Do you make your own problems? I apparently do. A very happy little boy couldn’t wait to wear his newly finished rainbow Rowan Tee. The next day he couldn’t wait to wear his newly finished Dragon Pocket Rowan Tee. And when he came home he wanted to know why his rainbow shirt wasn’t clean again to wear the next day. Good problems to have.
The guest bed beforehand
Is yours a dedicated craftspace? I feel blessed to have a space where I can leave projects and equipment set up. For the past 2 years at least my craftroom/guestroom has been my biggest (non-child) WIP. Storage and functionality have been the focus. First, I focused on tools and function, making tools as part of my Presents for the Craftroom Series. Those much loved and needed tools have made working in the room much easier, faster and more efficient.
With the workspace running smoothly, next came tackling storage. Thrifting furniture and other items helped get things organized, but I would get some things sorted then more would come in and I’d try something different not really making much progress. Eventually my craft space became lots of stuff surrounding a pathway from the door to the very small space between my working triangle of ironing board, cutting table and sewing machine.
This year getting organized got a boost. As I cleaned out the rest of our house and rearranged bedrooms, I was also creating storage space in a closet for boxes of fabric, which would replace boxes of old baby clothes, books and things we didn’t use, giving me room to breath in my crafting space. That lined up neatly with a few tools, a few organizational tricks, some new tech and a lot of woman hours (no men were involved in the tidying of this craftroom) helping me feel like my craftroom is, and will stay, organized and efficient. I’d like to share with you how it got there. Even if you thrive in a cluttered workspace, maybe something I’ve learned will be useful to you.
My quick notes on organization turned out to be pages long so I’ll be breaking it up. The three segments will be storage, Finding and Using Things and Plotting and Planning. I understand that my system is determined in part by what I found at thriftstores and yard sales and what tech I have available to me, but much of what I do could be adapted to what you have/find and what tech you have available. If you have any storage and organizational tips I’d love to hear them. Please share them in the comments.
The great house clean out continues. The heaps of pillow that somehow ended up in the odd category of “supposed to” live on the couch, but actually live all over the floor where the kids toss them constantly. They are being upsized and downsized-that is they will be replaced with (only) 4 large Euro-style pillows with pleated or smocked linen shams. Stage one: buy giant heaps of linen, didn’t go well. The linen arrived and it is lovely, but not the shade I wanted. So into the dye pot it will go. It’s cut and the edges have been finished. (Yes, I should have mowed, but it was the first day of fall, which in my book is a holiday.)
This week was definitely a cutting week. 4 pillows and 3 shirts cut all told. I’ve some finishes to share soon. And a new series on organization coming up as soon as the weather and freetime cooperate enough for me to get some more photos.
Hello school schedule. How is it that no one warned me how disruptive you are? Could you please be kinder with regards to toddler nap time? We’re testing different changes to our routine, but there have been a lot of other extras lately too. In this time of grumpy tired and busy I’ve been finishing all the around the house items that were lingering from summer. With little time for crafting it happens that projects are in the frustrating try again, fix it or must wait for something stage just now. Not having enough time to feel like sitting down to sew I’ve cut a few t-shirts out to sew during my next sewing session. I’m going to give Cashmerette Concord another go and make a couple of Rowan Tees for Oren. His request for a rainbow shirt, for which the plan looked like this:
suddenly became plans for two shirts. I’m digging into my pretties. My long stashed fabrics. One entirely rainbow shirt and one shirt with some hoarded organic dragon fabric from Cloud 9 are now cut out and ready to sew. It had to happen, because it’s grey and rainy again and dragons and rainbows make us happy.
The elegant details of vintage metal buttons never go out of style.
Another red and white post today. Some cross-stitched napkins from a kit.
This is the full design on each napkin.
Though I kind of like them laid out like this.
A gingham gathering apron from a reproduction of a vintage pattern (probably 1940’s), this version, has a few more embellishments than my first apron from this pattern. I’ve added piping along the front waistband. Butterick 8056 lent a pocket to this vintage reproduction pattern.
And hand-stitched eyelets allow cords fed through the outer binding to be tied up into the perfect shape for gathering: kids toys, a garden haul, my stitching project or what have you.
I can’t wait to take this for a spin at the local orchard. It wasn’t quite ready for Bartlett pears, but maybe Bosc will be our test run.
Mama’s little helper, model and mini-photographer.
This was sewn up as part of the Gingham Along hosted by “Did You Make That?” Sorry, for some reason wordpress has been having difficulties with linking text lately. the URL is here: https://didyoumakethat.com/2016/08/16/ginghamalong-giveaways/
