A Weekend of Organization

While there's nothing more I'd like than to explain my week's absence as unavoidable due to my collecting my Powerball winnings, the truth is that I somehow found myself with a one-way ticket to organizational land and was comped for the weekend.

In trying to move some project fabric from the closet cubbies to make room for the sandwiches waiting to be quilted, I hopped on the OCD fabric-folding bus and patiently refolded a lot of the fabrics in my cutting table cubbies to make room for the new.

It almost looks like I pasted pictures on the cubby fronts. There was some serious stacking going on this afternoon. Second row, center cubby is my 1930s repro collection. There are 38 fat quarters in that space. Next to the indigos on the top row are 10 yards of Sew Batik fabric. It was a precision folding day that Martha would have been proud of (actually, I'm pretty sure Martha would have been jealous).

The sewing armoire is looking pretty empty. Do you think it suspects that it might be on it's way out of the studio? It's such a hard decision to make. It's not white, but on the other hand, it's a darn nice piece (well, 2 pieces) of oak furniture with an electric sewing machine lift in the bottom cabinet with a fold out table. I just don't have the heart to paint it white. It's akin to spray painting a '57 Chevy--sacrilege.

What happened to the threads that were on the armoire doors? Hey, where are the 6 plastic thread boxes that were on the shelf? Well, this is how I spent my Saturday.....building them a modern, new home....

These are modular scrapbook storage cubes from Michaels. They were on sale last week, so each 3-drawer cube cost a painless $15. Two stacked cubes are desk-height and at some point (when the armoire moves on) I will use one of my white desktops across them. For now, they are prefect to set my little portable ironing board on top of (photo of that next week when my new Oliso iron arrives).

The drawers hold a lot of thread. They're about 14" square. You can fit about 8 rows of 12 spools in each drawer. That's a lot of thread. This morning was spent obsessing over the drawer labeling. 3 drawers of cotton, 3 drawers of poly sewing thread, 3 drawers of embroidery thread and 3 drawers of miscellaneous - hand embroidery/couching cord/embellishments (rick rack).

Won a great auction on eBay.....the 60mm rotary cutter and 10 replacement blades. $18 for the lot. I shall now become a cutting fool.

And since we were in Michaels, why not buy a new home for the rotary family as well?

There are 7 cutters in that box (in 4 different sizes) and a lot of replacement blades. (And if you look very closely, on the left you might see a stack of Bandaids -- hey, nobody's perfect.)  It looks pretty on the cutting table. And who doesn't like a magnetic flap box?

It's aIways fun to clean things up when you find little unexpected surprises. Like these two packs of seam binding that came out of my extensive stock of bindings and tapes. Can you say vintage? I didn't even know they were in there. Those, along with a boatload of thread were part of the armoire inheritance. It came to me chock full of lots of neat stuff. These will most likely find their way into a shadowbox and become studio wall art.

Check midweek. Hopefully, now that I'm all organized I'll be able to get some sewing done. I would have today, but my daughter came by with the grandpup and we all spent the day in the studio, the grandpup napping, me folding fabric, she cutting little Cricut shapes for me so she could take her Cricut (which I have been holding hostage for a year, in order to do just that) home with her.

Have a fabulous week!