I have always called my creative space an ATELIER. First of all it’s French word (say no more) and we use this word in Czech for artist’s studio. Even though I’m still kind of learning to call myself artist my creative space is definitely an atelier! And today I thought I’d share with you photos of couple spaces I have called that over the last couple of years and how they evolved …

One of my jobs in UK was working for a lovely couple, I cooked for them and walked their dogs and was a helpful hand in the house. I lived with them and had my first atelier in this lovely spacious room. I bought this table to work on and made my first quilts here! I also did a millinery class around that time and the purple head form is actually one my mum worked on as a young girl…

After this we went travelling and our first house together with Olivier on the Isle of Wight where Jasmine was born had this room (I obviously didn’t know I’ll be blogging about it one day, otherwise I’d taken better pictures ) YES the little bundle is our probably couple weeks old Jasmine.

But on the other side of the  room sat my sewing machine on an old treadle table and Oli build me a wonderful thread stand, which is still alive today – half in the shop and half at home.

Jasmine was one year old when we opened our shop and since then our atelier took over our lives … this was main living room – or what normal people use as living room! The rest of it was one sofa and Jasmine’s play area. For this room Oli bought a second hand table and made a hole in it to fit my sewing machine in – that made my life sooooo much easier and the same table now sits in the shop! Couple month before we left the table in the front got a “wing” and could be doubled in width for felt making.

And Jasmine always loved to sit somewhere among the boxes of craft stuff and played …

Our last house on the Island had small living room, but we still managed to fit a large table and sewing machine table and a carry cot with Balthazar … My mum was working on the bunting which came so handy when we moved to Suffolk!

When we moved to Suffolk, I still had a guest bedroom as an atelier, but then we had a leak in Balthazar’s bedroom and it was bit stinky, so we moved him away, shuffled the bedrooms and I had one table in our bedroom and all the stuff – fabrics and other craft supplies was crammed in the tiniest bedroom. So we slowly started to move everything into the shop and couple of weeks ago I managed to swap bedroom with Jasmine and I have this bright room just for myself!! BUT there is one huge change – there is no sewing machine!

With our children growing the dynamics of our life is changing – I do now all the sewing at work and most of my office work at home whereas all that was more the other way round when we started our business. I have now much more time for “myself” to draw, meditate, do hand embroidery, read my tarot cards, do what ever I fancy and this is now my ATELIER. It might change as my needs and myself is changing, but for the moment this is place where I’m happy and where I CREATE ….

The other place where I’m happy and where I create is my work, but to show you that I have to take some new pictures as it has change a bit since I last showed you the space just after we finished our workroom.

So until then thank you for reading

Vendulka