"Art", "Moving In" and "The Art of Moving In"

Greetings one and all,

I'm writing to you from MY HOUSE which is in no way, shape or form finished, but after having lived here for a month and then moving back OUT for a month, I'm back to stay. The house, for those of you who don't know, is situated right next door to the World's Greatest Quilt Shop, and will eventually, some day, be a Quilter's Retreat: a place where a small group of friends can come and stay and quilt and be.

So, it need not be said that half of the fun of moving into a new home is the DECORATING that takes place: the personalizing of your very own space and the unleashing of all those nesting instincts that have been growing inside you ever since high school. For me, this is another way to play with color and express my individuality. And of course, fabrics from the shop and from my stash are playing a huge role in this decorating-fest. I've been preparing for this moment all my life, and now the home decor has begun!!!

Last night, I covered two old pillows and two new pillows (gotta love the recycling!) with some fabric from my stash and now have a lovely bit of red (my favorite color ever!) going on in the living room. Phase 2 will be acquiring red accessories, like books, art, vases, etc., to pick up this color and sprinkle it throughout the whole room. I'll know them when I see them, but for now I'm so jazzed about the pillows it's ridiculous.

In the bathroom, for the past three months, a lovely little piece of fabric has been serving as a curtain. Not a curtain with an actual HEM and CASING, mind you, but a piece of fabric waiting for it's life as curtain to begin. What's that they always say about the shoemaker's children never being shod? ("Shod" is a totally wierd word, don't you think?) Someday, little piece of fabric, I will turn you into a lovely little curtain. In the meantime, the greens, browns and oranges (sounds hideous, but trust me, they're lovely) match the bathroom walls and the antique Japanese Geisha print that JD got me for Christmas so perfectly it's scary. Almost like I know what I'm doing...

In the Green, Green bedroom of mine I have splashes of spice brown and little teeny, tiny bits of pink here and there, as evidenced in this photo taken near my window. I have a quilt that Michaela made as a table centerpiece at her wedding folded over the rocking chair that the house's previous occupant left behind. I do believe this is one of my favorite places in the world: I sit there with a quilt in my lap, putting the binding on, the radio playing softly in the background, and I am in heaven. The only other place where I feel like that is during the summer months, when I go to my Grandparent's cottage on the lake, drag down to the dock on the lake my canvas and wood beach chair, a good book and a SOBE juice, wear my huge "Paris Hilton" sunglasses, slather on the pina-colada smelling sun-block, and I lie in the sun and am sooo happy. My Grandfather tells me I look like a movie star when I'm down there. Now that I have a winter time equivalent, I'm set for life. From this spot, because the leaves have all fallen off the trees, the sun beats into the room (making it so very different from how it looks in the summer time) and I can see the entire Salt Bay and the train when it goes by. It's good for my soul, I just know it.

And there are still several rooms to be furnished, plenty of fabric to do it with. They keep coming out with more every day, you know... I love the new stuff, but it does feel good to use up the old stuff.