Back to Organizing

Yesterday I spent most of the day getting everything  except my desk and bookcase moved around just to  make it easy (not to mention safe) to work on sorting and purging. I took my sewing machine out of the sewing table and raised the shelf it sits on to make the top flat for another horizontal surface. I raised one of my 2 foot x 4 foot tables to match the height of the other one and moved it so they are at right angles. With the table raised to a new height I can put my little blanket chest underneath and make room under the window to put my little sewing chest and stack things I am finished sorting. Did you catch the word FINISHED. I am making progress.

The large box holds all kinds of blocks from years of demos for classes. They are all bagged up by size etc. I wish I had tackled this box before THE RACE I would have used a lot of them for prizes. The box on the top of it is full of blocks that I actually plan to make into quilts. The other 2 boxes are 1.5 and 2 inch log cabin strips that I sorted last evening while watching  NCIS reruns. On the floor next to the chest  is a stack of empty boxes. Yeah!

This is one  of the big problems in my sewing room.It looks untidy no matter how I try to make it look neat. It also takes up a space I could use  more efficiently. Not sure what it would be because it is one of those things that I never move. Most of that stuff I could do without. The bottom 2 shelves are papers that I put into different notebooks and magazine holders. I could probably get rid of almost everything on the bottom shelf and all but 2 or 3 of the notebooks. I am not going to get into that now however as it will be a "whole 'nother mess" when I do.

This is one little area of my sewing room that is pretty much in order, a little oasis of calm. I really need to have this to look at as I walk by or into my room. 

The snow has arrived and I will be staying in all day so I am planning on another long working session. I do have quilting tomorrow with my church group  so I am hoping the streets have been plowed and are passable by then. If not maybe I will have to stay home.

We'll see. 

More on The Race

I am beginning to regret the way I started going through all my stuff. I am in such a mess right now that I am having a hard time finding anything, including a place to sit. I am now in the process of trying to make some order out of the chaos so I can continue. I have come to the conclusion that what I have does not qualify as a stash. I  have so few pieces of fabric anymore that are large enough to use for something more than scrappy blocks that if I want one cohesive fabric to pull it all together I will have to buy something. Of course, this was my ultimate goal.

Those empty shelves would lead you to believe and am making progress and I guess I am actually getting somewhere.

However......

This is what the rest of my room looks like. I  will not show you the other 3 side of the room as I do not want to end up on TV.

When I mentioned that my intention was to get rid of things Lori, our Jellyroll Race hostess, asked me if I would  put together some prize packages. I cut a lot of  5 inch squares for Notso Packs (not so charming squares) and also not so charming 10 inch squares (Mudpies). I cleaned out a box of leftover and packaged up in zip locks Ninepatch Colorwash blocks. I also put together a bunch of not so great ugly brown pieces. I made up an "Insanity Quilt Kit"  with the little triangles I cut off when I inserted solid bone colored spacers between my Jellyroll Strips. I sewed them together and trimmed the blocks  to 1 1/2 inches. "guess who  is insane). There was more but I have already forgotten what I put in the bag to give as prizes. I guess I will never miss it.

Lori also put together a few  things of hers for prizes and this is what I got as a "Thank You" for all my work, along with that chopped up piece of fabric hanging off the table in the above photo. (I am quite sure that I had added that to one of my prize bags to give away.) I have weeded out the two brown fabrics and put the green with my landscape and housing elements and the rest will be cut into log cabin strips. Who knows where they will end up.



First Place



The Final Finisher



Here are  the first and last place finishers. Lynn was  the recipient of the brown fabrics and I am not sure what fabric prize Fran received but they

both  seem to be more interested in the topiary they receive than the fabric  prizes. 

As I said before a good time was had by all.

Florida Jellyroll Participants

I have one more photo of the basement group Jellyroll race.

  Kate, Candy and Debi
  Candy use to live in NE Ohio and was part of oour Friendship block group and part of our basement group when we first started.
We miss her and were  happy to have her join us via Skype.
I am sure they had a good time racing together in Florida.

Jelly Roll Race



The night before the race



  The Jellyroll Race with the basement group was held Saturday. Lori, who hosted the event had planned well for everything. Mike her husband carried machines and bags, made coffee, watched Brady their 3 year old and stood ready to take care of anything that might go wrong. (nothing  did) It was Brady who gave up his playroom to provide us with a wonderful,large, well lighted space to sew.  Everyone finished a flimsy, everyone got a prize or two, lunch as usual was spectacular. What more can I say it was a great day with good friends  and I think  it exceeded everyone expectations.



Here we are sewing away as fast as we can, that is me in the green sweater right in the front. In the back on the counter if you click to enlarge the picture you can see the laptop with the Florida contingent who joined us via Skye. There were three of them. I don't have photos yet of their quilts

Here is Lynn with the first quilt top finished:her time was 47 minutes.

Diane cut her strips from an impressively large stash of bright fabrics. 

 Fran,  was last at 1 hour 44 minutes but only a few minutes behind me. She had some machine issues at one point and ran out of bobbin thread another time.
She cut her strips from a large stash of red fabrics.

 Gwen, who  had an all batik Jellyroll.

Jan on the left who cut her strips 3 inches. Jan was also our referee and had a whistle to keep us in line.

                                                  

 Kathy is hiding behind her all batik Jelly roll. Kathy is my hero, she taught me to paper piece, which was no small challenge

Maryann, on the left,had a Kate Spain Christmas Jellyroll. 

Suzie , on the right, used all batiks and I think  she cut them from her stash.  Just a note here about Suzie and Maryann; they are sisters. This fact somehow escaped me until I was looking at them one night at our friendship block group  and I noticed how much the resembled one another. This was probably during the second year Suzie was sewing with us. I don't know why they kept this a secret from me. Everyone  else knew they were sisters. Do you see the resemblance? 

This is me with my quilt made from a Kate Spain Central Park Jellyroll.

 This is Lori who hosted the event. She did a super job of planning for the event. There was also some planning a while back when they begn to finish their  basement that made Brady's playroom work out to be such a wonderful space for us to play in once a month.  I didn't want to leave Mike out even though my photo is rather poor. He not only went along with the plans that made this space quilt group friendly, he cheerfully puts up with us and never seems to mind the invasion.

Getting back to normal

Here it is Friday and  progress has been made. The tree is down and everything is put away and my Christmas dishes are back in the cabinet and the hand painted china is back on the hutch with no mishaps. For the first time that I can remember Jack helped take the ornaments off the tree. All the Christmas quilts are back in the closet and everything is back to "normal". This all happened on Tuesday and I have been busy since with decluttering.

This is the first time I have gotten things together to actually leave the premises.  Usually when I attempt to declutter I end up reorganizing instead; that never frees up any space. There is still a lot more to do and I find it to be very tiring so it is going slow but I am making progress. I keep repeating that to myself.

This is one of the things I am having a hard time letting go of. It probably has enough for a king size  quilt or 2 twin size. I dated it Feb 2010 and that is the last time it was down off the shelf. Those are 4 1/2 inch squares, 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 rectangles and 6 1/2 by 2 1/2 rectangles. They are scraps I cut over time for 12 inch scrappy quilt blocks from a Donna Poster pattern. I really like scrap quilts and I particularly like this pattern as there are no matching seams within the block. The fact that it an easy pattern and the pieces are all cut, makes it hard to let it go. The box is 13 x 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches deep; that doesn't take up much space and there are some other boxes the same size so  they will stack nicely. I guess I want to keep it but deep down I know it will sit on the shelf till next year. We'll see how it goes.

Today was a beautiful, sunny, 53 degree day, remarkable for January in NE Ohio; I would be happy to have this weather for  the rest of the winter. Jack got out on his motorcycle so he is happy. I would also be happy to look at this every day at sundown. This was on Tuesday and the second photo was 10 or 15  minutes later. It sure is better than gray. I took this without the flash through my window. As usual the photo doesn't come close to the real  thing.

Tomorrow is the Jellyroll Race with the "sewing in the basement" group.  It has been a long time  since we last met and I  am looking forward to it. My sewing machine and supplies are all packed and ready to go. I  better go and pack my camera so I will have some pics to show tomorrow. 

Decluttering

I have started going through my boxes and I  am finding that most of my stash is not much to my liking anymore. Every morning as I have my coffee I read my mail and go through my list of favorite blogs. Many bloggers have posted collages of the  quilts  they have finished this year and as  I  am seeing them I realize why for the  most part I don't like what I have on my shelves. Look here http://www.redpepperquilts.com/2011/12/goodbye-2011.html and here http://amyscreativeside.com/2012/01/02/a-look-back-at-2011/ and here http://www.happyquiltingmelissa.blogspot.com/2011/12/year-in-review-and-looking-forward-to.html and here http://www.cluckclucksew.com/2011/12/2011.html


Baby quilt

 Those posts will give you an idea  of  why I am unhappy with my stash. I am drawn to the light and bright and what I have on my shelves is mostly not light and bright. I do have a lot of bright scraps and I love working with those; that is what I am going to keep for sure; all of the rest is up for consideration as to whether I will keep it or not and I am thinking right now mostly not.

large throw



I am showing some of the quilts I  made this year that feature the type of fabrics I want to work  with.



place mate and pot holder














Braid

 I still like  all of the quilts I have  made over the years but reviewing what I am presently drawn to  confirms my opinion that if you make a quilt with fabric you like you will always like it but if all the wonderful fabrics sit on your shelf long enough pretty soon you will not like them so much anymore. So in view of  that I  am getting  more ruthless in my purging and I am only keeping what I really want to work with now. 

This is not a resolution; it is an immediate goal that I am working toward right now and I am not going to quit  until I am finished and have half of my closet freed up.

In the meantime between decluttering session I will put away the Christmas dishes and Christmas quilts and take down the tree. I am already a day late on the tree. 

Starting over again

The New Year always seems like a good place to start anew to do/fix all the  things that need to be done. I don't make resolutions but I do look forward to fresh starts.
In spite of thinking I was  back to normal after my one day stay in the hospital I realize this morning that I have not be feeling as good as I could. This morning I am feeling so much better that I can really tell the difference. It always takes me a couple of days of mostly sleeping to get back not feeling like "my get up and go got up and went". It's back this morning and that is a good way to start the new year.

 In between all my naps I tackled my Jelly Roll. I worked on it a little at a time and it is now ready for our race next Saturday. First I opened it up and separated the strips in stacks in the way I would sew it together. I showed that in my last post. I decided  I would add spacers of Kona Cotton Bone in between the strips and I knew if I added them all first I would have the order of things messed up so I did it as I went along and I trimmed off the corners at the joining, finger pressed and continued.

After I finished one stack I would go to the ironing board and press and then rolled it up around a cardboard paper towel roll. That kept it manageable as I went along. I let it rest for a while while I took a nap and then I stretched it out on my bed so I could find the two ends and I pinned them together. I did remember to cut off 18 inches. I accordion folded the whole thing in a stack and put  a selvage band around it and I am ready for the race.

Before Christmas as I was searching for something  I pulled out some things from my boxes of fabric and made some rolls of things to cut up and use or get rid of. No pics of that today but I will tell you that when you first start out it is hard to purge but when you run out of space to sort you get more ruthless. This is going to take some time because it is boring and tiring and I am not going to push myself.  I will say that I have gotten pretty ruthless already and that's not easy for me.  (pun intended).
I wish everyone a happy, healthy,and blessed New Year,
Ruth

Almost 2012

Three more days and we will be in 2012.  This has not been a bad year but this holiday season has been different than what we expected. Our daughter in law's mother passed away the Friday before Christmas and though it was not unexpected it is a sadness nevertheless. I spent a day in the hospital after a nasty episode of vertigo and I missed the funeral yesterday. Today we will wind up the Christmas gatherings with family and exchange gifts. Tomorrow one  more funeral, for a church member who has been ill for a long time. He will surely be missed but there can be no doubt that he is in a better place. Remembering what Christmas is all about makes these losses less difficult to bear.

Looking ahead to 2012 our Sewing in the Basement group is getting together for a Jelly Roll Race. We are sewing the strips together first at home and then when we get together we  will start the race.  This is a Moda Central Park Jelly Roll that I purchased on sale, in the fall, in hopes that we would do a  race.
Yesterday I thought that I would just sew them together one after the other as they were in the roll but when I looked at them  I realized that at the end of the roll there were strips  that were the same 3 or 4  patterns in different colorways so I sorted those and put them where I thought they went best. I will sew my strips together in the next few days, maybe Saturday, as we will probably not even go out to dinner for New years Eve.

The day after Christmas

Our Christmas eve and Christmas day were kind of low key.  Just church and dinner and no opening of presents. Following our church service yesterday there was a Birthday Party for the Newborn Baby Jesus; we had cupcakes coffee and tea and punch or something for the kids. We all brought birthday presents, packages of diapers, which will be given to local charities. There sure were a lot of diapers around the tree; I hope this will be a new tradition.

Around 6 PM we had part of our family at our house for dinner. There were 8 of us, our son and daughter in law and three of my grandchildren and one great grandson. The two young men who are brothers, my sons children and my granddaughter, who is one of my daughters children, and her 5 year old son.

 On Thursday our whole family will get together at our daughters to open presents.

Would you believe that I still  have to find one more Christmas present before Thursday?. Most of what I ordered from Amazon was just what I expected but there were a couple of things that did not seem age appropriate so I have one more thing to get before Thursday. We were already out this morning to get one present for our grandson who arrived yesterday from Missouri. We had no idea what to get him. When you haven't seen someone for 6 months it is not so easy.

Today is a beautiful, sunny, winter day and Jack is out for a ride on his  motorcycle. I am staying in where it is nice and warm and contemplating the culling and organization of my mish mash of fabric. More about this to follow.

Merry Christmas

When all is said and done this is what it is all about.

Wishing Everyone a Happy

 and

 Blessed Christmas



One more tree

We have a little tree that hangs on the wall above Jack's chest of drawers. it is probably about 30 years old and has been decorated in numerous ways over the years. the little  angel  on the top doesn't always make it to the tree because the  tree is usually up after the other tree is taken down and all  the decorations put away. If I put the little angel somewhere other than with the rest of the Christmas things I don't always find it till way after Christmas. This has come to be Jack's tree. His desk is right next to the dresser and he turns it on when he gets up every morning and he can see it when he sits at his computer. We leave it on as a night light until who ever goes to bed last turns it off.

I made a cover for my little neck pillow with my orphan block. When we got new pillows for our bed I took the covers off the old ones  and washed them and the stuffing and cut the covers and the pillows in half  and made throw pillows and I had  some stuffing left over and I made a neck pillow. The stuffing is  really nice and much more  resilient than the throw pillow inserts I have bought. I love to salvage stuff I might have thrown away.

My friend Kathy left me a comment yesterday promising to nag me about the tree skirt. She is a good friend who usually reminds me by email  when our friendship meeting are coming up and promptly answers my questions about the  friendship  blocks. I know she will remind me to  make the tree skirt.

Here is another shot of the tree  outside our bedroom window It has about 2 inches or more of snow on the branches. It snowed pretty steady all  day and without any real wind it made all of the trees look beautiful. This poor oak tree lost its top at least 10 -12 years back in a storm that came through and took out trees all over the place; they didn't cut it down but left it and it spread its branches out very wide at the bottom and started to grow a new top. In the summer it looks good and healthy and it is beginning  to  regain its shape.