A Plan Comes Together, Slowly…….

Welcome to my living room sofa!  It’s a very comfy sofa, only a couple of years old and opens out to a very comfortable double bed.  But the soft furnishings are boring me now.  I like to change them in the summer and winter just to give a new feel to the place.  

 Since I am at home a lot due to health reasons I need every trick I can think of to keep from getting bored with these particular four walls and everything contained in them.  This is my winter look although as you can see from the window behind it’s no longer winter.  Nature has done her spring thing with the plants and trees but the weather doesn’t know what to do next.  It’s been cold, windy and rainy here a lot lately.  I’ve even had to turn the heat on at times and this is May.   The sun comes out suddenly and randomly (like now) and it’s playing hide and seek with us and then disappears just as quickly.  So I blame the weather for not being inspired to change to the summer look.  It’s also the fact that the summer look bored me last year and I made a note to change things for this year.  My preferred colours are gold, greens (forest green to a mint/pistachio-ish tones) and rust (terracotta to apricot-y tones.)  I like to throw a bit of white in there too in the summer.  But I also like turquoise-y colours  and grey tones which I have in the bedroom along with the bits of pink (which the OH dislikes  but was able to sneak in here and there).

I have been working on something recently or at least formulating a plan.  It’s bits and pieces are coming together slowly but surely. 

 

I bought this yarn last year on the Albert Cuypmarkt because I liked the colours and the feel of it and because it’s mostly cotton.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with it but I thought it would become a garment of some sort.  Now matter what ,it was cheap ad pretty…..  A few weeks ago I decided I needed to have new coasters so used the yarn for this:

I whipped them all up in one evening while watching tv.

At the same time I decided to make a new throw for the sofa which also double as a wrap for going on the balcony in chilly weather and something to feel snuggly with for naps on the sofa in the warm weather.  (No matter how hot it is I like to be covered when I sleep.)  I really wanted to work with the yarn again so decided to use it for the sofa throw.  Here it is in progress a week or so ago.

It’s twice the size now and I figure that I’m about half-way through it at this point.  I even had to order more of this yarn.  The shop I got it from no longer had it but I found this place online and gave them a try.  I ordered on Monday early afternoon and had it on Tuesday afternoon! 

I have to note here that it gave me a feeling of deep satisfaction to be able to complete the entire transaction on a Dutch language website without needed a translator.  Not only have I mastered the Albert Heijn site I’m increasing my repertoire!

Now it’s on to the pillows, arm covers, piano bench, etc.

I looked on my remnants shelf and pulled out all of the fabrics and looked at the assortment.  Then I suddenly got the idea!  Why not do some patchwork?!  It was something I used to do a lot of many years ago but gave it up when it was difficult to find fabrics where I was living.   I’ve got various placemats and table cloths, runners, etc. out of these fabrics already and some patchwork would pull them all together with all my favourite colours in use.

I wanted to round out the assortment more so had to buy more fabrics.  Since I have trouble getting out and about it’s difficult to get all the things that I need.  I rely a lot on shopping online but some things (like fabric) just have to be bought in person in order to really see it, feel it, smell it ( for cheap fabric print finish ) .  I did a spot of Googling and found a quilting shop in Amsterdam and even better was that it was relatively easy to get to with just a five minute walk to the tram and two minute walk  from the tram to the shop.   The fabrics were all so beautiful and I almost got side-tracked into considering two completely different colour schemes!

And now the plan is slowly coming together.  I haven’t been feeling the best lately so the progress has had it’s starts and stops but I keep working on it even if it’s just a couple of rounds of the throw per day.  My next step is to press the fabric in order to cut the squares out.  Hopefully I’ll get around to that this week.

What do you think ?