Getting Organized – New Year’s Resolutions

Like most other sewists and crafters, my New Year’s mindset focused on organization and inventory of unfinished projects. Everyone is talking about Marie Kondo right now, the organizational specialist who approaches clutter in living space with a spiritual mindfulness. I’m not there yet. The past few weeks I have just been discovering what I have, sorting out the items that are actually in-process projects, and then deciding if the project is worth keeping and finishing. Last March I went through the up-ending process of replacing all the flooring on the main floor of my house. A lot of my sewing and crafting supplies were shoved here and there, mostly in the garage or up in the bonus room. Part of this home project was also to move my sewing studio from the bonus room above the garage to my master bedroom on the main floor. I figured that I could sleep in a smaller room because I wanted a good sewing space more than a luxurious bedroom, although I really had enjoyed my luxurious bedroom. Had to prioritize! This up-ending process had projects in too many places. I am just starting to get settled now that I had some time off around the holidays.

After spending time upstairs in my discovery process, I began to bring projects downstairs and stacked them in order or what I could finish most quickly. I am thinking similarly to Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball process in which he instructs debtors to pay off the smallest debt first and then work their way up to the next largest debt. The idea is to quickly obtain a sense of success and build momentum. I already feel better in that I have my projects organized and stacked in a loose plan to get items completed and into use. My earlier post of the black and white throw pillow was one of these projects. I have since applied binding to a quilt that had been a beautiful top donated by a member of our guild. I stitched the quilt on the long arm before Thanksgiving. Since I put a flannel backing on it, I had hoped to get this back to our donation committee at the beginning of the cold weather, but I didn’t make it. I am happy to say this quilt is finally bound and will go to the committee in February, which is still a pretty cold month in the Midwest. I’m working on binding some kennel mats this week. My problem is that I am too interested in being sustainable to toss fabric into the garbage. I had a couple large pieces of quilted fabric leftover from another project, so I had to stop and think if they could be used for anything and kennel mats came to mind. Lucky for me, a guild member is a contact to take these to a shelter, as she is the same person who collects the small scraps to fill dog beds for these shelter kennels.

I also finished a stroller quilt for a friend’s niece. I added a Thomas the Train pillowcase for this new baby’s older brother. The blocks I used for the stroller quilt were ones that I had made while not paying attention to check my seam width. They were too small and fixing them was not working well. So, I just used 9 of them to make a baby quilt. I am happy that was mailed this past weekend. It feels good to get items out of the house. To that end, I also have been sorting through my stash of quilting fabrics. I can see that some of these fabrics are so old, I am not likely to use them in a quilt. Some of my patriotic fabric is the oldest. Since our guild contributes to Quilts of Valor, and it is requested that a pillow case accompany each Quilt of Valor, I made these two pillowcases, above. When I show up for guild this month, I am going to have an armload of things to deliver. That feels good!