I really dig the simple, modern look of Oh, Fransson’s Mixtape Quilts, so I used my friends’ baby boy (due next month!) as an excuse to buy the pattern and try making one.
(This picture, obviously, is a couple of months old — my yard is now covered with snow, not leaves.)
I (re) learned a couple of important lessons while making this, including: Get the whole story
I have a new chair for my sewing room!
Well, sort of new.
As in, everything you see in the above photo is new: the cherry red paint on the legs, the fabric covering the frame…
The actual chair underneath, though, well, that’s probably older than me.
One of the funnest things about moving into a new house is making the space yours. Painting and picture-hanging and curtain-making — you know, all the things that bring a space to life and reflect the tastes and personality of the person living there.
Last summer my husband and I moved into what might be my dream house: a 90-year-old Arts & Crafts Foursquare in an old, tree-filled neighborhood. We have beamed ceilings, leaded windows, beautiful built-ins, and warm wood floors.
As soon as we moved in — actually, before we moved in — I claimed ownership of the small sun room overlooking our backyard. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do there, but I knew I loved having three walls of windows and a secret little balcony off to the side. So I directed our movers (ie: friends we bribed with pizza and microbrews) to drop my circa-1993 student desk and old kitchen table there. When I started sewing, this room is where I set up.
And it was nice. But in need of much improvement. The furniture was poorly organized, and barely fit in the room. The ceiling fan had no light, so at night the room got dark, making it hard to see what I was working on, even with the wall sconce turned on and two lamps brought into the room. Plus, the color wasn’t quite right.
The grayish-purple was probably perfect for this room when it was meant to be a relaxing spot to read a book or take an afternoon nap. But it wasn’t quite right for a room meant to inspire creativity. Besides, I spend all day surrounded by the muted neutral colors of office cubicals. I wanted something friendly, bright, cheery, and energetic. Something like this:
With a little bit of this:
And plenty of shelf space and storage solutions for books and patterns, fun knick-knacks, and tools like scissors and pins.
It’s coming along nicely. I hope there will be more pictures to share soon.
My magnolia tree last week
My magnola tree today
But, since I spent last weekend re-packing the contents of my cupboards, I figure it’s time to share.
And yes, you read that right: re-packing. The kitchen remodel was part of a big get-the-house-ready-to-put-on-the-market effort. And it seems to have worked. The house sold in a day, and — even though the buyer hasn’t really said anything to indicate this — I’d like to think it’s all because it had a pretty, pretty kitchen.
My new favorite feature: a built-in dishwasher! In the before picture, you can see the portable dishwasher on the left edge of the photo. It was such a pain to move and hook-up, that I usually just did dishes by hand in the sink. The new dishwasher alone made the entire job worth it!
My least favorite new feature: See those two switches to the right of the sink? One operates a light above the sink. The other operates the garbage disposal. When the electrician re-wired the kitchen, he reversed the switches. So for the last couple of months, every time I meant to turn on the garbage disposal, I ended up with a little extra light instead.
after
Want you can’t see very well in these before pictures is the grime that had built up in the deep grooves of the rough texturing of the kitchen walls. It was nearly impossible to clean, and it wasn’t very safe (I frequently scraped up my knuckles on the texture peaks while opening and closing the shades), so we took a rather extreme route to solving the problem: taking out the walls and putting in new ones.
Look at all that natural light! My kitchen table was a great spot for photo shoots (like the header on this blog!), and I can only hope I get so lucky in my new house. (Which, by the way, is still in Cedar Rapids — I’m not going far!)
Anne is a writer, editor, and occasional photographer in Eastern Iowa. She also runs a digital photo booth rental business, Red Curtain Photo Booth, with her husband.
Most of the time, she'd probably rather be sewing, baking, planning her next road trip, or playing with her digital camera.
