redecorating project

I'm forced to take it easy today since my bursitis is acting up again. I've been doing some repainting—the first step of the bedroom redecorating project—and all the up and down motion of getting on and off the step ladder has stressed my hip once again. Sigh... it's hell getting old.

I promised to tell you about this project anyway so now is as good a time as any. I've moved my studio into the attic space which is slightly cozier (a nice way of saying 'smaller') so I'm going to have to be a bit more organized than I have been. But, what I gain in the process is a functioning third bedroom.



In choosing colors for this room I started with a piece of vintage fabric—a Waverly polished cotton from the 1950s-60s—that I found tucked under a stack of tablecloths at an antique mall. Don't you just love the colors on this? I've planned the whole room around them, starting with that pretty blue-green for the walls. Benjamin Moore #619 Copper Patina to be exact. I had a moment (actually several) of panic when I first applied the paint because it looks sickeningly mint green in the can. But it dried much darker and looks perfect on the walls.

I'm going with lavender for the sheets (to match those little speckled flowers), and the original inspiration fabric will become accent pillows on the bed. And remember that wonderful quilt top I bought several years ago for $15 at an antique mall? If not, you can see a bit of it in the top photo of this post. The predominant color of that quilt exactly matches the walls as well. There's a local quilt shop with a quilting machine that will finish quilts so I need to stop by and see what's involved in that process. I have just the top so will need to find a backing fabric that coordinates with everything.

I have a long length of lavender woven cotton (almost a linen-like texture) and will make a tablecloth for the round bedside table and more accent pillows for the bed. I have no idea yet what to do with the windows and floor except that I want to keep it very simple. And I really need to work in that lime green color from the fabric somewhere, too. Most decorating projects are an evolving process, so I'm not exactly sure what it will look like in the end. I'll post pictures when things are more settled!

turquoise

I'm happy to hear that the Pantone Institute chose my favorite color as color of the year for 2010—turquoise!

"Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, turquoise inspires thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a comforting escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of well-being."


Some pictures of turquoise items in my collections.

fresh start

Happy new year! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

I'm happy to report that the website redesign is almost complete. I still have the eyelet trim pages and the fourth page of plastic buttons to do. And the links page. Whew, there's nothing like having to redo every single page of your website to make you realize how many pages there are. Hundreds, maybe thousands - I lost count! Anyway, it's mostly done and, if you go there, you probably won't experience too many problems finding your way around.

Someone commented about my craziness in combining the holidays with a website redesign and it made me think of those silly 1980s books about women who do too much. Yes, that would be me. But I knew the holidays would be slow on the website and it was the perfect time to do it.

So, a new year, a fresh start. By now I know better than to make new year's resolutions, but I am trying to get my studio organized. That's complicated by the fact that I'm moving it back into the attic space and turning the room it's in now to a third bedroom. I have cool plans for that - all based on colors from a vintage polished cotton fabric I found last year at an antique mall. I'll share when I get more into the actual doing part of the process.

I have lots of things planned for this year. Tons of vintage goodies (more buttons, sewing patterns, and some very cool vintage aprons) to photograph and get listed. Stitch School will be getting a new home on it's very own blog. You can visit now but I'm still early in the process of moving old posts over so you won't see much there yet. I'll be accepting ads and links to other hand-embroidery and needlework blogs so let me know if you have one of those and want to trade links. Guess I'd better design a new banner for that, too. There's so much to do!