I feel like I've been recovering on my own little piece of heaven on earth. One piece of my heaven is my awesome sewing studio that I was blessed with way before my diagnosis.
You know, there are times when God simply wants to bless our socks off. He did that to me with my sewing studio. I just have to share this with you.
It was a project of love from my husband and a lovely couple. She is a detail person and advocated for me throughout the entire design process. Even though she doesn't sew, I believe she researched every aspect of sewing/quilting and had some great ideas! To say that he is a master carpenter is putting it mildly. This man is gifted beyond words. Together they make a fabulous team! Many of their lunch dates were spent drawing on napkins and discussing "best case scenarios". Hmmm...I wonder what they talked about afterwards - after all the world revolves around me - right? NOT! :)Then the four of us came together to design my sewing studio together. At one point we used Leggos to come up with the configuration of the room! Hilarious!
It all started when I showed my hubby my dream fabric cutting table and this loving man said, "No."
WHAT?
NO?!!!!
No way was my loving, supportive hubby saying "no". That just doesn't happen in my world. Now, I'm not spoiled at all, just......as my daughter once said, "well taken care of." Seriously though, he and I support each other's dreams, mine is crafting and his is cars.
Anyway, I digress. So, we talked about it and then I showed him various other fabric cutting tables, sewing tables, design boards and such from my Pinterest page "Craft Room Dreamin' " (https://www.pinterest.com/miaismine22/craft-room-dreamin/) . Disclaimer: Should you chose to visit this page, I caution you to consider this thought:
His answer was softened to, "Let's see, let me think about it." Okay. Progress made.
We met with our friends and the result is this. Now, I am not a great photographer and I missed a bunch of details. My friend's hubby is also a prize winning photographer and one day he will take fabulous pictures of this dream studio.
This is the door to my studio. I love, absolutely love fabric yo-yos! My quilting bee got together and made this beautiful yo-yo garden. Then a couple of the ladies parked their cars down the block from my house and, under the watchful eyes of my suspicious neighbors, snuck up to my house and "planted my yo-yo garden by my front door" with a birthday card that said, "You've been yo-yoed!" Each lady from the bee signed the card! There's even extra fabric yo-yos in the bucket!
Here is the view as you walk into my room. You can see a part of my inspiration board (more on that later), my rolling scrapbooking cart, part of my cutting table, my design board, and the portable design boards. The fabric cutting table is huge, stores many yards of fabric and no! I am not telling how many yards!
My inspiration board was inspired by one of the lovely ladies at Bernina. (Pun totally intended!)Seriously, get to know these ladies, they have tons of great ideas they love to share - as well as a sincere love for those of us who visit their shop. It's my home away from home. My bookshelves holds quilting, crocheting and scrapbooking books and magazines and notebooks as well as more scrapbooking supplies. The rolls of flannel you see are actually pretty cool. They are semi-portable design boards that have pockets on the top through which painstakingly carved dowels (thank you, Baby) fit through. They hang from the top of my design board from carved "pins". The bottom of each design board also has a pocket through which another dowel fits to weigh down the fabric. I have four of these wonderful contraptions. Come on now, which quilter has only one UFO (unfinished object) going on? Oh, and the teddy bear in the corner? He's roughly 30 years old - a gift from my hubby.
Perhaps in this picture you can see the knobs from which my semi-portable design boards hang. This Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt is all hand pieced by my daughter and myself. We are now working on the white and yellow flowers. This project hangs on the permanent design board. My daughter found some cool white fabric with tiny hexagons on it, so we are now using that for the white flowers. The squares on the bottom are designed by my grandchildren for their little brother's quilt. The ribbon hanger storage to the right of the design board is an ingenious design by my husband. The rocking chair was donated by a friend and I love it! Originally, my husband's grandmother's chair was there, but we've moved it into my living room. Don't you love the lamp? It was a birthday gift purchased at the shop of La mujer obrera in El Paso, TX (http://www.mujerobrera.org/).
Here you have a full view of the west wall of my sewing room. The diamond shaped mini-quilts were hand pieced and quilted by a dear friend. I believe one is my daughters, but I'm taking care of it for her. :) The view outside my window looks out in my "side garden" which I'm preparing a post on for later. I have two rolling portable storage units on either side of my sewing table. Both of them open fully from the top and provide tons of storage. I can remove my sewing table and it's plastic insert, pop in the wood that was cut out to make the hole and wala! I have a solid table top on which to scrapbook!
Here is my framed pegboard storage case that hangs above my cutting board. It holds rulers, scissors, you name it.
This is only a part of my Heaven on Earth place where I recover. Believe me, I struggled to accept this very generous gift from my husband and friends. A lot, I mean a lot of time and money went into this project and I was quite humbled by their generosity. I prayed and asked God to help me understand, accept and enjoy this wonderful gift.
And now I do.
You know why?
Because this is grace. This is grace. This is grace.
And you know what?
God shows us His grace every day. It takes strength and humbleness to accept grace.
Thank you J., D., and my loving husband for being God's tools in teaching me this lesson.
And thank you for giving me a piece of Heaven on Earth to recover.
For today, this is my truth.