earthy dress on sugar city...and house re-do

For those of you unfamiliar with Sugar City Journal, it's divine. Two sisters-in-law sharing a blog. I HAD to post this dress.

See it here on their blog for more brilliant inspiration. I love it. Look at the terrific pleating and the rough softness of this fabric. Doesn't it motivate you to create some new fall clothes? (Just when my summer clothes are still waiting to be completed. Boo, me!) Their new shop gets stocked and immediately sells out in a blink of an eye. The women create clothes generally without commercial patterns! They also post pics of their homes and there are many very cool ideas on there.

Speaking of homes.

Lately I've been salivating over Apartment Therapy.

See, I'm thinking about re-doing the larger attic room of our house into a guest room/play room. From brown lino tiles, mismatched bookcases, stacks of books, papers everywhere, mismatched rugs, no curtains... to an airy white space with turquoise and yellow accents. This is my dream. On very very few dollars. I figure I simply switch the furniture around, paint it and the floors, make some bedding, a headboard, a futon cover (for the futon in the new office), and find some dirt-cheap lighting. No problemo! But where to put my husband who is currently using it as an office. In the current (wee) guest room! And so then I must re-do that room for him.

Here are some colour combos I've been eyeing. I am gravitating towards painting the floor in a pale yellow/wheat neutral. (Is that beige? Hm. Hope not. More of a yellow ochre.) And the fabric that I am loving of this batch, for a headboard, is the Kokka with the trees. Though I would love a more modern look. Like this one on the left.





For one thing, I hope to make a fabric-covered headboard and am having trouble committing, because this will anchor the whole guest/play room's colour scheme. I am seriously loving this Anna Maria Horner stuff, though.

Check out the Sketchbook in Blue. There's something cool about Volumes, too. Like a pile of books -- oh yeah! -- I get it! Duh. Volumes = books. Takes me a while sometimes. Two little kids..you know...mommy brain. :]

The pics on the left are my choices -- the ones on the right are the choices she presents on her website, FYI.



Anyway Ms. Horner is absolutely brilliant and very well known among quilters and fabric afficionados. But if you simply want to be inspired with beautiful, daring colour combinations, check it out. Her shop also sells fabric scrap bags. Mmmmmm....


I'll write more on the playroom/guest room transformation as the weeks go by.








Last week I learned about painting over lino tiles. Use TSP (ick) to clean them, or sand, then paint with oil-based paint. Fine. But is there a Lovo paint or a "cleaner" oil paint for this use? Am I pipe-dreaming?

xo ella