SARATOGA SPRINGS — Creativity and imagination are Denise Murphy’s handmaidens. A casual perusal of her Stitches & Time shop reveals the extent of Murphy’s talents: rustic pine tables, cabinets, and fireplace exteriors; faux stained glass; crochet rugs; candles; primitive home décor items; wood flowers; even jams and jellies from fruits she grows. All of these things she makes.
But when she started her business in 1987 in Gansevoort, it was quilts.
“I’m addicted to fabric,” Murphy said as she pointed out the shelves of multi-colored patterned cotton.
Somewhere along the way after she and the family moved to their current location in 1997 along Route 29 just west of the village of Schuylerville, she and her husband decided to try their hands at making a chimney cabinet.
“It sold in two weeks,” she said.
Wood became her passion, but she decided to go solo when it came to construction.
“My husband is very modern and finished,” she said. “I’m very rough edged.”
Farmhouse furniture is what she terms her look. Her father built her a workshop, which has every imaginable tool with shelves for paint, and with walls adorned with Elvis Presley covers. A garage was converted to a showroom for her furniture and other wood items. Word got out about her expertise and several local businesses, such as Saratoga Olive and Boca Bistro in Saratoga Springs, hired her to make tables and cabinets. The Town of Stillwater had her make beach benches and little trash cans for Brown’s beach; and recently a hotel in Bolton Landing has ordered twenty low tables.
‘I love, love, love woodworking,” Murphy said. “If I’m walking around and I don’t have my tape measure attached I feel something is missing.”
Her store continues to feature tons of handmade items, many of them from local crafters, such as goat milk soaps and whimsical dolls, as wells as interesting items like pillows filled with balsam from Maine. But her focus on furniture making and her interest in combining a little of this with a little of that has brought her into the vintage market, which includes using wood from old barns or collecting cast iron tools, tubs and sinks, and glass blocks, among other things.
Hear shop now has a tool hut with vintage tools; a shutter shed with old shutters; a window house; and several rows of old doors that people renovating old farmhouses are happy to find, she said.
While most of her pine comes from a sawmill that delivers, anything old interests her.
“I’m always looking for old doors and columns,” she said. “Right now I want to find a lathe so I can turn my own table legs.”
Her sister helps out in the store so she can be in her workshop.
“Ideas are just flowing,’ she said. “There’s not enough time in the day to build. Sometimes I hate to close up the shop. Maybe someday I’ll slow down and make some more quilts before I die.”
Not for now, though.
Find Stitches & Time on Facebook or visit her shop any day except Wednesday at 945 Rt. 29. Her phone is 518-695-5643.
