Dressing the Fridge!

I suppose this really doesn't qualify as a "craft" but this project reminds me of scrapbooking and so I'm including it here on my blog! When we moved into our farmhouse, we inherited a nasty looking fridge in the basement kitchen. When renovating the house, we decided to move the kitchen to the main floor of the house so I wouldn't be slaving away in the cellar scullery while everyone else was having a good time in front of the fireplace. It was a huge and expensive project but one I have never regretted.

The old "scullery" kitchen is now my studio. (I've always loved that word scullery - it does seem so apropos for my studio considering all the ideas I cook up down there.) It is a perfect space for me and my work with a big picture window and a door to the outside patio and garden. My laundry is there so as I am working away on whatever project I am doing at the moment, I can throw a load of wash into the washer. The scullery studio is also set off from the rest of the house so my family doesn't bother my works in progress. The screened in porch is just off my studio. In the summer and warmer months, it is ideal - I can work there and stay cool. I decided to keep all the kitchen appliances where they were - it was cheaper and I figured I could always use them at sometime. I use the old stove for dyeing wool and fabrics and making tea and the fridge is great for overflow food for parties. I use the wall oven for the Thanksgiving turkey.

The fridge sure was nasty looking! Because the basement is really damp (we have a fieldstone foundation and part of the basement is still dirt), everything metal rusts even though I have a de-humidifier that runs constantly! I devised a way to hid the nastiness by covering the fridge with photos. Every year or two, I have to re-do the photos because they get moldy-ish and wrinkly and start to peel off the fridge.

Before my big class weekend, I re-did the fridge using photos from one of my favorite books - Sheila Paine's "Embroidery from India and Afghanistan." I used an exact-o-blade and cut the pages out of the book. Using double stick tape, I taped them onto the fridge layering the entire thing. Then I cut out little detail shots and taped them on top of the first layer.

The finished fridge has the feeling of a quilt made of embroidered fabrics and inside is a cool spot to keep beer, seltzer, ice tea and some white wine. And since this is a farm, it is also stocked with some some crazy looking sinister bottles of medicine and syringes for the sheep (Vitamin B, worming medicine, and penicillin).


Of course you could do this project with any kind of photo from your own collection or from books and magazines. I can even envision a large collage mod-podged all together and applied to a fridge. The possibilities are endless.