Wedding Album Quilt

We have known the family of Rosie's new husband, Philip, for quite a while. We met a bit before we first moved out here, more than ten years ago, when the kids were all... kids.

We are all friends, and Philip's sister, Annie, has been a good friend of our girls for all that time. You can read her blog here!She is an excellent housewife and mother, and most fun of all, she is a fellow quilter, which just makes me very happy. When my big girls, also quilters, are away (and they live in Virginia, so that's most of the time), Annie hangs out with me and we choose fabric, look at quilting books, and sew together. When she got married a couple of years ago, Annie had the excellent idea of creating a wedding album quilt. She made the squares and put one on each table at her reception, along with Pigma pens, for everyone to sign as a memento of the occasion.

So when she said that she was making one for Rosie and Philip, I was thrilled! There was no possible way I could do such a a thing (I'm already way behind on the quilt I'm making them as a wedding gift, which I'll show you anon), yet what a fabulous keepsake!

I wish I could do everything! By hand!

No need in this case -- Annie really came through...


...with a design that is so Rosie, and in her wedding colors as well! It's delightful to look at all the messages that people left, and it will make a beautiful quilt for her to enjoy forever.

I'm going to let her tell us the name of the pattern in the comments, because I forget, although I do remember how excited about it she was when she saw it.
Won't it be pretty all sewn together, backed, and quilted? I promise to show you pictures when it's done, but we won't rush her, because she is working on another project, to go with this one:

Little Jack!

Homemade Anthropologie, or my chandelier challenge works out somehow!

Beyond this hall is the entry way of our house. (Please note the bit of molding you see there -- the Chief's handiwork after ripping out the godforsaken louvered doors of ill proportions. He did an awesome job.)


This entry is the same age as our house -- from the second half of the nineteenth century, when I am pretty sure light had been discovered. And if not, surely it had been discovered sometime before the present millenium.

But no. No light.

I needed a chandelier. Actually, even a bare bulb would have been an improvement.

What I wanted was something maybe like this:
But I knew that time was short.

I saw something out of focus and small and dark on Craigslist that looked like it could possibly work, but when I went to look at it I was a bit taken aback.


First, it was covered with grease. The crystals were opaque. With grease.

Who puts a chandelier back in the box, coated with grease?

"You can dip it!" the lady assured me. Dip it? It's 2 feet high and 2 feet wide! Dip it in what, pray tell?

The the picture on the box was not reassuring either. (I regret not taking a photo -- sorry!). It was sort of a Disney version of what a chandelier might be in a bad dream, as far as I was concerned.Bright, almost neon brass and dirty -- was this what I had in mind?

But here we were, and there it was. Do you ever experience this? The inevitability of the sale?

This is how we have acquired many unsuitable dogs, by the way. Anyone who wants to close the deal, just get me into your house. I will have trouble leaving without taking what you are offering, no matter how much my innards are sinking.

Bridget told me to buy it, pointing out that it somewhat resembles the small one in the upstairs hall. I wasn't sure, but I talked the lady down from $85 to $60 (Oh, you are bargaining with me? She asked. Yes, dear, I am. I'm clearly destined to buy this monstrosity from you, but I can put up a little fight!), so I figured I could clean it up and resell it if I didn't like it after all, which I was pretty sure I didn't.
With a basin of pretty much equal parts hot water and ammonia, and a dash of Mr. Clean, I got to work. As she said, all the pieces were there, every one.

The day was one of the few bright sunny ones we had before the wedding, so I started to get a little more optimistic during this process. The crystals were indeed crystalline, so that was a good start. This is a lot of little crystals to get back on there, and at first I got them on backwards (yes, there is a backwards -- a pointy side -- and a frontwards -- a flat side)! But with a little help from my friends, I did it.

I wondered if I could make this into something like this:




Maybe by spray painting a duller brass? But then I was seized by an uncontrollable desire to go black! Drama! Intensity! I was feeling it!



Are you feeling it too?




It's a little high, because the door has to clear it when it opens, which it does -- by a scant 1/2 inch!
But I have to say, I love it! Do you think it's too high?

I wish I had another one for the dining room! And now I have to find something to replace that fixture in the vestibule (see it there? Blah.). Oh, I'll bide my time :)

Thanks to Melissa at The Inspired Room -- go see what others are doing today!
Thanks to Life as Mom -- frugality has its rewards!
Thanks to Gina at The Shabby Chic Cottage!

The entry and the endless hall -- the after pictures!

Some people just seem to revel in redecorating, painting, rearranging...not me.

But you know what, it's worth it to consider your environment and do your best, given your means, to make things cheery and pretty.

If you can accept that things won't be perfect, you can get going. I guess my problem is being held back by that perfect vision -- but who can afford perfect?

As the Chief said, doing this hallway was going to transform our house. We'd lived with it in a dreary state for long enough. I think when we took friends through the house they really wondered what we were thinking, leaving things so...undone!

Before.

I've noticed that when you pray about something that can go either way (live with it or change it), if it's meant to be that you change it, the way to change it opens up.

If it's not meant to be, the door remains closed. It's not as if I liked bare plaster, peeling ceilings, and darkness. We just couldn't cope...and there seemed to be no way to do the work ourselves or to hire anyone.

As I said in the previous post, the wherewithal to do this work (a reasonably priced painter and a little windfall) landed in our laps. So we took the plunge. It's not easy for us to commit, financially or even aesthetically (color? color that will dominate your life?). But we did it.
To get things going on the decorating front, use what you have!

These eight pictures are actually menus that I saved from a trip I went on when I was 14. My father had a sabbatical in Europe, and he took us there on an ocean liner, The France -- one of the last great elegant ships on its penultimate journey across the ocean.

Although I am a "chucker" -- someone who tends to throw souvenirs and little treasures away -- I somehow held on to these pretty things, and when we moved here to these vast expanses of walls, I had my uncle frame them for me. They really pop here against the tangerine color, don't you think?{By the way, the colors are Matisse Gold (California Paint) on the walls and Calming Cream (Benjamin Moore) on the trim.

I'm trying to find the Country Living feature that inspired me, but not having any luck -- sorry! When I find it I will show you.}Remember this?

Do you like this better?



When you get to the top of the stairs, you now see this:
It's mostly trim in this little nook, so the painters didn't use any of the orange, but I think maybe someday I'll try to get some in there. Maybe there is a window treatment that could be interesting, although I'm sure I don't know what it would be...



If you stand with the small, back hall to your back, and look down the front hall, this is what you see now:
I'm not sure about that bookcase, but for now it has to be there. I need some interesting, narrow furniture for this crazy hallway!

Right now I'm so happy with the color and the freshness and the cleanliness!

But -- what about the chandelier??
Did I tell you that it was coated in grease? That it was somewhat nightmare-ish in style? That it was bright brass? Does it work out? Stay tuned!

A kind of cockamamie way to go about getting ready for a wedding...the before pictures...

Let's back up a bit to before the wedding.

I don't think that we are alone in undertaking renovations to prepare for such an event, but it does seem a little silly.

The front door we never use.

On the one hand, you have this feeling that everything must be perfect for this big event, as if it is some kind of D-day for which every detail must be in place.

On the other hand, the futility of changing one's life from what can at best be described as a work in progress to a finished product looms over one, mocking one's every effort. Add to that the knowledge that no one will notice or care, and you have a powerful reason to just skip it.

But no! We forged ahead! And it's a little hard to show you pictures, because I lack the $20,000 lens I guess I really need for this kind of thing, and also because the spaces in question are somewhat enclosed. So bear with me.

A glimpse into the Chief's study. The front door is on the right.

We moved into this house ten years ago, and about one year later little 12-year old Deirdre insisted that we remove the dreadful "country" wallpaper (you know, the kind with pastel little sprigged motifs) from the hallway.

What lurks beneath bad wallpaper...

I begged her not to, but let her anyway -- such was my lack of energy for projects -- I couldn't even muster the energy to deter them!

The issue really was that this is an endless hallway -- the part of our house that just keeps going with no possible stopping place -- no where to take a bite out of a project and say, "We'll do just this much."

Old plaster, high ceilings, nowhere to stop. Ugh.

In addition, we never use the front door, for reasons that I'll explain to you someday when I, God willing, post pictures of the renovation of the true front of the house and its landscape.

She took that wallpaper down, all right. And now what?

No, if you were going to do it, you were going to start in the entrance, go down the hall, up the stairs, and down the other hall.

This area we call the nook -- it's above the front door below. But -- what to do with it??

And this doesn't even take into account the other other hall I told you about before, which the kids actually did get done a few years ago. Yes, they repaired and painted it! They are great. You can get a peek at it beyond the doorway in the picture below:

So the entry way and hallway remained in this semi-stripped down state for all that time.

At some point, "We've just moved and are getting things into shape" just doesn't cut it as a decorating stance.

I counted my pennies and decided it was worth it to hire a (stunningly reasonably priced) company to repair and paint here. I'm really past dangling on a ladder in a stairway, and the kids were busy either preparing the wedding (while in school) or actually working at real jobs of their own.

One flabbergasting fact of the entry was that there was no light fixture (another reason to ignore it). It was in near total darkness, with the windows facing north. I'm not sure what people did back in the day. It seems like quite an oversight, to have nothing in the way of lighting there!And what do you think of these louvered doors, which are placed here for no discernible reason other than to warp the proportions of the space, making them even more cramped than they already are? Oh, and to catch dust -- they were really good at that!


It does look a lot better with the doors removed -- even before the Chief puts on new trim -- don't you think?
In the next post I will show you the chandelier I found on Craigslist and almost instantly regretted buying, as well as the after pictures.

Do you think that anything can be made of this desperate place? Can we do anything with this?

Some of the crystals are still in the box. But still. I think this could be a big mistake... do you think we can rescue it?