organization - baby steps

I'm a big fan of organization. I love a tidy closet where all the towels are uniformly folded (with the folded edge to the outside, thank you very much) and arranged by color. But the actual act of organizing? Uh... I think I have a dentist appointment that day.


Here's a small section of my sewing room closet. Looks pretty organized, huh? I mean thread sorted by color - you can't get more organized than that, right? What do you say we step back and take a big-picture look at the entire closet?


Good grief, what a nightmare! So it's mostly tidy, but definitely not organized. Who could find anything in there?? And that's just the closet!

One of the main reasons for this state of affairs is that it's just too darn overwhelming to tackle all at once. So I'm going to take some baby steps here.

You know how all the "organization experts" tell you to take 15-30 minutes and organize ONE thing? Yep, did that today on this one bin - my bright stash of batiks (as opposed to the earth-tone stash of batiks which will be organized on another 15-30 minute jaunt - stay focused here, Shelley!)

Put on some music, plopped myself on the floor, and got busy folding and sorting. And look what happened! (Ignore the canine lack of enthusiasm...)

Most of these are fat quarter and half-yard cuts. The pile in the back right is yardage, but generally I don't purchase yardage for stash - only for backings and specific projects.

I'd love to show you a photo of these lovely organized stacks on the shelf, but I think I'll wait and do a big reveal at the end of "Project Organize" when ALL the bins have been sorted. For now they are safely tucked back (but uniformly folded and sorted!) in the bin.

I've got to do some research on shelf dividers. Any ideas on how to keep the stacks from falling over onto each other??

like, hate, LOVE

This was like...

This was hate...

And now this is LOVE...


It's finished and I couldn't be happier. Happy with how it turned out, and happy I can cross this off the list and move on to other things :)

are they log cabins or hexagons?

It's getting near to deadline time for the SewMod row quilt challenge (February 1- yikes!). I made a great start last fall and got 4 of 8 finished and then the holidays took over. So today I grabbed some fabrics and started cutting strips for Kelly's log cabin row. Her focus fabric is a black and white swirl - the squares in the upper left corner. I have several scraps from my month in the Fresh Modern Bee, so I decided to add them in for some color punch.

I found the free pattern for this paper-pieced log cabin variation at www.quiltersnewsletter.com late last year**. The row needs to be 40" finished and these blocks are about 7" wide so I've got some sashing to do, as well as some corner triangles - I'm thinking the black and white swirl again for corners. We'll see how it all comes together.



Hope she likes them!

** I can't seem to locate the exact URL for this pattern right now. I'll post an update later if I find it.

quilting the New Wave/circling the globe

Finally after many starts, stops, frustrations, and exasperation, the New Wave is quilted!!


I used an all over free-hand design of swirls - large, medium and small - to fill the entire top edge to edge.


Thread on top is King Tut variegated (40 wt) in Crushed Grapes; bottom thread is one of the purples (50wt) from Connecting Threads. Paige (my machine quilting guru friend) suggested in a recent post of hers here, that a lighter weight thread in the bobbin can make for a more successful machine quilting experience on your home sewing machine. And she was right!!


It took me SIX FULL BOBBINS to get this baby finished - SIX!!! I've never used that much thread before on a single quilt top. So much thread in fact, that while I was quilting (and filling bobbin after bobbin after bobbin) that I'm sure it must circle the globe at least three times!

Someday I'll give you the whole sad story about how I marked this quilt three times only to have the chalk rub off -Ultimate Quilt Pounce and I are NOT on speaking terms. But for now, though my neck and shoulders are killing me, I'm just so giddy to have this task done and (I think) done pretty darn well.

And now I see lots of TV couch time in my week ahead to hand-stitch the binding :)

quilting at the White House

I saw this today on Facebook, maybe you did too. Too funny! Apparently Larry King can "app-lee-kay" like nobody's business...

my best Christmas gift

I received some really great gifts this year, but this one was my favorite...


My husband put together this collage of some of my 2010 project photos using walgreens.com poster making tool. You just upload your photos, arrange them into a collage as you like, choose a background color, choose a poster size (mine's 20" x 30"), and send it off to one of 1500 nationwide stores with a poster printer. Pick up your printed poster, wrap it up, and voila - you win the medal for "Best Gift Giver".

He choose some really great ones to include: Grandma Elsie, colorful pillows, me and Kaffe :), baby quilts, and my favorite - the Crayon Box!

The colors in these photos aren't exactly true. I was trying to cut down on the glare, so it doesn't look as vibrant as is does in real life. And the clarity is amazing, not at all fuzzy like you sometimes get when expanding a photo to a larger size.

Once I get it framed and hung in my sewing room, it will be a daily reminder of all the things I've worked on and enjoyed this year. Thanks so much to my wonderful husband!

Merry Christmas...

To you and yours!!