The Eden project (continued)

Does your husband mind living in such a floral home? He finds the apartment joyful and celebratory, and just wants more flowers by the moment. I know some people would find all this exuberance intimidating but, for me, this place is like a garden paradise: it fills me with euphoria. White, on the other hand, just feels sterile and lifeless.

New furniture or old? Old. I love flea markets - everything in my living room is from a flea market and nothing exceeded $500. It's not that I'm trying to save money, I just prefer it. I find ordinary retail stores energetically dead. I adore re-covering old chairs, footstools and Victorian sofas whose springs are popping out - I feel I'm giving them a new lease of life. I painted the wooden screen, too. My mother found it at an antique shop and I painted the design straight on to it with acrylics. I love the notion that a sofa has been around longer than I have and that she might have stories she can whisper to me when we're alone.

What sort of things do you rescue? I have an obsession with chairs, so there's a family of rescued ladies in our living room. I see them as my catwalk models, because I have a huge collection of fabric designs to cover them with. I love my English mahogany turn-of-the-century cabinet - it has all the original glass in the doors and kind of plays the role of the proper, elegant English gent in our living room. And then there's my red Victorian rolled-arm couch. She came to us in mint condition and now the upholstery is iridescent from being sat on so much. She's been a really solid friend and plays back-up singer to all my wild, patterned rugs and cushions.

How do you make sure your different pieces of furniture 'go' rather than 'fight'? Putting a room together requires an understanding of the dialogue between objects. There are a lot of different styles here, but everything interacts because almost all the pieces are curvaceous and feminine. A very straight Scandinavian sofa, for example, wouldn't look right here, because it would be too masculine.

What's the secret to flea market shopping? When you find something you like, check it over to make sure it's sound - rotting wood is pretty visible if you turn the piece upside down. I don't buy things if details have chipped or rotted off with age, because you can't reconstruct beautiful details like that and it often means the rest of the piece isn't too sound. Mouldy upholstery and broken springs don't worry me, though - a good upholsterer can work wonders.

What will you do when florals go out of fashion? I have never been interested in trends, so the world can embrace black and white and minimalism and I will just carry on doing what I do.

How do you go about designing a new print? I never sketch anything out first, because I adore irregularities - I'm a little bored by perfect, symmetrical designs. I never think about what it's going to look like. Prints just evolve leaf by leaf, flower by flower. I often paint on swatches of silk, then scale them up to create textile designs or canvases.

Have you ever gone too far on the floral front? I thought I had when I covered the Victorian love seat with my Vienna Garden print. I found the seat at a flea market: it was covered in mouldy upholstery and cost me $150. I stood there in the freezing rain trying to imagine what it would look like in red and pink silk shantung fabric, and decided that it would bring some real drama to my living room. It took me a week to decide whether or not I had done the right thing.


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