs and seeing how they were put together and putting them back how they were done.

“My husband Gary does a fair bit of the upholstery, I don’t really like the actual pulling apart.

“He strips everything back and we keep all the bits to use as a template for re-making.”

Lisa loves nothing better than selecting materials and machining them up in her snug Northgate studio with cutting board and four different sewing machines.

Lisa said: “I like doing chairs but ultimately I end up doing quit a bit of sewing, blinds, cushions and lampshades and sofa seating.”

Recently Lisa has been engaged to help restore furniture during a three-year project in the National Trust for Scotland’s letting properties, which since 2021 have been let through Sykes Cottages.

Lisa said: “The project manager, Derrick Lothian, lives in Peebles and was looking for people to help him.

“We do the work between the months of October and April.

“In January we did Harmony House in Melrose including the drawing room, re-upholstering couches, new curtains, cushions, a couple of footstools were specially made and two Parker Knoll chairs recovered which were gifted to the trust.

“That is just one of the rooms, the property sleeps up to 18 folk.

“We have taken it from a two- to a four-star plus and across the board that has been the scenario.

“There are repetitive things, for Harmony House there were 50 cushions and I have a diary and it’s all booked in how long things will take.

“If something goes wrong you have to keep on schedule with other jobs too.

“You definitely work more hours for yourself than you do in employment for somebody else because you want to make it work. I love what I do and it does not feel like a chore.”