Today after church was not my usual day. I try really hard to keep Sunday as God intended - a day of rest. Because of different obligations this week I didn't get as much done as I had planned.
Sister called me last weekend and asked if she could come and sew with me on Monday. Of course I said yes. My sister and I enjoy many of the same crafts - Mama raised us right :) We both sew, she's better at crocheting than I am, she encouraged and got me addicted to scrap booking and now it's my turn to share what little quilting knowledge I have with her. She found a new quilt shop in her little town - I have yet to check it out, but soon !!
Well in order to make room for us to both sew, I HAD to finish cleaning and organizing my space. This project was begun a number of months ago and I just kept putting it off. The problem is I have too much stuff. But I'm not ready to part with much of it at this point. I'm working my way there. Much of the fabric will go into future projects; the scrap booking is still needed but on the back burner for right now.
I'm too embarrassed to show you how bad it looked before I started cleaning today. Let's just say you couldn't see my work tables and if you use a
little tiny bit of imagination you'll understand. I'm forever reorganizing and moving and trying to come up with better ways to put things in their proper places, touch it once/deal with it theory. But I never seem to quite get there. Not sure when all this hording took over my life, but I've vowed to make my life simpler and I keep striving toward that end.
So now you can see my tables again. Happy dance, happy dance . . .
This wall, behind my sewing machine, are all
most my UFOs and KARTS. I know it's a lot, but I've been sewing since I was a teenager and some of these projects go back to my days of retail in a couple of fabric stores. And I have a really hard time letting anything go in the trash so I've managed to accumulate some things that were headed that way just because I knew I could use them.
I've tried to label every box and container so that when I'm looking for something specific I can just go straight to it. Some of these items just need an afternoon and they would be done.
I also have a love a old, wooden thread spools. Some still have the thread on them. Eventually, when Newton grows up and moves out I'm going to take back (yes, I had it first) his bedroom and make it my sewing room again. For now, I'm in the basement which does afford me more room - when it's cleaned and organized.
This cabinet was once in a toy store and they pitched it. See what I mean about salvaging . . .
anyway, it's been used for tons of things since the mid-80s: bathroom towels storage in a rental house that had little to no storage; books, scrap booking supplies and now my odds and ends of cotton fabrics (organized by color), interfacing and scraps (that you can't see on the very bottom) for scrap quilts. I think eventually the plastic "shoe" boxes will go away and the bins will just hold the fabric. The boxes were the first attempt at organizing, but I think they will end up just taking up valuable space.
All my cleaning and organizing took about 2 1/2 hours. I wasn't sure how long it would take, so I put a crockpot on for dinner and a quiche in the oven for lunch. By the time I finished in the basement, dinner was done:
There was only enough leftover for one bowl that Honey Do is taking for lunch tomorrow. This is a sausage bean soup with spinach. I pretty much butchered the original recipe which called for ground turkey or chicken and kale. I had sausage and spinach, so I made due. My family loved it. Some of the sausage was left over from Labor Day grilling. So I just cut it up and added a little more for good measure. Over all, it was really good.
Off to my stitching and a movie.
thanks for stopping by
Wishing you a creative evening.
Pictures of property of Edi's Crafting Life and may only be used with permission.
Scarecrow image downloaded from Internet.