Old Spillover Sewing Room. Daughter S.'s bedroom before picture. We bought the futon for her and it ended up not being comfortable to sleep on. I moved that into my new sewing studio and we'll be putting a bed in her room to replace it. The curtains were made by me last year.

Whoa! Spent a lot of time downloading photo's today and didn't know that Picasa had an instant download. Interesting........

Better photo of the tablecloth but still before final pressing!
Here's a better photo of the dressing table I will use for fitting issues. I wanted to use it to rest the mirror on and then decided to make it even more functional. I made the little skirt to hide a cd player and other supplies. The mirror originally went on the dresser that is on the other end of the room. I'm using it for storage. When put together it looked too much like a bedroom so I opted to split the peices.

One of my next projects for the studio will be a paper tape dress form. My sister has volunteered to wrap me. I've ordered the tape and can't wait to make one. I'm sure it will be hysterical.

Speaking of hysterical, if you look closely Max is in the mirror. He's never far from me if he can help it.

Finished A.'s table cloth with embroidered corners. I'm sure I'll get better at this with time.

Max with the lion mane.

Thought this picture was sharper.

I have to get better at remembering to take before and after pictures! The photo on the left was taken in the old sewing room/office. You can see everything was pretty much all lined up on one wall with my cutting table in another room. No more romping from room to room. The photo's below are the progress so far in my new studio. The little loveseat is facing where the TV will go. We'll be moving that down on Easter when the boys are home. I painted the dresser, desk and mirror on the dressing table to match the loveseat in black and will be covering the parson's chairs soon. Still looking for the right fabric. I decided to leave my comfy rolling chair in the office for now.

Fresh Start Again

My daughter A. moved out on her own recently, leaving vacant a pretty large room in the basement (about 225 sq feet). At first we offered it up to N., who is away at school working a co-op and not getting home much. We thought it might be more of an apartment type setting for him when he does make it home for a weekend here or there. He turned it down saying he liked to be "up" with the parents when he comes home. C. (the oldest son) had refinished the room right before he moved out handing it down to A., she was only in it a little over a year. We thought it would be tradition to hand it down to the oldest child at home.

In 2008 when C. (the oldest son) moved out, also the last time I added to the blog, unfortunately, I had remodeled one of the bedrooms upstairs into an office/sewing room. Office for the husband, C.(the husband), and the slash/sewing room for me. It was hard to contain it all so my sewing room spilled out into the youngest's bedroom (S.). It also proved to be not so user friendly because sewing is not a quiet sport when someone is studying or concentrating on office work.

Since S. rarely makes it here, and then even more rarely spends the night I was partly justified to use the space. But then when she does come it's a whirlwind of blankets and pillows and laundry and cleanup. So after 3 weeks of deliberating on what I would do with the space in the basement it just hit me. Why not make the space a sewing studio. At first I thought my husband would look at the act as a form of abandonment. We had wanted a shared space so we could work together. But when I brought up the idea he was fully supportive and even suggested I move another desk into the office for my lap top to have a home when not in use in the studio.

I have been refinishing furniture and moving everything down for the last two weeks. I knew this would be a lot of work, but it also turned in to lot's of projects piggy backing off eachother. It's been rewarding and has hopefully encouraged me to keep up with this blog.