Skip to main content

Little Things

Since the end of August I have been sewing or crocheting every day. What my creative month taught me is that it's okay to work on little things, and also it's definitely okay not to finish them immediately. Here's the first thing I worked on in September: the last three patchwork blocks I bought from the junk shop. I made them into mug rugs while practicing my hand and machine quilting. Took me three days. I loved it.

I'm continuing to make yoyos out of scrap fabric; as of writing this post I'm using a stack of precut squares I found in my stash, and I've made 41 in total. Have no idea what I'll do with them, but that's okay, too. It's fun and I like using the little yoyo maker.

Sometimes I just pull fabrics and iron them without any notion of what I want to make, like these red, black and white swatches from the scraps bin. Dreaming while pressing is an exercise in creativity.

I like accomplishing a lot, but arthritis and this year have taught me to be happy with accomplishing a little, or nothing at all. It's the process that I love.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more