Operation Clean Sweep

 As I was debating what to title this post, I decided on Operation Clean Sweep and had to chuckle aloud. My sewing studio looks like a bomb went off! Let's just say, overall I'm looking to reset things 😉

Our family Christmas went great! Since everyone had already had holiday dinners, I opted for a soup and salad bar. I made four different soups, and had everyone bring a salad. The weather was cool and rainy, so it ended up being a good choice. 

The mountains surrounding us all have snow, but we don't have any down in the valley, so I busted out the "snowballs" during a break in the rain. The grands had a great time with them, and so did my sisters Christmas puppy! 

This snowball fight ended up with the snowballs in the washing machine! 

The sun came out for a hot minute, so we had a lovely double rainbow to start off our 2023.

I thought all the grands were going back to school right after the New Year, but I was wrong. I ended up having two of them for two sleepovers, and four for an afternoon. I know there will come a time when hanging out with the grandparents will be "uncool", so I celebrate the time I get to spend with them. 

I did manage to get a few things done while I had the kids. All of Christmas is put away. I don't know about you, but I get such a sense of satisfaction when I put away the Christmas decorations. I love having the decorations up (though I've paired back in the past few years). Having the house back to normal and another holiday season behind us just seems to get me going for the new year.  

Resetting the house also is a great time to think about what is working and what's not. DH worked on cleaning up his office (a Herculean feat, it was a disaster) We bought some organizational things last year he hadn't put to use, but now he's using them, and we decided the 30 year old microwave stand was not serving its purpose well enough for a printer stand so we ordered him a cabinet with doors to take the place of that. That arrives today, which is great timing, as he should have time this weekend to assemble it.

I've been looking around my trashed sewing studio and fabric room, and evaluating what isn't working. Honestly, if I get a few projects finished it will look better, but that takes time. I was looking specifically for things that had no home, or that the "home" wasn't adequate. First up was my bolts. If I need more than about five yards of a background fabric, I tend to just go ahead and buy a bolt from Marshall Dry Goods. Since they'll let you buy wholesale if you are willing to buy bulk, I can save often get a bolt for the same price as about five yards from a quilt shop. They sell rolls of batting too, and they can be a good source for that. The thing is, I have no designated place to put bolts of fabric. If it's a bolt of wide backing, I do have place in my quilting closet for it, and I also store any other wide backs in there. If I'm going to use it for a quilt top, I want it easily accessible. 

I looked around my space and specifically looked for anyplace that could fit bolts. 

My ironing station is atop two low bookcases, and by rearranging them, and moving a shelf, I had space for bolts on one of those. I even had space for my interfacing bolts! If I did another magazine purge, I could probably use both bookcases for bolts if that is ever needed. 

I also did a swap of two sets of plastic drawers. I moved a wider set into my sewing studio, and now I'm storing all my rolls of bias binding and cotton cones of thread in there. I hadn't had a good storage solution for the large cones of thread, and nowadays that's all I buy. That set had been in my fabric room holding my patterns and scrap user system. I've purged enough patterns that they easily fit in a smaller drawer, and I've been busting my scrap user system over the past couple years. At one point I was completely out of 2" strips, though now I have a few. I'm not out of 2.5" strips but I've busted them down to a small amount. I bought different containers for my 2" and 2.5" strips, so they can be sorted and stored in my cutting table. I've decided I'm going to bust the rest of the 1.5" and 3.5" strips and no longer save them at all. I'm sure I'll cut them for projects in the future, they are common sizes to use. I've just decided I don't like my scrap user system taking up so much space, and I tend to use the 2" and 2.5" strips faster. Since I now have a smaller set of drawers to temporarily hold the scrap user sizes I don't plan on saving anymore, I took the time to sort through the 3.5" strips. Anything that read as one color got put in the drawers. Those are the easiest scraps to use. Anything that was a novelty fabric or had a bunch of colors I pulled and put into a bin. I chose four easy patterns and I'll be cutting for those over the next few weeks. I may end up with multiple quilts from the same pattern, but since I'll likely be donating those quilts, it doesn't really matter. Once I've gotten the 3.5" strips busted, I'll tackle the rest of the 1.5" strips, but I had already busted a lot of those, and I had stopped cutting those about a year ago. The nice thing about the 1.5" strips is when I get down to just a few, I can mix them in with my strings and use them in string quilts. 

In my sewing areas, I'm trying hard to not bring anything new in right now. Switching a few things was a better solution. With the current economy, our plans of buying a new house are on an indefinite hold. We still haven't ruled it out in the future though, so it's still in the back of my mind that I may have a smaller sewing space someday. We actually really like our current house, and it works well for us so staying here is no hardship. Someday we'd like to have a smaller house that's single story though, something more suited for our later years. If we ever do move, a good sewing space will be the number one on our list of requirements for a new house. 

Other areas I'm doing a clean sweep? I'm doing a freezer/pantry cleanout this month, and possibly into next month. I tend to do that the beginning of each year, making sure I use up what's in the house to make sure we aren't letting food go bad by forgetting about what may have been shoved into the back. The best part of that this year, is I will use all the grocery money I'm not spending towards paying off the new dishwasher we just got. We'll still be buying milk and produce, I'm just planning all the meals around what we already have in the house. I know we have enough meat to make it at least a month. 

I did get in a little bit of sewing this week.

I got all of these blocks done for the Chilhowie Mystery. The reveal came out today, so my plans for this afternoon are to get the rest of the cutting done for that. Once I have the cutting done I can put the fabrics away and clear off at least a bit of my cutting table! I really need to have a basting spree soon. I've started quilting a UFO, and I only have one other quilt basted and it's a small one. Unless it's bigger than a twin, I do all my basting on my cutting table, so I need to get it cleared off. I don't want to just dump stuff elsewhere, I want to actually finish up some things instead. I need some real sewing time to do that, and I haven't had that this week. 

I did start my temperature quilt. I'm always a day behind because you could have a low near midnight so I can't do the unit until the next day. I haven't looked up yesterday's temps yet, and it's not very impressive, but here's what I've got so far.

We started the year with two days of rain so those point down. The first four days all our lows were within the same 4 degree spread, but all our highs were different. I'm looking forward to see how our year shapes up, and how the weather designs my quilt. 

Are any of you doing some resetting of your house? Starting a new project or just determined to finish up old ones? Let me know.