Brooke here:

Progress is satisfying.  Plus, the potentially scandalous tiles are once again tucked away for safety.  We think of the children.

One of the many wonderful features in the main room is the window seat.  More than seven feet long and two feet wide, the window seat is large enough to qualify as a full-sized couch.  The windows to each side have prism bevels, and at night, one of the stained glass lanterns throws color across the cushions.  It is, as Ursula mentioned, an idyllic place for a girl in her mid-teens to curl up with a book and quietly cry.

Problem: the cushions were so repulsive they were crawling.  Easily sixty years old, their inherent nastiness went well beyond the frayed edges and dust.  We found things in them.

Fortunately, Jen, Brown’s friend and co-worker, happens to be an exceptional seamstress, so about a month ago we headed out to gather the materials for new cushions.  We ended up at a regular chain fabric store, which was probably a good thing.  The original fabric was probably lovely back when it was fresh — while badly sun-damaged, it seemed to have a nice emerald base and was covered in happy frolicking animals that may have been either puppies or sheep (ref. crying adolescent girl).  Replacing that original fabric would have been a neat touch, so Elizabeth and I hit a specialty shop to check out the period fabrics.  Some of them were… I want to say racist?  I know we’re living in the South and there is some History to this area, but it’s disconcerting to see tapestry fabric with honest-to-God scenes from plantation life woven into it.  History is a hard nut to crack at the best of times and I’m sure this was fabric that was an exact match to the hand-loomed coverings on the couch in the parlor of Whatever-Mac-Dude’s estate back in 1845, but just as I was processing that particular sample we turned the corner and pow! We got hit with another swatch of That Ain’t Right, this one featuring the Chinese.

So, off to JoAnn’s, where the fabrics are much less controversial.  Brown and I picked out a rich purplish-maroon with earth tones in it, and Jen got them back to us a couple of weeks ago. My camera didn’t capture the colors correctly (see the first image in this post) so we asked Steve to take these:

When Jen has some spare time in her seamstress’ queue, we’ll get some pillows made with the leftover fabric.  And I might go back and cram an extra layer of 1/2″ Posturepedic foam in there so we can use the window seat as an extra spare bed.  But until then, we’ll cross this off of the Neverending List of Things to Do and call it good.

Good?  Good.