by Wendy Scheel | Oct 9, 2015 | Home Tour
As the Home Tour continues, we travel upstairs. These stairs, all 17 of them.
At the top of the stairs to the left of the dresser, you can see light shining thru from my son’s bedroom. Jack is 17 and I believe that any parent with a teenage son can agree that no one wants to see that room. 🙂 But if you really want to all you have to do is take every piece of clothing you own and throw it on the floor. Walk on these clothes for several days, add some bowls with dried up cereal in them and add some tossed about wet towels to complete the picture.
That picture will not make an appearance on this blog. 🙂
Moving past Jack’s room and on your immediate left is the guest bedroom. I will share that part of the tour later in the month. Continuing down the short hallway is a bathroom on the right and then straight ahead and up two little steps, we enter my sewing room/studio.
I love this room. The previous owners originally used this area for storage and then updated it to be a media and exercise room. Now it has found its third purpose.
The window in the front faces West and the afternoon sunshine is glorious.
I have a large table in front of the window that holds my sewing machine and serger machine. The area behind that is my cutting table.
I debated cleaning and organizing every inch of the studio prior to taking pictures. But the thing is is that it never looks like that. There are always 2 or 3 projects going at the same time so in reality the studio is one big area of organized chaos. 🙂
Lining the wall are industrial racks and barrels of fabric. My Dad made me the black horizontal racks. Makes the room look so professional. Love it.
And finally, between the industrial racks, I have rows of finished pillow covers. These are covers that were made and then photographed to be listed in the shop. I offer several different sizes of covers so typically orders are filled when they are placed. These covers are just waiting for someone to order their size. 🙂
That is the sewing room/studio. I hope you enjoyed the tour!
This weekend in Minnesota is going to be unseasonably warm. Yahoo!!
I will share with you tomorrow on the SideNote Saturday post the outside item that won me over when we were considering buying this house.
Have a great weekend!
by Wendy Scheel | Aug 3, 2015 | Quick Thoughts
Do any of you play Trivia Crack? You know the App that is basically the board game version of Trivia Pursuit? If you don’t, you should. It is so fun and additive. There are six different categories to answer questions from. I always, always pick the history category last. It is my weakest subject. That and geography. Ugh, geography.
Why am I bringing this up? By some miracle, I have a quick little history lesson for you today. It will never be a Trivia Crack question, but well, maybe someday it will be and then you can thank me when you win the game. 🙂
Did you know that way back in 2012, Old Lake George was named Pooh Pooh Pillows? Yep, you read that right, Pooh Pooh Pillows. PPP.
I started my Etsy shop making pillows and my family refers to me as Pooh. So logically Pooh Pooh Pillows came to be. I messed around with the name Pooh Pillows, but it made me think that I was selling Winnie the Pooh Pillows or Pillows made from pooh, and ain’t nobody wantin’ a pillow made from pooh. 🙂
Fast forward to 2015. We bought a house on Lake George in Minnesota.
The feeling of Pooh Pooh Pillows was changing because I was now making several other items besides just pillows. I had more of a vintage, French farmhouse rustic vibe and I wanted that to be reflected in the name. I played around with “Lake Studio”, “Sewing Studio”, “Pillow Studio”, etc but there didn’t seem to be the all encompassing feeling of what I wanted to project in a name.
Then one day I was giving someone directions to our home and within the actual directions, you turn right onto Old Lake George. Ba-zing-a!! I guess I literally needed a “sign” to direct me to the answer for a shop name.
End of story. End of history lesson. 🙂
by Wendy Scheel | Aug 3, 2015 | Quick Thoughts
Do any of you play Trivia Crack? You know the App that is basically the board game version of Trivia Pursuit? If you don’t, you should. It is so fun and additive. There are six different categories to answer questions from. I always, always pick the history category last. It is my weakest subject. That and geography. Ugh, geography.
Why am I bringing this up? By some miracle, I have a quick little history lesson for you today. It will never be a Trivia Crack question, but well, maybe someday it will be and then you can thank me when you win the game. 🙂
Did you know that way back in 2012, Old Lake George was named Pooh Pooh Pillows? Yep, you read that right, Pooh Pooh Pillows. PPP.
I started my Etsy shop making pillows and my family refers to me as Pooh. So logically Pooh Pooh Pillows came to be. I messed around with the name Pooh Pillows, but it made me think that I was selling Winnie the Pooh Pillows or Pillows made from pooh, and ain’t nobody wantin’ a pillow made from pooh. 🙂
Fast forward to 2015. We bought a house on Lake George in Minnesota.
The feeling of Pooh Pooh Pillows was changing because I was now making several other items besides just pillows. I had more of a vintage, French farmhouse rustic vibe and I wanted that to be reflected in the name. I played around with “Lake Studio”, “Sewing Studio”, “Pillow Studio”, etc but there didn’t seem to be the all encompassing feeling of what I wanted to project in a name.
Then one day I was giving someone directions to our home and within the actual directions, you turn right onto Old Lake George. Ba-zing-a!! I guess I literally needed a “sign” to direct me to the answer for a shop name.
End of story. End of history lesson. 🙂
by Wendy Scheel | Jul 30, 2015 | DIY
Incase you have forgotten, I love estate sales. And for some reason I am always drawn to the chairs.
When I first started going to estate sales I would buy all wood chairs, no fabric on them. I would clean them up and usually paint them. But I wanted to branch out. I wanted to try re-upholstering a chair. This is the chair I branched out with. Go Big or Go Home Wendy!
How hard could it be to take off each piece lay it out on some new fabric and tack it back on? Seriously, how hard? So I started and I removed all of the fabric and then painted the wood.
So far so good and only a couple of hours of work. Then I put the old fabric on top of the new fabric and started cutting. BUT, I didn’t mark anything down as to where the new pieces were suppose to go! I had so many different size pieces and no idea how to put it back together. Ugh.
Instead of trashing the whole thing and losing the $40 I had into it, I cut off the arms of the chair so I didn’t have to re-upholster them! Bra-ill-ient!
Now it was just a matter of sewing a couple of square corners and, done.
(I will share more about this chair on another day. It is now part of my daughters first apartment. )
Since biting off more than I could chew in the re-upholstering department, I have reverted to buying chairs that aren’t so difficult to re-upholster.
Exhibit A: This chair that I painted and re-upholstered the seat.
Exhibit B: This rocking chair. It needed a little TLC and an update of fabric. And here is how I did it. The right way.
After removing the fabric, I washed the wood with water, dried it and polished it up with Hemp Oil from the Miss Mustard Seed line of products. Instant beauty.
I knew I wanted to go with the French Farmhouse fabrics to replace the not-so-desirable fabric that was on the chair. Here is the line of pillows made from French Farmhouse style fabrics in my shop that I chose from.
The winner for me was the beige/khaki line fabric.
So, I removed the old fabric pieces and laid them out on top of the new fabric to cut them out. With only two pieces I figured I would know where to replace them.
Self explanatory right? The same process was used when the head rest part of the chair needed a little padding. To hold the padding and fabric in place I used some basting adhesive.
Incase you were wondering, this was the brand of basting adhesive I used to hold everything in place. Incase you were wondering. 🙂
And now for the big reveal…..always my favorite part.
And one more beautiful collage.
I haven’t attempted another large re-upholstering project. Going Big or Going Home! wasn’t the best choice. 🙂 Have any of you miscalculated your skill set when trying a project?
And as a side note, Spencer my product photographer didn’t take some of these pictures. I think it’s pretty evident, but in full disclosure, wanted to point it out. 🙂
by Wendy Scheel | Jul 20, 2015 | Quick Thoughts
We’ve all heard the phrases, “Get your ducks in a row”, “Get your poop and a group” and for those that need to hear it a little stronger, “Get your shit together”.
I for one use the phrase, “Get your poop in a group” quite often when organizing my office and for that matter when I am talking to myself. I find it easier to create and really buckle down and actually get something done when everything is in it’s place.
However don’t be thinkin’ that my office is always organized. After a long day of sewing it is a mess. A joyful pile of scraps, thread, strings and unrolled fabric. And to be honest, I usually don’t clean up after a long day. I will wait until the next morning to get my poop in a group and attack another great day of creating.
So here are pictures of my office when is ready for a new day.
Have a great week everyone!
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