Distractions pt14 - Marathon, not sprint

My mantra this weekend has been to remind myself it's a marathon, not a sprint. The cruel part of my brain has been teasing me by highlighting that no matter how I frame it, I'm back of the pack.

I am so sick of painting. This weekend I was planning to do the area above the stairs, but that got usurped by door frames. The good thing is that the walls and ceilings for the two upstairs rooms are completely done. The bathroom is mostly painted, and next weekend we should have some access to the kitchen/downstairs to paint. We've got so much more to go:

I'm pondering what colour the skirting boards will be. Gloss white is a safe option, but our walls are so pale, it seems like an opportunity to add some interest. It might be something we decide after the floors go in and we can see what colours we're working with a little more easily. Pinterest hasn't realised I need some ideas and is still committed to showing me bathroom designs.

In general, the builders are making astonishing progress. It might not be visible in this image of my future sewing space, but we're nearly on the home stretch now. The bathroom is taking shape, and we have a date for the kitchen to be delivered. The floorboards have been replaced/secured again (feels like some kind of milestone). It's time to start thinking properly about moving in and what we need to get done beforehand (probably all of the painting). I may need to sew some curtains soon too (oh joy).

Stay safe,

K

Distractions pt13 - Paint

Oh hey, I completely lost track of the days over Easter. Ooops.

My sewing space still looks like a mass of cables and builders' tea. But we make progress. We have paint on some walls and ceilings. We have the beginnings of a bathroom, and we have a new water connection!

I'm busy trying to draft blog posts and shoot my backlog of projects - there is a big stack of finished projects in my sewing space which I have tactically removed from the clean/dry laundry pile - to prevent me wearing them again. I was hoping to get them all photographed a few days ago on the mannequin (because I didn't want to be in front of the camera that day) and unfortunately the first three projects I selected didn't fit on the mannequin. So, they're waiting for the right moment again.

K

Distractions pt12 - unplanned, unscripted, unknown

This week my future sewing space looks like this:

I'm no closer to inventing the perfect desk. It probably involves an audit of our scrap wood before I buy new plywood. I should also wait to see what the new electrical cupboard looks like.

Work progresses on my Burda 6875 coat. I am doing more hand sewing on this project than I thought I would. Some of the finishing could have been done by machine but perhaps I've doubted my ability to concentrate well enough to do the finishing by machine. I am doing some things that feel counter-intuitive and I'm doing some things that feel right, but are obviously against the rules.

My bedtime reading recently has been Clare Shaeffer's Couture Sewing Techniques. I have a funny relationship with the concept of couture sewing - while it is clearly more expensive, and clearly reserved for the higher classes, I don't really buy the idea that it is "better" than any other form of sewing. In Threads of Life by Clare Hunter, one of the things that really struck me was the author's assertion that the growth of the home sewing industry (cross stitch kits, sewing machines, patterns etc) began to take away the stitcher's creativity and forced a kind of homogenisation of both design and technique. The book/packet/instructions are correct - everything else is inferior. Knowing that couture is so heavily focused on making one-off designs look like the sketch, so iterative and so heavily focused on hand sewing, why should it be seen as the "best" or most "correct" way of doing things?

Anyway, pics soon

K