Spring Cleaning: Phase the first

The objective: hang and (re)frame pictures

The impetus:  Chris is fanatical about HGTV and Dwell magazine and I’m reading more design blogs these days and continually blown away by the interior design savvy of my bloggy friends.  Tired of staring at our boring walls but not ready to commit to a full paint job, the frame plan was laid.

Living room: before

Chris and I often lament the shrine to our wedding that our cluttered mantle had become.  It increasingly struck us as a bit egotistical to have the large wall adorned only with a very large picture of ourselves.

After:

Still more odes to ourselves but a little subteler now.  These are framed photographs of us in Shinjuku on Christmas day 2005 that previously hung in our front entranceway.  The small frames around them contain knitting cards, two Cara Davis photos of BMFA fiber and one vintage postcard of a mother knitting with a toddler at her feet that I got in Galway in July 1998.  The glass plates are ones I made for my shop when I first opened it but took down when I came to realize how astronomical the shipping costs would be.  They look so pretty hung that I’m considering relisting them.  In the corner above our tv is a much smaller photo from our wedding.

The front entrance:

As I mentioned, the two large photos above were hung in our front hall and covered an awkwardly placed electrical panel.

After:

The shelf is tidier than before, believe it or not, and I finally found a lovely frame for the Black Apple print that Erin gave me for Christmas.  Beside it are framed cards from Paper Papier.

Bedroom wall 1: before

In late July of last year I was sick of our completely bare bedroom walls.  I didn’t have a large redecorating budget at all so I went to the dollar store and bought some small canvases and craft paint and came up with this:

It took up the space but the colours were a bit too primary for me and it felt a bit too scattered.  Chris cleaned out our underbed boxes and found some simple frames.

After:

This is wrapping paper, also from Paper Papier, that I absolutely fell in love with.  I wanted to buy it just to use the colour combinations as inspiration for knitting designs.

I realize the above photos don’t give much of an idea of the room as a whole but our room is so small that it’s impossible to maneuver yourself to get a picture of the whole room.

I’m no Julia or Suzanne Sugarbaker but I’m happy to have kicked myself in the behind and actually improved my surroundings.  Still to come but less photogenic: washing the walls, cleaning out closets, donating clothing and much more depending on my energy level and ability to maintain interest in this undertaking.

Love Action

I was wracking my brain for a title for this post that would be a little more exciting than “Simplicity 3750″ but I was stumped and I’m eager to show my blouse so I went with the song on the radio. So, thank you, Human League. I think it could be argued that this has an element of romance:

Pattern: Simplicity 3750

Fabric: lightweight cotton from Fabricland in Orleans. Contrasting polyester tie from remnants bin in Fabricland on Ogilvie.

Last Spring I was teaching junior kindergarten and grade three full time and being a public school in Ontario the school was not air conditioned and it was very hot. I bought a bunch of summer blouses at the mall, including one that looked very similar to this one at RW & Co. I was completely in love with that blouse (and still am) so I freaked when I saw this pattern.

My favourite part is the sleeves with my first cloth covered buttons:

Although I apparently cut out one of the sleeves improperly and didn’t notice until the entire thing was finished and I had one button facing back and one facing front. “Tra la la” and “fiddle dee dee” I said as I merrily took my seam ripper to the sleeve (although Chris may argue that I chose different language). I may have also flown into a mild rage when attempting to make and apply bias tape for the first time.

I’m super duper happy with this!

Another amusing anecdote: I learned to sew for reals when I was around eleven and my mom enrolled me in a Kids Can Sew class. We started with simple projects like a draw string shoe bag and worked our way up to a final garment: culottes and a peasant blouse not entirely unlike the one you see here, but for one major difference: back in 1991 I chose a motif of pigs skateboarding in neon sportswear on a black background for both pieces. It was a bold choice.