I have a studio. Do I use it? Not that much! I sit in the living room and stitch and burn and the coffee table is my true studio. I have a new coffee table, earned with the proceeds from our recent yard sale… It is part of The Exciting Plan in the works for when I move to my own place in a year’s time. I am working on a design plan and it revolves around a few key pieces of furniture. I’m selling off several pieces that have been with me my entire adult life. Liberating? LIBERATING! I’m pretty excited. Meet, Isala, from Ikea.
I read Posie Gets Cozy, my favorite blog, and this post inspired the heck out of me and I fell in love with the cabinets. These will be going in my new dining/living area when I move. I haven’t decided on the configuration yet but this is the inspiration. It will hold some dining type stuff, some witchy type stuff, and some art type stuff.
It also means that I have a lot of work before me. I’m working on slip covers for the sofa and chair that are very neutral. I will be using pillow covers and the like to highlight the seasons, leaving the foundations as is. This will enable me to make dramatic changes without a lot of expense or work and minimal storage of said pieces.
For years I’ve been storing my grandmother’s ancient kitchen queen with the intention of renovating the old gal and using her to store my herbs and witchy tools, books, and the like. The pull out porcelain enamel bread worktop would have been great for mixing potions. Potions I NEVER make.
She has great bones but this is a sad state of affairs. When my grandmother moved into a nursing home we moved the queen to my parent’s garage. The rope used to secure the doors is still there, 35 years later. The breadbox has an articulated sliding door which is cool and the original menu for holiday feasts is still inside the left door. I have loved her long but also neglected her. I cleaned the top half last summer to get a handle on the damage and it cleaned up better than I thought. Sadly, she was full of mold, which I can’t be around unless it’s Brie, and fixing that drawer was going to be hell. The original drawer front was inside with glass knobs in tact. I had lots of dreams for us. And in one look at Posie’s lovely study, I betrayed my old gal and a new dream began.
I am tired of the smell old wood furniture gives to textiles, a kind of sour, musty odor that I don’t like. I want drawers and doors that open and close properly and my time has become my most elusive and valuable commodity. So off she went with an aging biker couple to a new life and I’m free and so is she. And the coffee table became the first in a series of new pieces. I am planning on a new dresser soon and then at least one cabinet and the tall narrow cabinet. We shall see if a second cabinet is in the plan as the year unfolds.
I saw this yummy printed linen/rayon fabric at Joann’s about six weeks ago and I knew it was perfect for the autumn pillow covers. I had some unbleached linen that would go great on the back (I’m a total fan of being able to use the backs as art too) and this project was born. Thank goodness I have a year!! I have made a vow that all my pillow covers will have zippers from now on too, instead of whip stitching them closed. Goodness that made a quick clean challenging.
I have plans for winter and spring/summer covers as well and new curtains. I’m purging a lot from my life that I’ve been carting around and that has included old ideas too. It’s been quite a busy summer as I work my tail off at work and home and while Mr. Furnace and I continue to work on things, mostly old concepts of what a relationship should or could be. I’m exhausted as I’ve mentioned more than once but excited and inspired. plod plod plod
So, here is another teaser for items to come in the Etsy shop. I gotta come up with the money for all this, right? You can see here another unmentioned project, my Samhain quilt top… Probably not ready until next Samhain, just in time to move to my new digs where ever they may be. The pouches, Miss Mitty in her felted bed, a wooden box that will be the recipient of the recipe design on the sketch pad, and finally, one of the new pouches, both in fabric WIP and in sketch… Life is good. Now if only the small staph infection that is on the END OF MY NOSE would heal, things would be perfect. Must have caught that from one of the unclean, unwashed masses at the yard sale. Jeesh.
Stitch Witch Cottage 