True Confessions: My Sewing Room

Remember when I told you I was redoing my sewing room?

{crickets chirping}


Really?  You don't?  That could possibly be because I made that declaration over a year ago.  Oh dear.

I told you all of my good intentions for that room here.  I even provided an oh-so-charming "inspiration board" for the so-called Aqua Poppy Sewing Room.

Then I set about giving the room a complete overhaul.  I mean, really, it needed it.  Remember?  Piles of stuff everywhere?

{more crickets chirping, owl hooting}


Oh, you don't remember that?  Well, let me provide you with a link to my before shots of the sewing room...

{typewriter bell dings, file drawers open and shut and open and shut some more}


Hmmm.....no link, here.  Apparently, I never actually showed you the before pictures.  Hoooo boy.  I don't know if we should go there, but, if you say so....

Let's take a stroll down the memory lane walk of shame, shall we?  I present to you, BEFORE:

{scary music}

{really scary music}

{really, really scary music}

{extremely scary music}

Wait!  Hold it!  Before you dial the Health Department, just look at the next pictures.  There was progress, I promise!

See?  Progress!  I wasn't kidding.  And really, I should have posted these progress pictures months ago.  Because it really was positive change.  I just got hung up on perfection--it wasn't done.  Note that all picture frames and wall shelves are leaning against the wall or hidden behind chairs.

Can we talk?  I have a huge hang up about hanging things up.  On the walls.  It seems like such a final decision that I avoid making it.  I'm sure this crippling decor anxiety is the result of some traumatic event in my past, for which I need design therapy.  At any rate, these hand-me-down shelves that I spray painted poppy red have been languishing behind that chair, gathering dust, for months now.

I wasn't kidding about the dust.  

As it turned out my hang up hang up end up being something of a happy accident for this room.  While going through the sewing room closet recently, I found something tucked away in a box that I'd forgotten.  These pretty tab-topped curtains that used to hang in the girls' bedroom when we lived in our Connecticut Cottage.

I loved those curtains.  I found them on Ebay for a song, still new in the package, from Pottery Barn.  They were just right for our girls room then, with buttercream walls and a bright sunny window.  I sighed when I pulled them out of storage, remembering that happy, girly space, and carried them over to the window to get a better look at them.

My bright, sunny window.  In a room with buttercream walls.  And--HEY!  THESE CURTAINS MATCH MY CHAIR!

Suddenly, that formerly blue stripe in the plaid looked, well, aqua.  And poppy red went out the window.

It probably didn't help poppy's case that I'd been following the progress of this bedroom over at Cassandra Design.  

Pink and aqua....just like the curtains I'd forgotten that I already had.  (How pretty is that room?  Make sure you go see all of the pictures, it really is beautiful.)

It also did not help poppy's case that the two main red elements I'd put into the room were not my favorites:  The bedspread and the shelves.  There was nothing wrong with them, I just wasn't crazy about them.  Furthermore, I'd just about come to the conclusion that in order to really make the Aqua Poppy work, the walls of the room were going to have to be some shade of aqua blue.

Ah, the walls.  Here's where things got dicey.  You see, my sewing room used to be our nursery.  Right before we brought our little Lily home from the hospital, those walls were painted that shade of buttercream by my mother-in-law and the Bionic Man.  It's hard enough that my sewing room doesn't get to be Lily's room, anymore.  Painting those walls seemed like it would be going just too far.

I wasn't kidding about design therapy, either, was I?

So somehow, inserting some soft pastels back into the room and taking out the bold red patterns just seemed like the right thing to do.  After all, the red elements in the room had been inexpensive additions: I got the bedding at Target on Clearance for under $20, and the shelves were free.  So, I reasoned, if I could find new bedding for under $20, I could afford to do a sewing room color switcharoo.

Off I went to Target.  Where, wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles (name that musical), I found a clearance section of bedding.  Like this comforter marked down to $12.

I still had a birthday gift card for Joann's, where I went next to pick up a few supplies to add to some I already had in the sewing room closet.

See all of those little fabric yo-yos I've been making, in coordinating colors?  They're a big part of my plan to dress up that $12 bedding.  Stay tuned.....hopefully I'll have another update in less than a year.