Every home needs a space where you can carry out your hobbies. A room that has lots of natural light, plenty of storage and some stylish furniture and furnishings to create that sense of well being.  So we set about creating a room by renovating our garage. I have been writing about traditional interiors  and shown you aspects of our house in Melbourne , but I also love mid century modern design as well as eighteenth and early nineteenth century antiques. Our  second house in country Victoria another Californian Bungalow is the repository for our other collection of furniture and the new room created over the last twelve months provides a home for a Fler day/night bed settee, a Danish rosewood sewing table, a teak coffee table and Fler arm chairs. This room holds the collection of furnishing fabrics, dress fabrics I have squirrelled away, books on crafts and sewing and many craft implements as well as my toys. I confess I have never really grown out of "Leggo" or "Barbie". The storage pieces are all Ikea. Affordable, flexible and attractive. I love Ikea and have become quite good at assembling their furniture. I have pretty much memorised all the dimensions of my favourite pieces ( tragic ) which I include in many cost effective interiors.  I still have some finishing touches to complete, window coverings, cushions, and refinishing the series 7 chairs, for a splash of colour.

I always like it when I can include a little bit of history into our home. I was browsing through a book on French textile design and I spied the pattern that I have just included in our laundry. It seems that 'La Draperie' was originally copperplate printed on cotton by a firm called Petitpierre and Cie  in Nantes between 1786 and 1795. This example  printed in pink is from the Warner Fabrics archives and appeared in a book, published in 1991 by Laurence King Ltd, written by Mary Schoeser and Kathleen Dejardin, 'French Textiles 1760 to the present' .  I am glad to see that the Warner fabric archive is still going and has a website http://www.warnertextilearchive.co.uk. It just goes to show you have no idea where those historic fabrics will turn up I bet they never thought they would star in a laundry in country Australia, more than two hundred years later.

I thought I would do a little post about our laundry in our house in the country. You can see from the before photos it was a pretty grim little room. We gutted it and moved the window to make the space work better. We kitted it out in simple white Ikea cupboards and a 'Lack' shelving unit. The idea was to create a butler's pantry feel, providing additional space for my ever-growing collection of china and glassware. A round sink has been used. This is great for washing jumpers and other  items of clothes as well as doing flowers or even washing out paint brushes. The additional shelf we added came from the off cut from the second row of cupboards. Being a very narrow room we used narrow overhead width cupboards top and bottom and cut down the bench top to fit. It seemed there was this piece of laminate going to waste when the idea of adding an extra shelf came to mind. A little extra basin for hands and the loo is also incorporated. But what really makes this room fun is all the blue and white china pieces. Willow pattern saucers were the first thing I bought at an auction when I was about twelve. I can remember spending two dollars on a box of these saucers. Over the years they have been used as dishes for cat food, pot plant saucers and generally just cluttered up the cupboards. Hanging four different types in a line adds a little autobiographical touch. There are plates from my mother's kitchen and my partner's mother's dinner set as well as ones I have picked up at opportunity shops. There is one more details to add, a towel ring, an excuse to show off a collection of hand embroidered hand towels. So watch this space. The Roman blind is the strong graphic element that holds it all together.  Found in our stash of fabrics it is called 'Draperie' from Clarence House. The pattern was just wide enough to fit the window. For a little more detail we added a herringbone ribbon braid, this is by Martha Stewart. The pale aqua adds a contrast. The colour appears elsewhere in the house.