Organized - and Nostalgic

I've organized my sewing room!

It took me 5 days. Not bad, considering that there were children helping. Every 5 minutes a small person would come to ask for a snack, or to use the bathroom, or to put a dress on a doll, or find a puzzle piece, or something. And there were also meals -to be cooked and eaten - that got in the way.

Sorting the fabric was actually the easy part, humiliating as it was to see some of the prints my teenage self thought were cool. After the kids were in bed, I put on a movie and watched dragons scorch entire cities as I placidly sorted and folded. Nice relaxing evening. Unfortunately, my stash is only 1/3 fabric. The other 2/3 is notions, hardware, remnant supplies from old projects like jewelry-making and stained-glass painting (look who had too much time on her hands before she got married and had kids!!!!) and, well, it was like opening a can of worms.

I should probably mention that this was an organization, not a re-organization. That's right- before this, I'd never organized my sewing room. Sure, I tidied it up from time to time, and bought tubs for storing notions and stuff, but there never was a system. When I moved from Singapore, I packed all the fabric I had into cardboard boxes. When they arrived here, I literally dumped them all out into the hugest tub I could find. It was never sorted, and stayed that way for the next 5 years, buried under new layers of more recent purchases. Anyway, it's done. It won't look this neat for long, and time will tell if there is a workable system here, but it got me to throw out a lot of rubbish, so no complaints.

I thought I'd document the After photos (see the Before photos in this earlier post) so that if I mess it all up again next week in the future, I can come back here and reorganize it back to where it was.

Here's the overview shot - two closets.



The left closet stores all the fabric, as well as ribbons
and the leftovers from long-ago jewelry making.

Of the fabric itself - the top two shelves are stuff that gets sewn into garments. The shelf below that is vanity fabric - printed stuff that I buy because it's pretty - it gets used mostly for craft-sewing or drapeless summery sundresses for the kids. The bottom shelf is what gets turned into bags and other receptacles. Orla lives on this shelf.



This stack is the only one I sorted by color - the very versatile cotton collection of solids, dots and ginghams.



The right closet is msotly non-fabric



which was organized thus:



One of those tubs is Emily's - she wanted her own stash, so she filled a tub with plastic and metal needles, a measuring tape, a pincushion with pins, embroidery floss, hoops, some fabric, and her very own Unfinished Projects - one skirt and one bag.


I actually think this is very silly, but I made labels for the tubs to force myself to get excited about putting stuff away when I'm done using them.



There are empty spaces on either side of the shelves in the closet, so I put stuff in there that doesn't need to be visible to be used: the high-density foam, bags of stuffing, and stuff that has to be stored in rolls - oilcloth, packcloth, vinyl and my rolls of drafting paper.



The little cubbyhole cabinet in front of the sewing table has an in-tray on top. In the four drawers are sewing thread, unfinished bibs (I am disgusted that they need an entire drawer so I will be trying to get rid of them soon), fat quarters and blog stuff - records and toy patterns and things like that. I discovered something interesting: fat quarters in the US and fat quarters in Singapore/Australia/possibly the UK too? are not the same size. They are bigger and squarer back home because we measure yardage in meters there. Makes completely sense now that I think about it, but it threw me off a bit when I was trying to fold them and they were different.

The cubby holes hold sewing books and craft books, as well as clothes catalogs and the notebooks in which I sketch stuff I want to make.



Under the sewing table are two more storage areas. One is a rolling organizer for felt - wool felt vs acrylic.



The other contains WIPs - one project per tub. Look - on the second shelf - bibs. Again. Grrrr. They're like an infestation. The rolled-up white thing is a white fleece blanket (from Ikea) that I use as my photography backdrop.



The sewing table is counter-height so I can stand at it and sew or cut fabric without getting a backache. I often sew standing up because it prevents children climbing up on my chair to poke their fingers where it is sharp and dangerous. I also get to sit under the table to dig around in my felt stash, or meditate on my WIP tubs. It is more exciting if it feels like I am in a cave or a tent.



I have to say, though, that I do most of my cutting on the floor. I've always been a floor person.


So that's the tour. Only two things were left to do after sorting out the innards of all the storage spaces. One was to hang up that pocket quilt:

I'm still not sure if I want to keep it there all year, or not.


The other thing was to put some color on those white walls:



I found these wooden frames lying around in some other part of the house so I put fabric in them, and stuck them up with masking tape to see if I liked it. I wish they were a little smaller, but they'll do.



So Sewing Room Organization - check. Phew.

Exhuming the ghosts of fabrics past also turned up some interesting relics from my childhood. Emily was extremely excited to discover my ancient Dymo labelers, and happily printed out her name with one of them. She also found my pompom makers and wanted to make a pompom, so I had to deorganize my thread-and-yarn tub temporarily to get her some wool. Kate found my collection of Giant Marbles and hijacked it for the rest of the day. Jenna, bless her, left me alone.


Here's a collection of circular things I experimented with in my teens. I suspect there might be a name for them - anyone know? They're thread wound around plastic washers - as I said earlier, I clearly had a lot of time on my hands then.



Here's felt food circa 1970/80's. This is a mangosteen I made as a child.



This next one is possibly the first stuffed animal I made. He is about 1.5" long, has a gaping head wound (repaired with glue where the sutures failed), detached retinas and atrophied neck muscles. I must have been 7 or 8 at the time because I made him to look like my then favorite softie, Terry the Turtle. Terry is gone now, so I'm glad I kept this little guy.



Two of my first dolls. These are almost 3" high. I think I was about 9, maybe 10 when I made them. A later version had removable clothes. I'm almost sure I stitched some of them in class under my desk during the especially boring lessons.




Doll pillows. Check out the whip-stitching! Why can't I sew this neatly now?



And speaking of deteriorating workmanship, here are some random felt flowers. They were from a kit for making a felt dog - these flowers were to embellish his ears (why?). After I'd stitched them up, I decided to keep them as is, because they were so fat and cute.



Looking at them this week when I dug them out, I was amazed at the stitching - I was a much, much, much better hand-seamstress at 9 than I am as an adult. Dang, I wish I could still do a blanket stitch like that.



One of my first bits of practice embroidery - I must have been 11? 12? at the time. I remember being obsessed with produce with nationalities and clothes. There were the Spanish Onion, the Irish Potato, the American Pumpkin and a whole host of others, but this Mexican Corn was my favorite. Again, I don't think I can embroider this neatly now.



Just as I was beginning to feel intimidated by my overachieving preadolescent self, I found some cross-stitch! Snicker.


Guess what this is:


Emily said, "worm trying to eat an acorn".
Not really - it was my freehand rendition of Snake Slithering To Pond With Large Rock.


More aquatic life - this masterpiece is Swan And Fish Fleeing Voluminous Seaweed:



Flower. Hm.



Chicken With Snowflake:



Chicken....... hm........... Years later, haunted by this one thought, I would (hurrah) abandon my career in cross-stitch and experiment with other media.

I thought I'd share some of the other cross-stitch samplers I found mysteriously hiding in my stash, for two reasons. One, they weren't sewn by me, thankfully. I'm not sure who did - possibly my aunt, who was a sewing teacher when I was little. Two, they were samplers for a cross-stitch class for children, so they're quite different from the kind of elaborate cross-stitched nativity scenes that I see a lot of now.

This was meant to be a bag, clearly - it was sewn into a tube before embellishing. I like how the top edge is folded down and frayed. I might sew it into a fabric bucket someday.



This is such a fun repeated pattern of trees and ducks:



Interesting (to me, anyway) use of diagonal stitches throughout:



And some Japanese figures. As a little girl, the left figure caused me great consternation because of her oversized bare feet. In spite of being explained to that it was her train, I was still very disturbed.

And that brings us to the end of our tour. I haven't touched my sewing machine in three weeks, except to move it to dust under it. I feel very detoxed. If not for Emily wanting to sew a small tote today with her new Stash Tub, I wouldn't have even taken its cover off. Have any of you taken a sewing sabbatical? I recommend it - it's lovely.

Alas, I think I need to make a few things now that the sewing room is no longer a mess. I'm going to start with these

and see if I can get them to look.... different.

Good night, all!