I know I have been quiet these past few weeks. All my mojo was out the window. I could not get motivated to do anything, to write anything....
I just sat on my bed, staring holes in the air, as we say back home.
This happens occasionally. Usually it doesn't last long. This time it took quite a while to get through that valley and climb back out. My husband started to get worried tbh.
Alas, I picked up my sewing needle again last night. So there is light at the end of this tunnel and it's not a train.
Most of my fabric comes from the thrift store, or friends that donate fabrics they no longer use, or are left over from their own projects.
This means I don't have yardage of anything.
I do have bigger pieces, but for the most part my fabrics are less than a fat quarter, or even the pieces in jelly rolls.
Never the less I adore all my fabrics. So many different scraps and textures and colours.
I have been without things I need before and without disposable income to just run out and buy them. So I hoard art supplies tbh. Everything gets examined for potential use before it wanders into the recycling bins/garbage. That's why I even keep the tiniest scraps in my scraps of scraps jar by my workstation.
This means my supplies have a tendency to take over the house, if I am not careful.
So periodically I have to sit down and sort through them all. Decide what is really worth keeping, how much I really have of what material and what I can let go.
Recently it has been the turn of my fabric stash to get examined. In contrast to my paper stash, when I go through my fabrics, I usually sort them by projects. Which wasn't much help in the past, because I forget what project I sorted them for over time and my plans change. 🤦♀️
I tried lots of different ways to organise my fabric. Tips got from friends, tips I read online. In the end I none of them worked together with my way of working.
I had enough of rummaging around my house, foraging for bigger fabrics I knew were somewhere and hunting down that elusive scrap in that perfect colour I know I own, but didn't know where it had gotten to.
I finally fulfilled a longtime dream of mine. I sorted all my fabric by colour into buckets.
Don't get me wrong. I love to go through my fabrics, playing with arrangements and the surprise combos offered by the randomization of the fabric pile. My new bucket system still lets me do that, while cutting down the time spen hunting for specific fabrics, when I need to.
This little exercise of sorting also showed me just how much fabric I really had! I had no idea! Having it in smaller piles in different places didn't make it look like it was all that much. 😮
Something has to be done with all that fabric.
So last night I finally grabbed my two of those fabric buckets and my scraps of scraps jar and went to work.
I just started sewing fabrics together into strips. No clue of what they wanted to be. But eventually it all fell into place and in the end I had a cute new envelope pillow cover with a crochet edge.
There will be more to come. I have a ton of pillows on my couch that now definitely need new covers. Ideas are already swirling through my head.
My fabrics are all scissor cut, or torn and then hand sewn, so nope. Not all lines are super straight. Of course I could rotary cut them with a ruler and make it all conform, but Life rarely has right angels or goes in straight lines. So a few squiggly seams are imperfectly perfect for me. ❤
I am working on a few new tutorials now, but I am playing with the idea of putting together a workshop for these "cushion covers on the fly". Any interest? They are so much fun to make and a great sew on the go project.
So this was way more writing than I had planned lol.
Hope I didn't bore everyone to tears.
See you soon!!😘
XO
B.🐝
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