Getting Organized

Well success is on the horizon. Monday we went to Home Depot and purchased the materials needed to organize my sewing room. I will post some pictures of it on the next blog as it was before.....sad, sad, sad. We started by purchasing two shelving units like you would put in a garage, they each hold 700 lbs and are 6 ft x 6 ft with 18 inch deep shelves. We figured this would be enough to hold my current stash and accomodate any new purchases. It turns out we did pretty good. I have been slowly working on it all week. Today I got 95 % of my fabric organized. It looks sooooo much better.

I had to move everthing in the room to one side for my husband to work in there. He bought 2 solid birch wood doors, they are 32 inches wide, and 2x4's for the legs and supports. The two doors will form an L shape in the room leaving plenty of room for my "regular" machine, serger, and embroidery machine. The rain this week has kept him from working much on it so far. But we need the rain for the garden and the well more than I need a sewing table, so I am thankful for it.

I am so excited about getting that room in order and ready to truly work in. The light will be so much better where my new table will be, and with all the new surface area, there should be a place for everything I own.

A good friend of mine offered to show me how to quilt today... so that is another thing I am looking forward to. As soon as I get a working area going I am going to take her up on it.

Fabric Stash

Okay... Whew! I feel so much better! See I thought I was the only one in the world with the nasty secret of my fabric stash. It is large, maybe even huge. I hide it in the basement, in bags, boxes, under the bed, where ever I can find to stash a little bit more. Now I am not a horder by nature, but fabric is a passion. While cruising the internet and checking out various sites I have found that I am not alone, there are many people afflicted with this illness. Some of them no doubt got their start like me... REMNANTS. I think they are satan's apples for the crafter. They beckon to me a small piece of really cute or beautiful fabric with a REALLY low price. It calls me over, tempts me to touch it, to feel the soft, or roughy, or bumpy curves of it flowing over my hands. My mind races, what could I make with this, is there enough to do anything with it. Is it cute enough to buy no matter how much there is of it... These are the questions I ask myself. The biggest draw to these remnants for me is at JoAnn's Fabrics. They have discounts on all their remnants sometimes as much as 50% - 75% off the remnant price. I could stay there for hours, feeling the fabric, imagining the possibilities.

I love anything that looks antique, soft and romantic, fleece, bright and colorful, let's just face it I love it all.

So today my husband is taking me to Home Depot to look for the materials to make me a storage system for this fabric. Somewhere that I can stack my fabric neatly and by colors to make it easy to see what I have and what (if anything) I need. I would love to just move down to my sewing room and live there only coming up for a cup of hot tea and a tomato sandwhich.... but my children need to be fed, there is work to be done.

I will post pictures when the storage system is done and the fabric organized.

If you have any sewing related storage tips let me know, I am all about getting that room organized so I can be more productive.

Joyful Crafting....

Jenjie