Last week I showed you the beautiful pictures of my office (well that is if you have imagination). See here for last week’s blog. I decided my office was disgraceful and I could not use it the way it was since I was not inspired in there.

Time to reflect and plan

Let me back up a little bit. This has been a week of too much reflection. The teenager gets up around 1 pm and then does his online homework. I have given up on trying to wake him up earlier than that because I want to like myself during the day. Surely I am not a terrible mother! Also there is nothing vacationy about confinement anymore.

Just the facts ma’am

Back to my office dilemma. I sat down with my assistant (picture below) and talked about what exactly I want out of my office. Here are the questions I asked:

1. Do I want an office full of paperwork and such or do I really just want a room in which I can create? The answer is that I want a room to create in. I can’t be creative in a mess.

• 2. What do need room for? I need room for my sewing machine, serger, laptop, sewing supplies and a place where I can cut out fabric and get my head out of the box.

• 3. What inspires me? I am inspired by beautiful surroundings or fabric

• 4. What is my budget? My budget is $0. I would have to find everything I need in my house/stash. I loved the desk in my blog last week but it is not in the budget. I would have to substitute with something else that is floral. Uh oh the salt already put my 80c over budget!

What do I have and where do I start?

I have a lot of shtuff and I started by cleaning out the excess and then moving the furniture around. I made room for my beautiful antique table given to me by a South African client who had it shipped to the US.

Blind dilemma

I had a blind that is not perfect but I wanted to make it all work. I installed the blind and then had to work around it. After I installed the blind I realized that I need some sort of a header to cover the arched window and the space above the blind. I did not like the traditional idea of hanging a valance in front of the curtains as that screams “dated”.

What about curtains?

Instead of sewing something I found some linen curtains that I already had. They are a beigy brown color and certainly not what I want for my beautiful office. My genius amazed me then! I remembered that I bought a bunch of fabric dyes years ago that I have never used!! Well after a quick google I found instructions on how to dye fabric. There was only one ingredient that I did not have and that was non-iodized salt. Would you believe that the store stocks on that salt including kosher salt is virtually non- existent? Who knew everybody wanted to dye their clothes this week? Amazing what happens during a staycation!

Dyeing the fabric

Dying the fabric was a challenge. after I found the salt I mixed it all together in my washing machine. put the curtains in the machine and decided to stop the machine from rinsing so I paused it. After 10 minutes the water started draining with my dye in it! I ran to the machine, unplugged it and added more red orange and yellow dye. By this time the color was orange and I watched it like a hawk. In the end the color was beautiful. It is a pinkish red.

Header?

My fabric stash is from all over the world. I guess you can call me a fabric hoarder or fabric ho for short. I decided to dig through the pile and see what I could find.

I had this beautiful large print fabric which I bought last time I went overseas and decided it was perfect for the header.

What’s left to do?

I have a huge antique table to work on. There is now room for my 2 sewing machines and my laptop

I have storage cabinets and bookshelves. I am still working on these.

I have curtain rods (some brackets are in a safe place somewhere) I installed the double rods.

I have an office next to a bat cave, I mean a teenage cave

I have a cute collection of print blocks. I have put these up but am still refining the way they hang.

My room is not finished yet, but I can say that my assistant loves it. By next week I should have it all done. I finally used things that have been sitting around taking up space. I am still unsure what to do about the teenager and the bat cave.