Setting up my studio

It’s a project I’ve been putting off and it has a looong way to go before it’s how I want it. But today, I decided to venture into my studio, an old butcher’s shop (it’s one hundred year old or less. The house is over one hundred years old. I’ll have to check the plaque out the front again) to make some presents for my little girl’s upcoming birthday.

Well! What started out as an innocent, ‘I’ll just move a few things around so I can get to work…’ turned into a journey into the past. It also rekindled my creative urges. Let me explain.

I love to knit, sew, crochet, embroider, in short, create beautiful things out of textiles. So did my grandmother. So did my fiance’s mother. Both these ladies have been very inspirational in my life, for many different reasons other than their crafting abilities. And now that neither of them are with us anymore, I have been given the honour of accepting thier sewing desks and everything inside them. My fiance’s mum also left me with boxes of other craft resources.

I had already looked through most of my grandmother’s sewing items. She died when I was sixteen, but I received her sewing cabinet about two years ago, and so have already had time to look at most of it. My fiance’s mother died last year, and I was handed down her crafting items at the end of the year, right before we moved. It didn’t feel right to open it until we moved. Even when we did move, I have saved it for a time when I could put some decent time aside to pore over it all.

It turns out, today was that day. First, I moved both sewing desks near each other to create a corner. I told my fiance that I was arranging it so the ladies could talk to each other. Then, I opened the  drawers in both cabinets, and sorted through knitting needles, crochet hooks, stitch holders and markers, and stored them so I could get to them more easily.

As I organised my needle and crochet hook collection, I opened up my own needle case. I laughed to find some little wooden skewers I’d broken up and filed into points with a nail file when I was nine years old. I desperately wanted to learn how to knit cables, but didn’t have the right needles. I was the sort of child who didn’t like to be deterred, so I learnt how to cable, and I guess I never threw these makeshift cable needles away even after I had ‘real’ cable needles!

I remembered them both as I worked. My grandmother teaching me to knit and crochet. Un-teaching all the crap sewing advice I was given at Textiles and Design at high school. (Thanks, Gram!) Coming across my fiance’s mother’s Red Nose Day badge, and remembering seeing her wearing a similar one when I ran into her and his sister down the street, years before he and I ever became a couple. The badge reminds me of her cheerful, bubbly personality.

My fiance’s mother’s old sewing patterns.

As I re-connected with two important family members who’ve passed, I felt a little  more at home in this house that has so much work that needs to be done on it. Once again, I felt the excitement I felt before we moved here, about all the things I can do, that my family can do. The first three months of living here, and catching every germ going as a new person does in a new town, and wanting more time to settle in, all fell away.

My grandmother’s writing desk. She grew the most beautiful flowers in her garden, and would sell them at the local florist. She saved the money from these sales to buy this writing desk and her sewing desk, both of which were her pride and joy. I’m going to thrift this piece into something special as soon as I can.

With these two ladies by my side, today I felt as though this house is my home. This studio is my studio. The overwhelmed feeling is gone, replaced by that sense of excitement, adventure and possibility once again. My creative juices began flowing immediately. I thought of several ideas for my daughter’s birthday present, and began winding wool skeins into balls on the old chair my father reconditioned. He has made lots of beautiful furniture for our home, but this is the first one he’s ever given us that wasn’t fully made by him from scratch!

So to two great, amazing women, thank you for what you’ve given us while you were alive. I hope you know what it means to us. Thank you even more for what your memories have given me now. I promise to pass the skills on down the family tree, as you both have. The adventure has begun.