Sewing room tour!

I'm back!  The wedding was amazing, honestly the best day, I really couldn't have wished for anything better.  The honeymoon, on the other hand, ended up being cancelled due to Andrew and I both contracting a horrible vomiting bug, which landed poor Andrew up in hospital briefly.  We spent 3 nights in Premier Inn Gatwick then limped our way back up to Edinburgh to recuperate.  Not quite the start to married life I had envisioned but in sickness and in health and all that!  We're claiming on insurance so fingers crossed will be able to rebook some other time but in the meantime have spent my remaining time off spending our wedding money on new furniture!



We've been planning on reorganising the spare room for years now, but never had the funds available to see it through.  Thanks to our very generous friends and family we spent a fun day in Ikea, picking out storage solutions and sofa beds.  It's really given the room a new lease of life, it's much more open and spacious now, with more storage for my sewing and knitting supplies and more room for me to spread out if necessary.

The sofa bed is a Vilasund from Ikea.  It was surprisingly easy to put together and we slept on it the first night (don't tell anyone, you're supposed to leave the mattresses to 'plump up' for at least 72hrs before using them...).  It's lovely to have the fire on, snuggled in the sofa bed, looking at my stash and planning all my autumn sewing projects.  You may have seen a view from the sofa bed on my Instagram feed (Craftandthrift).  I'm planning some bright, tweed wool cushion covers for the sofa!



We're using a vintage metal trunk donated by Andrew's folks years ago as a coffee table/storage solution.  I love the brass coloured clips and nails and the black corners, not so keen on the person who wrote all over it in sharpie though.  I'm thinking maybe some white spirit or nail varnish remover might bring that off but I'm worried about damaging it, or ended up with odd looking lighter patches.



This beautiful silver tea set was a wedding gift from Frances.  It's from the 1920's and I love it.  It goes perfectly with my silver tea strainer (see original post here).





Aren't these prints adorable?  'Adopt a buddy' was a gift from Victoria and 'A Tiny Visitor' is Laura George.  I love her stuff, I could seriously buy almost everything in her shop.







The storage unit is the classic Ikea Expedit, renamed as 'Kallax'.  We built two of these this weekend (the other is in the kitchen) so this second one went up in about 20 minutes.  I love that I can see most of my stash now (the rest of it is in the trunk - shame on me for having ALL THE FABRICS...).  It's super handy to have somewhere to store my sewing machine and overlocker as well, rather than them gathering dust under my desk.  The wicker basket on top was £5 from a charity shop, I bought the red leather straps off Ebay and used it to hold cards at our wedding.  Now it's being used to store craft supplies!  The knitting needle holder next to it is a recycled champagne bottle, rose Moet no less!



My antique sewing box, inherited from Andrew's gran.  I love it, I love the design and all the little corners to store things in.



Even the puppy approves of the new craft nook.  I love sheepskin rugs, I only ever buy them second hand but I love that it uses the whole of the animal, rather than just the meat.  This one was from an auction room and I hand washed and blew it dry with my hairdryer, it took 2 days but came up super soft and fluffy so was totally worth it.  I want to buy more for the lounge, this one and it's pair get moved around the house all the time because we love them so much.

All in all, I love my new craft corner.  So much more organised and relaxing, I'm looking forward to some autumn/winter sewing, with the fire on!