Sidetracked

When it comes to certain areas, I am an organization junkie. For most of my house, it is well lived in. Things have a place, but they may or may not be there. There are six people living here, trying to get everyone to put everything just where I want it would be pretty unrealistic. My house isn't complete chaos, but neither is it incredibly neat.

My sewing room, however, is my domain. My girls do get things from it from time to time, as well as sew things occasionally, but overall, it is my haven. Kind of like the batcave was for batman, what he said goes, my sewing room is for me. In there I like things just so, everything should be right where I put it.

Just like every January, when all those New Year's resolutions are fresh in people minds, stores put out the exercise equipment, diet plans, and organizational supplies. I found some really great stuff for organizing, and since I never did finish organizing my sewing room after moving it a few months ago, I bought a few things while they were available. You know the best part of this? Every item I bought for organizing was MADE IN THE USA!

I already had the green plastic shoeboxes, but I bought all the clear ones this week. Some have labels on them, because in my plan to attack the scraps in my scrap pile, I chose which Go dies I have that would make good scrappy quilts, and I labeled a box with each shape I plan on cutting. When I have a shoebox full, it's time to make a quilt. As I get more Go dies, I will probably start saving more sizes, so I bought a few extra boxes. They were only $1 each, so not that big of an investment.


Here is my cutting table. The green and purple baskets are new. The green basket holds the scraps I will cut up next. I'm not even going to show you my real pile of scraps. I got the green basket to make it seem like a reasonable amount. When the green basket is empty, I will fill it from my scrap mountain. The purple basket has strings left from cutting. I love making string quilts, so I'll keep any strings left over from cutting. I am going to stick all the crumbs in a flat rate box, and when it's full I'll mail it off to someone who wants them. Sometimes I like playing with crumbs, but they add up too fast for me to keep up with them. I decided if I just give all the crumbs I accumulate this year away, I will have more to play with soon enough, and they won't weigh me down now.

On top of my cutting workbench are four sets of drawers. Two sets I had, two sets are new. The two sets I had hold 1 1/2", 2", and 2 1/2" squares. One set of drawers holds the lights, the other the darks. The new sets of drawers aren't full yet. In one set I am saving HST's in the aforementioned sizes. I have all the Go dies to cut those. The other set of drawers so far just has all my extra rotary blades and an extra cutter. The new sets of drawers I bought were $12 each.


More new baskets making an appearance. One basket has my larger Go dies, the other my smaller ones. The baskets fit just right on this shelf with my Go cutter. My four new baskets were $6 each.

I bought these two new sets of drawers too. I hadn't ever seen drawers this size five high before. I am replacing a shorter set of three drawers with these two sets. The two sets together are about the same width as the old set, but since these are five high, I get more storage with the same amount of floor space taken. These were my "big" purchase at $24 a set.

In total I spent just over $100 at Big Lots where I bought everything. I am really excited about being able to start taming the scraps now that I have a plan. I am still cutting strips and squares, but I wanted some more variety pre-cut. I always go to my pre-cut stuff first when making a quilt, so more variety pre-cut means more complicated patterns at my fingertips.

Here is one of the rows I have assembled for Orca Bay. I have two of these together, but not the filler row that goes between them. The way I divided the quilt for how I am assembling it, I need four of these, and I'm going to make all four before I worry about the filler rows. I've started on the third one, but I've mostly been organizing the past few days.

Today I went to the Tucson quilt show. I was amazed at how many of the quilts were hand quilted, a LOT of them, and lots and lots of hand applique. This is Arizona's centennial year, so there was a whole separate category for centennial quilts. There are always a lot of southwestern themed quilts, and this year was no exception. I went with my MIL and a friend of hers. We try to go together every year, we see the quilts and then go out for lunch. We always have such a fun time.

I got to try the Tin Lizzie sit down model.
http://tinlizzie18.com/esp-long-arm-quilters/tinlizzie18-sitdown/

I stitched out a couple flowers and a few leaves. It is fun to think about for a someday possibility.

I talked to a Bernina dealer as well, for my Bernina was making a really odd noise the other day. It is probably 20 years old or so, and I know I've sewn a lot on it, and it looked well used when I got it. A new Bernina will probably be my next new machine, but oh, deciding on which model is the tough part.