Reno

We're doing little renovations around here - a bit of fixing here, a lot of plastering there, a whole lot more painting sometime around Christmas. New carpets. Maybe some polished floors. New curtains and blinds. Some doors to replace the missing (yes that's right) ones. We've been in this old house for 6 years now, and finally I feel like we are fitting into it. And we know what we want to do with it.



I've been complaining for a while about the state of my sewing room. It is permanently messy, I have no storage system, and most of my dressmaking fabrics and all my yarns are in the spare room, as is my design wall. It's time to kick the detritus out of the sewing room and onto a trash and treasure stall. And bring the good things back into it, preferably so they are in the one spot.

One Monday I noticed that the Mister had designed me a sewing room layout on a post it. Quite possibly this was more romantic than a bunch of roses.

I had Wednesday morning off work while the plasterer was here so I took the time to sort through my sewing room. I didn't even scratch the surface. I barely made a mark in the dust.



This shelving system (Expedit from IKEA, in case you were wondering) is about to become my only storage in the sewing room, other than the storage that comes in my sewing cabinet (which isn't much). I've decided to refine my book library - if it isn't sewing, quilting or crochet related, it has to go. Actually most of my crochet books and magazines have gone into the pile. At least 5 of the baskets will be sent to other uses - I intend having my patchwork fabric on display on those shelves.



The two lack shelves and the cabinet underneath this wall are going. I'm in the process of selling half the Blythe collection and the remaining girls will live somewhere else in the house. I have bag supplies on that shelf - already cut out bag pieces that just need to be sewn up and sold. The stuff on top of the cabinet is all scraps. Honestly - it's a disgrace. The big red boxes are from my full time bag making days - I won't need them anymore. The smaller plastic boxes are full of fat quarters from when I first started quilting 15 years ago. I'll be sorting out my fabrics my colour and putting them in the cubes of the Expedit, so I can see them and use them. In the boxes and baskets they are invisible to me.



The sewing cabinet will ... ugh. I can't even bare to talk about it with all that junk on it.



So far the shelves are looking OK. I've managed to store my current projects and recent fabric purchases on the upper shelves, and I have a heap more room too. But all the baskets need to be sorted through, and some kind of system for my fabric scraps identified and used. I'm doing my research on that.

It's a slow process but I'm determined to get this sorted out before Christmas.



In the meantime, I had to take the quilt that lives on the wall in the living room off the wall while the plasterer was here, and as it was so dusty I decided to throw it in the washing machine. I hung it out on the line to dry, and couldn't help noticing how much the batik fabric looked like stained glass.



And while I haven't been able to get near my sewing machine for all the junk, the one inch hexagon quilt grows and grows.