When Does Function Beat Fad ?

If you are a Facebook friend you might remember one of my posts yesterday about this subject. In a nutshell basically Theresa (one of my Facebook friends)and I were discussing this. When does function beat out decorating?

Yesterday as I was working on my quilt in my dining room I began to think about this very question. Yeah yeah there was smoke and everything coming from my ears. LOL. Since I live in such a small place I don't have room for a bunch of stuff. Don't get me wrong I LOVE to decorate my home. But it almost getting to the point of overwhelming. The discussion yesterday was about starting collections and how they grow until you have way too many. LOL. Then you know you need to get rid of stuff and with good intentions you start a pile. Then you have no idea what to do with that pile sell it or donate it so the pile sits. Anyway, since my dining room is my main crafting space I need to make it more functional. Here's the thing... people will still see this room so I need to make it visually attractive as well as functional.

If you'll remember my boxes I painted store a lot of my sewing stuff. All my scissors, thread, embroidery floss, etc are all in these visually attractive functional hide away... (I have begun to take down my Christmas stuff so they aren't complete displays.) :)





Then Steve made me the apothecary look alike to hide my sewing machine. Again functional yet decorative...



Do you see where I'm going with this? You all know I LOVE my dining room but I want to make it more functional. So where am I going with all of this? Well, I told Theresa yesterday that I wanted to decorate my cabinet with fabric from my collection. She pointed out that people decorate with quilts and coverlets so why not fabric. I totally agree. I found this picture in one of my quilting magazines and thought that it looked awesome. Of course it is filled with wool, but why wouldn't it work with fabric?



Granted a lot of my fabric has a pattern on it but you could still stack by color. At that point you could add all types of colors to your room instead of a certain color palette. Again very functional so when the mood strikes I can have my fabric ready to go instead of in the basement in totes. I could see at all times what I have in my stash and know what coordinates and what doesn't. Then my dining room would start looking like either a. a quilting shop or b. an olde time mercantile or option c. a worse mess. LOL. So this leads to what I am going to attempt in my empty cupboard.



This is my last day off and I am going to work on it today. Wish me luck. LOL. By the way I believe I will have a stack of homespun that I want to get rid of. I just don't use homespun in my decorating scheme anymore. Let me take a closer look and I will let you know. We can either do a fabric swap or you can buy it.

In an attempt to think about this move I decided to empty off the cupboard and came up with this little display in my dining room.



I was mulling over in my mind what I want to do and then Steve came home. LOL. That always changes my thought pattern. He had been working on some new pretties/ thrift store redos for my house. No pictures yet as I need to paint them.LOL. Again Theresa and I were talking about thrift store finds and staying out of the shops because we already have enough stuff. Anyway, my thought pattern changed to a pie safe cabinet thing with screen or chicken wire on all sides. I have seen these in magazines where people have put quilts or coverlets in them. So for now, I will use my cabinet I already have until he makes me my new fabric stash cabinet.

I know this is a bad picture, but I got it out of Country Sampler. This is sort of what I want. Steve is all anxious to start building. LOL. P.S. if you have one of these cabinets shoot me a picture through my email. Thanks.



This is another New Year's resolution. It is one I make every year to get more organized. So today I will be working on it. I am off Thursday again and will try to get pictures of my progress. Wish me luck. LOL. I am so anxious to give it a try.