Friday the 13th - chill out day in the studio.

Not being a suspicious kind of person Friday the 13th does not really affect how I organise my day, but this stinking head cold that is persisting had a great influence on me instead. I decided as the weather has been a little chilly and I was not feeling so good still to spend the day catching up on things in the studio instead.

I started by lighting my little fire. This lovely little enamelled fire is not really big enough to warm the room effectively in winter when temperatures drop to -16°C (daytime temperatures), but it is quite adequate to take the chill off a room in spring and autumn. Now I know that in August we are strictly speaking in the height of summer, but my temperature gauge was only registering 15°C in the studio and I have a desperate need to keep my Lemsip levels high so I lit the fire anyway, just for an hour to warm the place up so I could be comfy for the day and to boil the kettle.

It also occured to me that the photos on my blog are a bit of a lie. They only show the studio as it was when first finished. So I took a couple that tell the real story.  (and even that is a bit of a lie because I tidied up recently and now you can see the floor and some of the worktables which were buried just a couple of days ago!)

So from left to right is my ideas board which is actually an old picture frame that I have strung some wire across and use little mini pegs to attach things to, my Christmas pressie the stereo and mp3 player, the comfy armchair and book for when things get too much, the cutting table I stole from Brendan back in June with the big mirror underneath that I have not worked out how to hang up yet, then there is the lovely 'POSH' rug that my mum sent for the dog for his Christmas bed a couple of years ago, and shelving holding just some of the material I have to play with.

Then continuing around the room, just visible on the left is the table with the iron on, a chair I tried to shabby chic paint effect but looks really naff, a pine bed shelf that I found in the sales and made Bren fix to the wall, a tapestry frame covered in work in progress items, a chinese folding screen with pockets full of sewing magazines and patterns, then my Ikea tables that I work on, luckily the other 3 boxes of old clothes are hidden from sight.

The floor is concrete but a lovely friend gave me the rug so at least my little tootsies stay warm, and you can just see Molly posing in the nude on the right.  360° tour of the studio.

The brick built end is actually a bread oven, which is what my studio used to be.

The oven was shared historically by 5 houses, who would stoke the fire up and bake their bread every other day or so.  The fire would be lit in the oven (behind the black door) and allowed to burn fiercely until all the brickwork was hot, the dough would be left to proof underneath in the hollow space.  Once the oven was at baking temperature, the dough would be moved out of the way and the fire would be shovelled into the hollow and left to go out basically (it is just a niche with no flue there), and the bread would be put into the oven.  It is quite a big oven, 1 metre x just over a metre, so lots of loaves would bake at the same time.  It had not been used for a long time, and in fact we used to store our wood and coal in there until Brendan installed his death saw in the barn and we moved our wood next to that.  When the bread oven  was empty I could finally see how large it was and how it made a perfect den, originally intended for Thea, but I took first dibs at moving in.

Despite making a mess of the pattern cutting yesterday I thought I would continue with my table cloth tunic top as if nothing else it would be good practise, so I whizzed up the hems with the machine and made a couple of straps in the same contrast fabric as I used for the interfacing on the front and finished the top.

  Unfortunately the cutting error means it is unlikely to fit me, will have to see if I can convice Thea to wear it....

On the plus side the tablecoth is large enough to have another couple of attempts at this pattern.