Organizing, Knitting and Quilting

   I split my time over the last month working on two big projects.  One was the Grandmother's
Flower Garden Quilt and the other was an organization project.

    I organized all my craft supplies and projects that have been stored into big, medium and small storage boxes over the years.  I have over 48 storage boxes and they hold fabric, yarn, buttons, zippers, pins, pin cushions, rotary cutters, snaps, Velcro, excelsior, batting, fiberfil, batting, embroidery floss, embroidery hoops, tape, paper, greeting cards, thread, stabilizer, beads, jewelry findings, paints, glue, and glue guns, etc.  Some have specific projects in them that are ready to be started (or finished) and some boxes just hold several items that go together like yarn, pom pom makers, and a nostepinne.  I organized all the like items together, labeled the boxes and indexed the box on the computer.  I put most of those boxes in my office closet and I have a legend that tells me the location of each box and what is in it.  It's nice to know where everything is.

     Here's are a couple of pictures of the inside of my closet.

    I spent about 3 weeks last month working on the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.  After I finished putting the third row on the quilt top, I figured up how many hexagons I need of each color for rows 4, 5, 6 and 7.  I traced them and cut all of those out.  I paper punched more hexagon papers for basting, then I basted and sewed together all the flowers for the fourth row of the quilt top.  I just have to add the green path to each flower before I sew it to what is already together.

    Here's a picture of the flowers for the fourth row.

    On Saturday and Sunday last weekend I spent time knitting dishcloths.  They are a thank you gift for my DD for helping me with some yard work last Saturday morning.

    Here's a picture of the knitted dishcloths.  I love the yellow yarn.  I have to get more of that color for me.

6 New Drawstring Pouches

   I've been making these for the last few days.  I love this pattern [link to the tutorial is here] and I really enjoyed making all of these for myself.  All of these pouches were made with fabric from my stash.

    I think my favorite is this one with the cute winter camper fabric that I found several years ago.  I couldn't resist it when I bought it, and there was also a summer camper print that I had to have as well.

      I also did a little organizing.  Yesterday I labeled all my thread containers.  I have had all my different threads separated into different containers for a while, but I wanted to slap a label on the boxes to make sure anyone else looking would know what was in the box.

    The top boxes are those plastic boxes with the spikes and they hold all my multi-purpose polyester thread.  That's the small collection of thread from the last 15 years or so of garment, accessory, and home dec sewing.  

    When I started quilting 4 years ago I wanted to use only cotton thread in my quilts and I bought lots of thread from connectingthreads.com for quilting and it's all in the middle box.  I even organized it by color in the box and laid the spools on their side to make it easy to see.  

     The bottom box is my messy collection of polyester embroidery thread I purchased in the last year to do embroidery with my Brother PE 770.  I bought all those small spools from threadart.com.  They sell them in sets so you can get a nice variety of color without having to shop individual spools.

    I think I have enough thread to last me quite a while.

You Can Never Have Too Much Blue Fabric

   I just organized my fabric stash.  It was a real mess after the last few projects I did from stash.  I do this about twice a year to organize my fabric by color and weed out little scraps I know I will never use.  I couldn't make myself take a "before" photo of the mess.  It was a complete disaster.

   I have a boatload of blue and blue print fabric.  See the pile in this photo.  It's more than double the amount of any other color I have in my stash.

   Not much red, one piece of Christmas fabric, but look at that stack of pink and green.

I think I have just the right amount of purple and white.

Here it is organized and put away in its container.

All the Lovely Thread, Lots and Lots of Thread

         I have a collection of all purpose thread in these boxes.  This thread collection goes back a few years.   When I was making clothes and home decor projects this was the only thread I ever bought.  All purpose thread has the best variety of colors.

       This is my cotton collection for quilting.  This container is supposed to be storing a knitting or crochet project, (it's called a Yarntainer by snapware) but I'm not really doing any knitting or crocheting these days, so I put these cotton thread spools in it this morning.  It's perfect, the container is round and clear making it so easy to find my thread.  I'm sure my cotton thread is happy in its cool round home.

          Look at this, 180 little spools of polyester thread for my embroidery machine that I purchased in January after I got my embroidery machine.  I keep it in this big plastic box because I have cats, but I'd like to organize it.  It would be nice to put it in clear boxes like my all purpose thread.  That would cost me a bunch of money.  I'm still looking for other ideas for storing this thread.  I'm not  even going to show you a picture of the box of prewound bobbins I bought for the embroidery machine.  There are 144 beautiful bobbins full of white polyester thread for embroidering.

 
     My serger thread collection only contains four spools of grey that I bought when I got the machine and they stay on the machine.  I never got around to buying more because I don't use my serger as much as I thought I would.

Kitchen Drawer Fix Up and Clean Up Project

    I live in a mobile home.  I love my mobile home.  I bought it new 7 years ago and I love the floor plan.  My kitchen is huge and it opens into the living room and the dining room with a door to the laundry room.  It also has a great pantry (no pictures, it's kind of messy in there now and needs to be cleaned up).  My kitchen has tons of cabinet space but I only have three drawers in the entire kitchen.  It's really sad.  I like drawers and I wish I had a few more.  While I'm wishing for more drawers, it's time to fix and organize my existing drawers.

  View from the dining room looking straight to the laundry room door.

This is the view from the dining room looking at the pantry door.

This is the view from the living room with my homemade curtains on the windows.

    Yes, the counter tops were cleaned off to take these pictures.  The counters are normally covered with all manner of kitchen things, dish soap, hand soap, and hand lotion by the sink; dog food, cat food, and dry cereal under the cabinets by the refrigerator, dish towels hanging on racks set on the cabinet doors, and pot holders by the stove top.

 

      These drawers were not built for heavy use.  The front of the top drawer I was using for silverware has come off two different times.  In examining the top drawer for problems when I cleaned it out, I realized that the right side slider mechanism of the top drawer was placed lower than the left side slider mechanism.  I unscrewed the bracket and placed the bracket in line with the left side bracket.  I hope this solves my top drawer problem and I can use it without the front coming off.  I was only using this drawer for small items that I never needed so I wouldn't have to open it.

 

   Bracket fixed.  You can see the hole under the bracket where it was originally placed and it was way too low.

   I have been using the second drawer to store knives, but I have too many in there.  This drawer needed to be cleaned out and I also checked the slider mechanism for this drawer to make sure it was working properly.

     I'm ditching these old, old, old, chef knives [so tired of sharpening them] and I ordered two new chef's knives from Amazon on Monday.

      New chef knives.

 

    This is the bottom drawer and it holds all my large utensils.  I thought the basket would help keep everything under control, but the drawer is clearly too deep.  I weeded out all the unnecessary stuff, cleaned the drawer and put my crazy utensils back in the basket in the drawer.

  Here is the top drawer all cleaned up.

  Here is the knife drawer all cleaned up with my new chef knife set.

   I'm really happy with my drawer fix and clean up.  It was interesting trying to find a good position so I could reach the back board to put that slider mechanism bracket back on.

Craft Organization

     I spent the evening organizing.  My project list and project material box were out of control.  I was starting new projects before getting the older projects done and that is not good.  I'm a little obsessive about doing things in order and I really needed to revise my crazy long crafting project list.  I numbered every project in the order I want to do them, then I took all the materials to make most of these projects and organized them in separate numbered bags to correspond to the list.  All I have to do is pick up a bag and everything I need to get started will be there.  I didn't take a before picture of that messy box because it was just a jumble of material.  Now my project box looks like this:

Just What I Need, More Organization

      I found another area of my life that needs a tiny bit of organization.  I will be keeping a car maintenance diary of all my car repairs for my new 2015 Kia Soul that I purchased last August.  I usually just keep my receipts in a file in date order for the current car I own and I keep those receipts for as long as I own that vehicle.

    I would love a place where I could look at the maintenance history at a glance instead of digging through receipts, so I am going to keep a diary for my maintenance on this car on the computer.  I will create a document in Notepad showing the date, cost, description, and where the maintenance was performed.  I will also make a note of the reason for the maintenance, i.e., routine or collision.  I normally have all my routine maintenance performed at the dealership so that's an easy one.

    Yesterday I had car maintenance done in the parking lot of my work address which was pretty cool.  I had to have the windshield replaced on my new baby because there was a big crack in it.  I heard something hit it last Friday while I was out running errands at lunch.  The crack showed up on Saturday .  I called the insurance company getting the paperwork started for having it replaced on Saturday afternoon.  I live in a state that has free windshield replacement as long as you carry comprehensive insurance on your vehicle.  My insurance company uses Safelite to do this work and Safelite has a mobile unit.  They will come to your work place to do the work in the parking lot so you don't lose any work time.  It's a neat service, the only drawback to this is that the weather has to be clear, they don't do this work in the rain, unless you have access to a parking garage or a covered area.  I was worried because I woke up to rain this morning, but it cleared up about an hour before Safelite was due to arrive.  Boy, was I lucky today.

   I'm starting my car maintenance diary now.

 

 

Time To Buy A Bathmat

     I'm going to buy a bathmat from Walmart today.  I will not be finishing the crochet bathmat I planned to make with the the 1" strips of fabric I sewed together to make fabric yarn.  I did a test crochet last night with the ball of yarn I made the other night and I hate it.  I just wanted to let you know that I will not be working on this project anymore and you won't see a picture of the little bit I crocheted last night.  It is completely U G L Y.   I wasted about a week on this sewing/crochet fail and I'm moving on to the items listed below.


1.  Recover the cardinal pillow I made last year with red plaid fabric I bought a couple of weeks ago.

2.  Cut the squares for my Civil War Buckshot pincushion  and order the emery sand.

3.  Make the 4 pillow cases with the yardage of Tanya Whelan fabric I purchased last year.

4.  Iron the muslin and trace the pattern for the hand embroidery, Never Underestimate A Woman
     With A Sewing Machine.   Then pick the colors of floss for the embroidery.

5.  Organize the box holding more projects, fabrics and supplies.

6.  Start the pink fluffy granny square afghan for my bedroom.