Taking Shape

(The blanket was crocheted by my great aunt, the pillows and bunting are both by moi,
the couch is Ikea, the vintage work basket is from Ginger's Girl, and the photo was a gift from my mentor
—an original from the Getty Museum archives of the Parthenon marbles, which I wrote my senior thesis on in college)

You've seen the better half of my home studio here but I never revealed the rest because it was always filled with boxes of supplies and odds and ends that wouldn't quite fit into our attic storage area. Just last weekend though, we got a new couch for our living room (which I think I'm going to re-upholster so stay tuned for that bit of madness...), cleaned in places I didn't know existed as we moved things around, and hauled this little Ikea sofa to my upstairs workroom. I had gotten it when I was working in DC and had a studio apartment in Alexandria, VA so perhaps it is fitting to have it up here now—I'm certainly happy to finally have a place to sit and do embroidery without hurting my back or having to haul my supplies to and from the living room!

I've been waiting so long to be able to bring this couch up here so I could make a pillow out of some of my AMH square dance/pastry line fabric to go with it:

VERY easy to make:
a large panel of the square dance fabric fits a 12x12 pillow (or 14x14 if you've got enough seam allowance) 

and then I just made an envelope closure for the back in coordinating pastry line fabric.

I've thought about embellishing some areas of the flowers with embroidery but like it just as it is for the time being. I think having a bit of my favorite fabric on display like this will be a nice bit of inspiration and I do like being able to decorate this room with anything that suits my fancy, in any colors I please since I do not have to go through the process of whether it is way too girly or not. Eventually I'd like to repaint (the blue was there when we moved in), but I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together for now.

Speaking of things coming together, I've made some good progress towards the show as well this week including 20 draft stoppers and 26 yo-yos! The weekend will find me holed up in the studio still so I can churn out a couple pairs of embroidered converse and some embroidery pattern work...I've definitely got my work cut out for me!