Thursday, May 19, 2011

Sewing Room progress, part 2

I will start with a disclaimer: although most of you know the room in this post as the "sewing room / guest room," I must disclose that its more formal name, according to some members of the family, is "Maura's bedroom."  You can probably guess which member of the family initiated that name.

Luckily, Maura (my sister) is happy with the updates I made this week to her room.  (I gave her a preview via text message, given that it's her room and all).

In the sewing room progress part 1 post, you saw several messy corners.  Here's one of them, circa yesterday at 5 pm.  (Check out the House Tour tab at the top of the blog to see it 11 months ago compared to now!)


 It's no wonder I haven't been sewing much recently.  I could barely find the sewing machine, let alone the rest of my tools!

Here's the same space today:


I've been dreaming of shelves and a bulletin board for a long time now, but I seemed to be in a decision paralysis.  It's a strange phenomenon of freezing for small decisions.  I wrote about it before - it took me far longer to select outlet covers than it did to select paint colors.

Yesterday, I attended a conference in Elmira, NY (about 45 minutes south of us).  Besides being an interesting and educational meeting, I also got to go to Hobby Lobby.  Hobby Lobby is a really cool craft store that is ALMOST cool enough to justify driving the 45 minutes just to go there.  But that would be a very bad economic decision, first because of gas prices, and second because of how much I enjoy Hobby Lobby.

Seeing as I was in the neighborhood, though, I indulged in an aisle-by-aisle look at the amazing selection of furniture, home decor, fabric, craft supplies, etc, etc, etc.  The 50% off signs in the "wall decor" section made me bite the bullet and select some shelves.  I didn't expect to find a better deal elsewhere, and I liked the styles, I reasoned.  Plus, a 45-minute drive is too far to get home and wished you had bought something.

Of course, once I took the first step on this project, I was suddenly emblazoned with confidence on picking items.  My cart quickly filled up with a cork board, fabric to cover it, a thread rack, a picture frame, and a glass jar.  I had to make a few guesses in terms of sizes and colors, but thankfully everything looks great now that it's up!





This is a cross-stitch picture done as a wedding gift from our friend Ashley. Doesn't it fit in perfectly!  The shelves contain a mixture of pretty and functional items, that add up to a space that makes me want to hang out ~ and much easier for me to complete projects!

Tonight, I whipped up a little sunglasses case.  I like to think of it as a case in point.  Get it?  Case?  Oh....I should write blog posts earlier in the evening, before I get tired and silly!



You may be wondering how the other corners of the room are faring.

Lilly has some company now, in the form of a storage ottoman from Target, a lamp from Lowes (a birthday present from my mom & dad), and a beautiful papercutting (a birthday gift from my Aunt Clare!)


She cut this all from a sheet of paper, pretty cool, huh?


My favorite part is that she selected the color for the matte by studying Lilly on the blog :)  Definitely incentive to keep posting!!

The worst corner of the room was this side, which was a general junk pile.


You may remember my pleas for a good Craigslist find, not to mention my recent teaser about a project.  Well, it's still not done, but there has been some definite progress!


Final completion of this project hinges on me finding, well, the hinges.  (Jeesh, again with the late night puns.  Sorry!)  I could have sworn that they were in one of the drawers, but they apparently migrated to the basement with the leftover paint.

The dresser was, in fact, a $45 Craigslist find.  It came a long way with some paint and new hardware


All in all, the sewing room Maura's bedroom decor makes me more and more excited about spending time up here.  I'll be back with more progress updates.  For now, it's off to bed, lest any of my too-tired puns make their way into my 8:30 AM presentation tomorrow morning.

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