Thursday, December 30, 2010

Cleaning Up My Rubbish For The New Year


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So 2010 is almost over. A few days before Christmas, I cleaned up my sewing table - to the point that it was unrecognizable as the same miserable mess of drafting paper, elastic cord, homeless zippers, one million thread spools and lint that it'd been all year.


I almost don't want to begin sewing again, just to keep it looking the way it does now. But I have an owl to make for a friend's birthday, and I think I might want to sew a fleece robe for myself, so..... hello again, mess.


I have two big organizing tasks to do for the new year. The first, which I finished this week, was to refresh the art wall in the kids' playroom. Their old art wall boasted masterpieces from as far back as 2008 - almost entirely Emily's, because she was essentially the only functioning artist then.


To do this, I had to clear out the art basket (thing into which all the artwork from school, the kitchen table, church etc is dumped) and sift through pieces like these:



Took me two days - why? Because I wasted time getting sentimental and nostalgic over each piece. They eventually did get sorted - some into folders for storage, some into the trash, and some onto the three new art walls.



So Art Walls - check.

The second task is to - eeewwwww - clean up my sewing closet. The current situation is reprehensible - I have the space, but no system. Everything is everywhere else. I have never organized my fabric in a visible way before. All of it was in giant opaque tubs, and whether it saw the light of day again depended solely on my very dubious memory. I know how I'm going to organize it (and by "organize", I mean "make visible") but it's daunting. Worse - there's probably ugly fabric from my teenage past in there too - I'm scared about having those pop out at me and bathe me in shame forever.

But don't let me regale you with tales of my lousy housekeeping. Let's look forward to the new year! What new projects/skills/techniques/fabric-buying resolutions have you got? I'm going the same way as my 2010 resolutions:
  1. Do not pick up knitting.
  2. Do not pick up crocheting.
  3. Do not pick up wool felting.
  4. Do not pick up quilting.
  5. Do not buy any more filthy camera bags from garage sales from which to poach hardware, because we all know they will stay under the sewing table for months, fighting for space with the spare Singer (does it even work?) that we refuse to throw out/donate to Goodwill because we're paranoid that the Pfaff will die during a massive thunderstorm and we will be left without a means to finish the wretched Halloween costumes and will have to resort to the glue gun, which should really only be used for Supreme Cardboard, most of which is also under the sewing table, along with the rolls of newspaper that are half-finished drafts of who-knows- what pattern for who-knows-which kid.


Yes. By my calculations, that should leave me enough time in 2011 to make a few cardboard things and sew a few toys. Maybe even clothes. Some of you might call this narrowist crafting discrimination and close-mindedness. I'm calling it survival.


9 comments:

  1. love your 'do not' list. good luck with that! btw this is my first time to your blog and the pocket quilt is AMAZING. happy holidays!

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  2. You're funny. But I understand as I tend to pick up too many projects/hobbies and then can't finish anything. It's a bad habit. Last yr my resolution revolved around not buying new yarn until I had used up a chunk of my stash. I was moderately successful. I should do the same with fabric this yr.

    Also, love the art walls! Happy New Year!!

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  3. I definitely know the feeling. My birthday was last week and I began to ask myself if I want to be know as someone who was creative or a hoarder of epic proportions.

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  4. 1) Learn how to use new sewing machine.

    2) Use up fabric in stash. At least the big pieces that were bought with garments in mind. The fat quarters can stay till 2012.

    3) Knit through yarn stash. Particularly the mittens that were bought in 2009 and started in 2010.

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  5. I too love your "do not" list except I have already done all those things, which makes my crafting very scattered. I look forward to all of your new projects in 2011. Happy New Year.

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  6. I love your art walls! I also love the clouds that are painted on the ceiling.

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  7. I stumbled here from a tutorial that thelongthread linked to on her list of 100 tutorials fro 2010, and I'm So, SO glad I did! You have a great voice - I've spent time reading a number of your posts this morning & afternoon, and have been giggling the whole way through. I'm excited to read more & I wish you a great start to the new year!

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  8. Funny... you get more done with your do not list than I accomplish with my LIST. Go figure!

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