Changes

 One of the things I really want to get to in retirement, particularly over the next few months when overseas travel isn't an easy option, is to declutter and sort out the long to-do lists.  We all have those lists, things that would be of benefit to get done or to repair or to organise or to replace, glory holes of clutter, but not of sufficient priority to get to when life is keeping you busy.  After a brief trip to IKEA last weekend, I made a start on my sewing room this week.  The initial task was to replace this overflowing bookcase with a taller bookcase.

Of course, this required taking all the books and clutter off the old bookcase first and piling it around the sewing room by category.  By the end, I was fighting a strong urge to just give up, shut the door and pretend I never had a sewing room in the first place.

It was a hugely depressing task because there were so many books that I have bought, read, and kept with the best intentions to make something from - but in 95% of cases had never got round to.  Plus I would have to retain my faculties until I was 110 to ever get round to it all - not to mention similar stashes for other hobbies.  But after a few cups of tea and some self-pep talks, and after DH kindly assembled the new Billy bookcase, I got on with it.  I've put the books back on the new shelves by category (applique, traditional, general, techniques, cartonnage, stitching etc.) and labelled the shelves.  I also got a bit ruthless and weeded out a lot of books that I was never going to use or read again for various reasons, and over the week I gave them away on Facebook to grateful new owners.

the discards

I had so much room then on the new shelf that I could bring out some of the binders and boxes hiding in the fabric storage nook. The end result felt so much better.

Before I knew it, I was excavating various other glory holes in the sewing room, pulling things out of cupboards that had been there since we moved in, pulling out messes of fabric that had been hastily shoved onto shelves when we had the flood, finding all sorts of empty boxes and rubbish that had built up over the years.  I also took a ruthless look at some of the 'get to it some day' projects that were hanging about.  I've been listening lately to a sewing decluttering podcast and in her UFOs episode she talked about rating projects from 1-5 in terms of how much they excite you, 1 being the lowest.  Then she recommends you get rid of all the 1's and seriously re-consider the 2's. She said why would you spend time on 1s that you could be spending on the 5s?  She also said there's usually a reason why you've never finished something.  In that spirit, I have thrown out the cheap tapestry picture of flowers that I started in 1985 on a holiday in Greece when my aunt/travel companion was driving me crazy, dismantled a few project material collections to salvage the raw materials, and added some other UFOs to the donation pile.  I've also added several more forgotten projects that were lurking in bags here and there to my master project list, because I probably do want to finish them.  I even found a grid-printed canvas ironing cover fabric squirreled away, and used that to re-cover the majority of my ironing surface - since for several months now I have been snagging my iron on the edges of a big hole which had developed right where I tend to do most of my ironing.

Half my design wall was covered in pinned up lists, patterns and project ideas so I took all those down, added some to the master list, and am actioning others. One of those was a free pattern from ByAnnie for fabric storage boxes.   I resized the pattern upwards to make three storage caddies that fit the cubbyholes in another bookcase in my fabric storage nook.  Rather than use expensive foam stabiliser as called for in the pattern, I sewed the boxes just with wadding in them, then inserted four foam sides frankensteined from scraps of foam stabiliser that I've been saving.  The fabric is from Aldi, their cheap fat quarters are perfect for this sort of thing when you don't want to use 'good' fabric but still want something nice looking.

I still need to give the room a good hoover but overall the sewing room just feels so much better now, plus I took the opportunity to move some things around so that things I use more often are closer to hand.  Which probably means I won't be able to find anything for the next six months.  Now I just need to tackle all the similar clutter build ups around the rest of the house.

Before I started all of the above, I wanted to clear the decks by finishing off various projects piled on my ironing surface - one of which was the antique anvil block quilt top I bought in Kalona a very long time ago.  Because of its age and the feedsack background fabric, I wanted something simple and a bit rustic (because the red plaid blocks were reminding me of lumberjack shirts).  So I looked online for examples of tree blocks and eventually found a quilt made with quite a simple tree block of rectangles that seemed suitable.  I drew out a pattern at a suitable size for my quilt top (which doesn't have right angle corners but I took an average measurement) and calculated the side borders.  But for the top and bottom borders, which needed the white space to be marginally narrower in order for the trees to fit, I had to call in the big guns as the arithmetic was totally beyond me.  DS, now a chartered accountant albeit based in our dining room, kindly helped out his aged mother and quickly calculated the shrinkage ratio for me. You can't see it very well in the photo but I used mixed cream background prints similar to the original top. I was really surprised when I added the first side borders, how it suddenly turned from a 'dark' top to a light one, because suddenly the background fabrics are making the blocks float whereas before the red was dominating.  The end result is actually rather Christmassy.  I considered whether a final red border would look good but couldn't find anything suitable in my stash so have decided to call it done.  I've pieced a backing for it out of stash squares I cut a long time ago, cut some binding, and added it all to the 'to be quilted' clothes rail.  DS is now talking about possibly moving out in March/April so I may yet get my quilting frame set up in 2022.

Little Christmas sales in churches and village halls have started up.  We went to one this morning and I bought this little needlebook which is so well made. The pages are all finished rectangles rather than just made from felt, and each page has been embroidered with the name of different types of needles.  So much work in it so I was pleased (although slightly surprised) when they charged me £6 for it which is a fortune by church sale prices but little enough for the time it would have taken to make this.

Are you making any Christmas gifts this year?