Sewing Room Re-Organization - Part Two

It has been, what, 10 days since I dragged all the !&*(% from my sewing room and dumped it in the living room. Since then, I've worked, visited my daughter at college, and picked at the piles of stuff. It's been harder to work on this week, since we're still waiting for our electricity to come back on, but I do have an hour or so in the morning before I go to work where there is enough daylight to see what I'm doing.

Here are some photos of my living room as of today....the couch is clear! The chairs are at least visible, and you can now get from the kitchen to the hallway without fearing for your life, even in the dark!

The sewing room got a bit of a rearrangement, and may yet again, I haven't settled on a layout yet, but you can still see the floor, you can open AND shut the door completely, and once the power comes back on it will be much easier to sew!

Remnants of Hurricane Ike...Yikes!

I live in Ohio....no where NEAR the hurricane zone. But last night we apparently got the remnants of Ike in the form of winds....50, 60, up to 70mph. Honestly, we didn't even have any rain with it....how in the world do people refuse to evacuate? How do they bear it? And don't even ask me to imagine what it must be like for Texans today, because I can't possibly wrap my mind around it.

We've been without power since 6pm last night...just our end of the development, the people to our left still have lights on (bitches!) I ran to Speedway at 6:30am to get coffee and donuts. We did watch from our garage last night as pieces of our trees came down...one punched a hole in the eaves, but luckily didn't damage the main part of the roof.

We felt and heard the 2 transformers just across from us blow; that's when we lost power. Luckily I have an excellent Hello Kitty battery-powered lantern! Well, we're not alone, I know, and I'm grateful to live so close to work, where my office still has power and internet!!

I do know 1 of the buildings on campus has been deemed "off limits" because there are live power wires draped across it...no homework for those lucky students! When I spoke with my daughter last night, her college dorm was also without power. She lives 1 1/2 hours to the north, and could see several large trees down, too.

I'm just thankful that we suffered no major damage, and that barring a few things in the freezer, we didn't lose anything. My heart goes out to the millions who have lost so much!

Attack of the Sewing Room!! or Organizing your Sewing Space

I WISH I had taken a "Before" picture of my sewing room, but, well, imagine all this stuff:


In this tiny space!! Saturday I took everything out of my tiny little sewing room and tossed it in the living room. You couldn't tell there was a floor, everything was just piled everywhere! The room is only 10 Feet 3 inches square! I know, that's more space than a lot of people have. But I definately need to re-organize and get rid of stuff. I've been picking at the piles; I am selling a bunch of books and yarn on ebay, I gave some cotton fabric to a friend who sews clothing, I've got a bag earmarked for a church group who makes quilts for babies in the hospital....you get the idea! I took one white bookcase out of the room and moved my table over. The problem with regular bookshelves is they are not quite deep enough for anything other than books.



I'm weeding out so much, and determined not to put anything back into the space. I store alot of my fabrics in the basement in tubs. However, since my daughter went to college this year, she and I have pretty much destroyed the basement space. So, as I'm trying to clean up the living room I have to sort thru the crap in the basement, too! What a disaster!

Stay tuned for updates!

more on Ohio Arts Council!!

So I have submitted my online application to the Ohio Arts Council, and now must deliver my support materials. These include swatches and sketches of the designs, so I've spent 2 days doing Presentation sheets. I think they turned out pretty well!!

I think I have 6...maybe 7 sheets altogether. It's difficult, because I don't usually sketch at this point. For these designs, I have my fullsize pattern, and just go for it. I never know for sure how much usable fabric I'll be able to salvage from each thrift shop garment, so my original design "plan" could change several times as I'm piecing together the different elements.

I do sketch out garment designs when I'm using "new" cloth, especially if I'm doing fancywork: applique, quilting, piecing, etc. In that case, I normally have a large supply of raw materials at hand, and few worries about coming up short, or needing to cut around a stain or hole!