Julienm1

Today plan to sew with reckless abandon. Grabbed the cheese ball container and will just start sewing those scraps together and trim at a much later date. They have been yelling at me for a long time. (GET US OUTTA HERE!)

retiredteacher09

Julienm1: Great way to use some UFOs. I had better organization skills when I was teaching and running our sons around for their activities. Less time equaled better organization back then. Now it is ‘lots of time, I can do it later.’ Slowly working on getting back to organization. Although I have been retired since 2009, my lack of organization has increased over the last 5 or 6 years. I’m blaming it on my love of sewing quilt tops. 🙂. Have fun with your scraps today, I wonder how many fit into that cheese ball container.

Julienm1

I have no idea how many scraps were in that container but sure was a colorful mess when they tumbles onto my sewing table!

oksewglad

I am so with you on this! For me it was the daily work on a dairy farm/farm office coupled with 4 kids and volunteer work. I always found time to sew then and now have more time to sew and can be more creative. But yes now I am paying for slacking off in the organization department! Back to the old grind...hahaha

Teen

Sounds like we are all trying to get the creative spaces a bit more organized and doing a good job. I cut up the scraps from my 2 recent completed projects. Those have a habit of getting ignored and start piling up....so that is done. Then, I cleaned my sewing room.....which led me to the adjoined bathroom....which led me to clean the guest bedroom and bath....., which had a quilt folded on bed that needed binding I just picked up from quilter...so, I blinded it. Then lightening and thunder hit so I unplugged everything....good thing, too...minutes later we had a power surge....then it hailed. Closed down for the night...

thepolyparrot

I bought Mimi Dietrich's books and the EQ CD for Baltimore Album quilts about 10-12 years ago and went on a buying frenzy for solids and read-as-solids for a few months. I just finished sorting the 40 gallon tub. Ugh.

The bad news is that I've never started a BA quilt - not even in EQ! All the applique quilts I've made after my buying spree have come from kits. 🙄

Julienm1

Stopped sewing last night to count up how many scrappy or kiss blocks I need. Came us with 28 scrappy 6.5 blocks. Kiss blocks are four 3.5 small blocks to make one 6.5 so that's ...way too many to admit to...lol. Only need 6 more scrappy and then start the kiss. Kisses go together so fast...YEAH! Luckily I do see I've made a dent in that scrappy container. Even found lots of hst hiding.

I meet with Project Linus coordinator Thursday for coffee. Didn't tell her I have12 quilts.

Ok...back to work.

jmoore

Julienm1, sounds like you are making great progress on your scraps...would love to see some of your blocks.

Teen, I could sure use you at my house for a day...my sewing studio is clean because I haven’t been souping much sewing with this darn vertigo thing (now going on 4 weeks) but the rest of my house is suffering and DH just doesn’t see things like I do. 🤪

rryder

Teen- I got exhausted reading about everything you did- isn’t it amazing how one thing leads to another? Hope you came through the storm with no damage.

Jmoore-sorry you are still having vertigo problems, hope you find something that fixes it soon.

thepolyparrot - I did something similar once when I got inspired by another quilter who makes beautiful art quilts. I bought all her books, and using her method for fabric organization, I stopped cutting my smaller scraps into “precuts” and reorganized them all by color. I ended up with 8 drawers stuffed full and they made a very pretty display, But..... Instead of making gorgeous art quilts using her techniques, I stopped using my smaller scraps at all. That’s why I spent several weeks this past month re-doing my scrap drawers. I ended up with my small scraps cut, sorted and organized into precut sizes that I like to use. In fact, they are now organized in the exact same way as they were for years and years before I bought all those lovely art quilt books. They now only take up 6 drawers and I’ve been using them.

today I’m going to tackle the bottom drawer of my dresser and the skinny metal cabinet where I keep my riding gear. I’m sure there are breeches in there that I could pass on to someone else. The goal is to get clothing items cleared out of the metal cabinet so that it can be used for other kinds of things that I want to keep in the bedroom. Wish me luck!

Rob

thepolyparrot

I was thinking while I was sorting last night that I should just cut all of these up and make my own scrappy quilt kits. This is crazy what we do, isn't it? I'm glad you found a way to make yours workable, again.

My scrap bag is a BIG laundry basket - nothing close to usable as it is - apparel knits and bottom weights and bag lining scraps with only a few quilting cottons. I will tackle that next and I will be ruthless.

And good luck with your next step, too - it's a relief to get some of this stuff cleared out and organized.