My Sewing Room Chair

I don't think I've ever showed you the chair from my sewing room. It's probably appeared in the background of a few pictures over the years but it's intriguing enough to deserve a post of its own.  

The thing came with the house and it's ridiculously heavy so the sewing room was where I found it and the sewing room is where it stayed until I dragged it outside to take some pictures where the light was better. 

Someone obviously made it and that someone obviously had the same "that's good enough" attitude that occasionally allows me to do things like lop off the corner of a quilt because the backing wasn't quite the right size.

The back is bolted in place and there were notches cut to fit the slats. It looks like this thing started with a plan and some idea of craftsmanship... I don't know what happened to make bending down nails with the hammer seem like the right thing to do.

And I don't know why that shelf underneath needed to be two boards thick. But it does make a nice place to stack quilting books.

Maybe, given the blood thinners, I should see if Hubby can remove the worse of the protruding nail ends. I've managed to go ten years without cutting myself on one, but these days tin foil makes me a danger to myself.

making progress

I was back in the sewing room after dinner last night, sorting and cleaning until it got too dark to see what I was touching. I'm far from done, but I can't believe how much better it's looking. And how much better it feels!

One of today's projects was the bookshelf under the window. It's part of that awful built-in table and isn't quite the right size for quilting or knitting books. Not long after we moved in Grandma gave me a set of needlework encyclopedias and that's where I put them. I think I forget that just because something's been in the same spot for years, it doesn't have to stay there forever.

I boxed up the set of books and now my favorite quilting and knitting books, the ones that have been piled beside my sewing machine because I don't want anything to happen to them, are safely on the shelf.



I've cleared off the entire surface of that L-shaped table, which is really shaped more like an "f", with the shortest piece lower than the rest. I could understand if it was one flat surface that went back to the corner, but this set up baffles me. I'm sure it was thought up by the same guy who thought beer cans made great roof flashing.



Like the flattened beer cans, it's not going to be a permanent part of the house. I don't know when I'll manage to get rid of it, but it's definitely going.

The lamp, which was here when we moved in, is boxed up and bound for Goodwill. It took up space, needed to be rewired, and I've finally decided to let it go. Should've handed it over to Grandma when she said she could sell it in the antique mall, but just because I missed that opportunity doesn't mean I should keep it, not when I've got other lamps that I actually like.

it's never going to look like this again

And, to be honest, I don't think I'd want it to. Where's the fabric? The yarn? (It must've been hiding behind my back when I took the picture, but that does not look like a sewing room. And when I took this, it'd been my sewing room for almost a year.)



I'm not brave enough to show you a picture of what it looks like right now, but it's better than it was before I spent an hour this morning sorting through the mess.

Teresa over at Fabric Therapy has done a series of four posts about how she keeps her amazing sewing room organized. THIS is the kind of sewing room I drool over.

And there's a great discussion on the stashbusters list right now about how to tackle sewing rooms. It's got me feeling motivated enough to tackle my own. The timing couldn't be better -- Between my abscessed tooth and those stupid bees, I'm already so cranky that the mess can't make me feel any worse.

I proved that this morning when I looked up and saw that the ceiling has a water stain. I can't tell you how glad I am that I found the problem before anything got wet. It can be fixed. Or things can be moved.

Maybe after a couple more hours, I'll be able to post a picture or two.

If I loved my sewing room before, I can't come up with the words to describe how I feel about it now. Ever since my parents brought over the steamer trunk and doll house and cedar chest last week, I've been fighting the urge to jump up and down screaming "it's mine mine mine mine mine!" I thought it would be bursting at the seams once I finally got everything in there, but there's room to spare and I've still got the bed, which I need for nursing the baby and blocking stuff on.



I've been waiting twenty years to get the steamer trunk. It's been mine since I was in junior high, but it's been in Mom and Dad's attic the whole time. The only reason I've finally got it now is because they sold the house and had to move it. It's probably close to a hundred years old, and it's been in the family since it was new, which makes it even more of a treasure. I think I'm going to keep lace weight and sock yarn in the drawers, which aren't very sturdy.



Grandpa made the doll house for me when I was three. Now it's full of yarn. The cedar chest belonged to my other set of grandparents and was on its way to Good Will or a garage sale. It's kind of ugly, but I wasn't about to turn down a free cedar chest.