Done & Done & Certifiable

I finished Mom's birthday quilt on time, and here's how it turned out:

I also made some pillows for Kat and Oliver out of some Minky remnant yardage I got for six bucks at JoAnn (I also used up two bags of fiber fill that I've had sitting in the sewing supply closet for a while):

So that should make me happy, right? Eh. I want to do more with the time I have left to sew. Which brings me to the most ambitious embroidered quilt I've ever made, my recycled linen quilt, which I finished a little over a year ago:

It's become my favorite quilt. It's the perfect weight for year-round use, and I just love it, so I've kept it out in the office since I finished it:

When I finished it I remember thinking "never again." Linen is so hard to piece because it moves all over the place when you're sewing, plus all the work I put into the quilt was just insane. Now that my hands are deteriorating rapidly and my time to sew is running out, I accepted that I really couldn't make another one. And please note I was fine with that decision. Until I noticed the Etsy shop where I bought some of the scrap linen was offering more bundles, and . . .

Yeah, I think I'm making another one. Since I'll have Christmas gifts to make first, and I need to collect more scrap linen, probably after the holidays. Argh.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Oh, Lynn. Your mother's quilt is just beautiful! It couldn't have turned out nicer. Really. And that linen quilt you did last year is probably still my favorite as well, as much for the amount of work you had to put into it as to how it turned out. But you do realize, you're a tad bit a glutton for punishment, yes? ;)

November 20, 2020 at 8:43 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Valerean

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