Thursday 4 February 2010

A Sewing Room?

My husband is making me a sewing table. Somehow, whilst doing this, he came up with the idea of transforming a very small room off our bedroom (currently a junk room, smaller than my sister's wardrobe) into a sewing room. I have mixed feelings about this, as I rather like sewing in the family room where I can talk to everyone, but am trying to be positive about the idea.
Despite the drastic curtailment of sewing time just recently due to renovation tasks, it has been quite interesting working on this room.
Our house is around 120 years old, which is quite venerable for an Australian building. It is a post and beam construction, so the walls have been moved around quite a bit during the history of the house.
We pulled off some damaged masonite, and removed some of the tongue and groove wall boards, which were not in good condition. It looks pretty awful here, and that would be an accurate representation.
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Strangely, in the wallspace, we found these scissors, and a metal double pointed knitting needle.
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I cannot think how these items could have found their way between the walls - there was no gap until we removed half of the wall.
My husband and the children perfomed an exciting electrolysis experiment, and removed all the rust, then my husband sharpened the scissors for me, and now I have some new paper-cutting scissors for my sewing room.
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I wonder if they were sewing scissors once upon a time.

9 comments:

Eileensews said...

Can you share what you did to remove the rust?
Thanks.

KID, MD said...

That is a cool find! I think you may enjoy having a nice sewing space to yourself. I love being able to hide from the world and close the door to my sewing room.

Liana said...

Sounds like it was meant to be a sewing room, and you've been welcomed by the brownies. :)

Gail said...

Same way pins keep finding their way onto my lounge room floor to the annoyance of my family.

Gretchen the Household Deity said...

If the room is too small you won't be able to do *everything* in there. `-) Maybe you can still trace and cut in the family area? They are at least half the time spent sewing anyway.

Erika Mulvenna said...

Yep, those do indeed look to be sewing shears! You can tell by the bent handles. As my handy dandy 1940's guide to household scissors says, "The bent handles allow the blades to lie parallel with the table when cutting out a pattern, making it easier to cut accurately."

Maybe this once was someone's sewing room many years ago?

Joy said...

As we are buying a new house, I'm about to get a sewing (part-of-a-) room. I'm also ambivilent about being out of the main living areas. I guess you can't have it both ways!

Carol said...

How lovely to have these treasures in your wall. I found all sorts of things when I started renovations. We took out all the internal walls and in the process discovered where there had been doorways in the past. It was easy to find where the house had been added on to over the years. I think you'll enjoy your own sewing space, no matter how small. I agree with Liana, it sounds like this was meant to be and who knows, maybe some previous lady has sat in the same space making clothes for her family.

sb said...

Your scissors look almost exactly like my Wiss brand shears except that I don't see any engraving on yours. I bought mine when I first started sewing in 1960 because that was the brand my mother used; they are now my paper scissors.
sb