Rehabbing Twilight

When Kat was a tween she fell in love with Twilight, so I pre-read the first two books in the series so I could see if they were age-appropriate for her (and they were.) We actually raced to get a copy of the final novel while we were on vacation, which made her very happy. Then followed a few years where she and her friends completely obsessed over the movies.

Anyway, I am not a fan of this series or any sort of YA myself, but anything Twilight-related brings back some lovely memories for me. When I saw two sets of the themed journals in tins go up for auction, I decided to bid on them, and won.

Here are the two sets of journals when they arrived, unpacked. The journals themselves are all in pristine condition and need no upcycling, although I may make fabric covers for them. The tins were in slightly rough shape, so I decided to rehab them.

I decided to use a metallic silver spray Rust-oleum suitable for metal to paint the tins.

First I sanded them, and then I took them outside to spray paint them.

It took a couple of coats to cover up all the damage and make the tins look like new again.

Here they are. One turned out a little better than the other, so I may do more with the lesser of the two. For now I'm happy with how I was able to rehab them.

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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.

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.

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...

Valerean

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