Ol' JEB

I finished another UFO in my sewing room. I made dolls for my kids about a year and a half ago and didn't get around to making them cloths. Well today I finished one.

I figured I would start with the youngest and work my way up.

I asked Bubby if he wanted a doll?

YES

What kind?

A Boy

Did he want a pirate, cowboy or something else?

COWBOY!

What do cowboys wear?

Yellow shirts, blue pants and hats

He kept running in and out checking on the progress. He really enjoyed the details.

You gotta have a pocket of a hanky.

He couldn't wait for me to finish but insisted on a horse for Ol' JEB to ride. Then he had to show me how it all works.

WooHoo another guilt project finished and one happy boy to boot!

Sewing Room Makeover

I know it has been a few months since I promised to post monthly updates to my sewing room. Well..... I had some crazy busy sewing projects going on in there with birthdays, pattern design, ren fest sewing and quilt guild.

This past week my husband "decided" to help me with the sewing room.
You have already seen the before picture......

We have been redoing our side of the house (my mom lives on the other side in a gorgeous new home.) However, our budget died in January when my husband lost his job and we went for months trying to squeeze by on our savings until he got a job again. We we are almost in job land, (the postal service isn't the fastest at finalizing jobs). But our house still needs the changes and so we have had to rethink what we wanted to do. IE... the floors we have gone from considering hardwood to tile, to carpet to just painting the concrete and living the simple life. :o)
I grew up with the simple life and I am happy to have that in my blood and we are going back to it with our children. Life isn't all about getting gain and living in a magazine styled home. If you think about it your best memories aren't about money or possessions or furnishings, they are about family, love, and time spent enjoying simple things.
So I looked at my sewing room and thought about what I could do for less than $100 to improve the place. The flooring had to go. I had shag carpet put in there and the room used to be my children's bedroom. Well with 12 years of kids crawling, puking, dribbling food and who knows what else on it it was a little skanked out! Also the surface of the carpet had become like Velcro with all the years of washing and vacuuming. That does not make the best flooring for a sewing room. All the treads and scraps stuck to the carpet, NASTY! It was a vacuuming nightmare.

See what I mean?!? SKANKED!
So we decided to rip out the carpet and paint the concrete underneath. I had a painted floor in my room growing up and actually loved my simple country room.
So here is what we did.


Monday we emptied the room.




This is when we made a lovely discovery. Due to a very weathered backdoor we had water damage in the interior wall and now have Black mold damage in that room. We had to get that all cleaned up and sealed. Lucky for us it was a very tiny bit of damage.



Tuesday - Saturday I spent painting. The colors I picked were aqua, warm white and red. So with about $65 worth of paint, the room got a sweet makeover.


I am loving the closet. I want to put some of my selves in there (I know "Happy thought, selves in the closet". If you don't get that reference then you need to watch more Jane Austen.)

I was worried about the floor color. It is very bold but I love it. Red is my favorite color after all.


Interesting discovery, due to the placement of the closet, this room has marvelous acoustics and is really fun to sing in. My husband even noticed it. I used to sing all the time and haven't for a long time. He caught me singing in there as I painted and commented that it reminded him of when he met me 17 years ago. I worked in the deli/bakery of the grocery store he worked at and at night when I was cleaning the place up I used to sing all the time to make the work go faster for myself. He kinda liked hearing my voice across the store. He wanted to know who the new girl was that had the laugh that would float across the store to the meat shop where he worked. (We just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary this week so those memories are kinda on the surface right now.) I wasn't like the other girls he had met. I guess he liked that. hee hee

All I have left to do now is put in the baseboard trim which I need to learn how to cut and my Friend Jill's husband is helping me trim out the window with a wide sill. I can't wait. It will be lovely and white.
It is amazing how exciting a new coat of paint make the simplest things.
Tomorrow I get to start the arduous task of sorting through the stuff that was in there and putting back what I want to keep.
I am teaching my oldest children how to weave some rugs and will let them use up the fabric I don't want to see come back into the room.

Oh I do need to put curtains up. Any Ideas?? I want something very vintage. It needs to keep the light out of my eyes. That room gets a lot of morning sun and I can only sew early in the morning before the kids get up or late at night after they go to bed.
I want the light to fill the room but not hit me right in the eyes.
And the rule is CHEAP FIX. I want something that isn't going to be really expensive. I don't ask for much do I? :o)

Oh My Moda

Yes I know I need to be posting pictures of my sewing room but I am up to my eyeballs painting my house. Every free minute of the day is spent painting and painting, papaya Orange, buttercup yellow, pear green, fiesta Chile pink, imperial plum, La Fonda turquoise, and on and on and on. My skin and hair are sporting a rainbow of spots. I have also been battling the worst flue and strep infection I have had in a long time. Thanks to Silver Shield I am back on the mend and painting like crazy to finish up this house.
I am going to post about the room as soon as I have free minute that I am not coughing, painting or swapping something.
In the mean time I wanted you to share a lovely site that I discovered recently and have to share with you. It is fabulous!!!

Go check out Moda Bake Shop.

It is loaded with projects that use their wonderful fabric packs. As some of you know, I occasionally work at my friend's quilt shop when she needs my help. When I first saw the charm packs, layer cakes, and jelly rolls and such I wasn't sure if I liked them but have found them to be more fun than I ever imagined. They give you a wonderfully coordinated scrap bag effect to your project. You can mix and match fabrics from a whole line of fabric without having to buy the whole line of fabric. The sizes are very usable too. Anyway, I am not paid to promote Moda's line or fabric bundles. What I love about these projects is their scrappiness and the ideas they offer to USE UP your fabric stash. (after all remember that when the stash is gone YOU CAN BUY MORE!) I am looking at ways to use up my stash this month to reduce the clutter in my sewing room and here is a quick way to get ideas. Every post is a tutorial or a recipe for something to sustain you while you sew. :o)

Quilt Guilt

Ok so it has been one month since I posted my shame. It is time for me to post again and see where I have improved.
I tried to do the 15 minute per day thing and didn't do the best but I did try and steps forward are what matter.
Here are the shots again.
Front Door View

Help there is a child in there!! Oh wait the floor is clear so the child is safe to play while I sew. Never mind.

Back Door View

Kinda clean floor. Who knew there was carpet in there. Wow. Now to work on getting new flooring. ..... Carpet and stray threads don't mix well.

Cutting Table/Desk

I can actually cut out on that table now and sit at my desk and dream up projects!

Sewing Table

My mom discarded her old sewing table that she got a few years ago and let me have it. She got a new custom build job that allows her to have her sewing and computer at the same place.

Closet O' Crap

Do you know what is in there. NO because you can SHUT THE DOOR now. I did get all the 2000 pounds of wheat out of there into the newly finished storage room/safe room. I was then able to clear the floor and get that stuff into tubs stacked nice and neat in there.

Fabric Storage Shelves

Next project to tackle is this shelf. We will see what 15 minutes per day concentrated on that shelf gets us in one month.


Well I did come a long way but am no where near the end of this project. I want a clean, photo worthy studio when I am done. I WILL GET THERE!
One thing that I found was about a whole shelf worth of projects that need to be finished that I owe people. One problem I have is not being able to say no to people. I love doing things for other people but then I don't get to do things for my children and that is sad.
I finished up 21 diapers for my great nephew. It felt so great to get that off my conscience. I see those kinds of projects and know I need to do them but have a stack of things due today to do and they just get farther and farther behind and I feel worse and worse. So I am going to try to work my way through those projects and see if I can't track them on the sidebar or something. It would be nice to have the shelf space back for things I want to do! There are so many dresses and aprons in my head just waiting for free time to spill out onto paper and fabric and dance off on a life of their own. :o) Maybe to your house.... Maybe..... We will have to see what I can get done.

Goals for February.

1. Keep up the 15 minutes of de-cluttering everyday.
2. Start in with about 15 minutes everyday working on Guilt projects.

Before and so far pictures (we aren't to the after sage yet)








Thank you for all the comments of encouragement and shared shame in January. I want to see what you are doing. Post and let me know what you have accomplished.
Next month I want to lose a couple of hundred pounds of unwanted fabric. Stay tuned. I might have to do some tutorials for getting rid of things in a fun, re-purposed way and maybe liberate some of the good stuff and send it off to new homes where it will be loved and USED!!!

I almost forgot about the name of this post. The unfinished projects on my shelf are mostly quilting projects and my husband calls them quilt guilt. I also am in a quilt guild I started a few years ago and often misspell the word guild to guilt. :o)

Challenge 2009 and a little bit of Honesty

If you have a weak stomach then this post is not for you. I have contemplated posting this for months but never had the guts. Then I saw a post at Skip to my Lou that gave me some courage. Granted her room doesn't look half as bad as mine but it looks bad enough. :o)
I am one crafty Mama. I sew like a Madd woman and can whip out just about what ever I need to Johnny on the spot. I am very laid back and can go with the flow and change on a dime if needed. This craftiness has a price though. I live in a mess.
My crafting is usually guilt ridden because I can think of about a dozen other things that I need to do. So, when I craft I get in the sewing room as fast as I can, sew like a tornado and get back out to do the dishes or something like that. The craft supplies are usually left where ever I put them last and the pile grows. Also my house is in the middle of a construction zone as we add onto the house to move my mom in here. As we work on other rooms, their contents gets left in my craft room. That doesn't help. Also when company is coming with no notice, the contents of the living room gets dumped in the middle of the floor of my sewing room. That doesn't help me either. (thank you DH and D kids)
Then my sewing closet, instead of holding neat little boxes of crafty supplies, contains about 2000 pounds of wheat storage that is waiting for pantry room to put it.
Also this is my room after about 3 weeks of insane Christmas sewing projects and a new pattern design.
Result.....
My sewing room makes me sick every time I pass it and I HATE to have people come into it to get supplies from me. I have tried all kinds of tactics that work for a month or two but then the clutter creeps back in as in crazy stress of my life goes out of control again.
So I am going at it like AA or the basic steps of repentance.
I AM ADMITTING I HAVE A PROBLEM.
(are you wondering what the other steps of repentance are?..... I would be at this point, ....
they are 1 admit you did something wrong, make amends or fix it if you can, apologize for doing the thing to the person you hurt (self, others, God) and promise never to do it again and pray for forgiveness)
Back to the mess now.
Here is my plan. I had to shock my self into reality so I figured I would come clean and admit that I don't live in organized crafty land. I will admit that my craft space is the black hole of Calcutta (what ever that is).
AND....
I am posting pictures of my craft room on the first of every month this year to show my progress and keep myself accountable for my actions.
Trust me I am sick about the state of this room and more embarrassed that you can imagine that you are seeing my craft guts strung out all over the place. I contemplated cleaning it up a bit before the shots but that wouldn't be honest.
So here are the scary details of my craft room. Please run now if you are weak, this is very Scary!
View through the front door of my craft room.


View through the back door of my craft room.

Yes my craft room has a back door. The contractor cut one so heat from the wood stove could get in there and keep me warm.

My SAD sewing table.

I really can sew there, honest.

My cutting table/desk.

No I can't cut stuff there right now.

My wall of fabric storage.

DH built these for me last year to help me organize and it did work of 3 or 4 months. Then the clutter came back.

Closet O' Crap

Honestly there are no excuses here. Can't think of one, except for the 2000 pounds of wheat in there somewhere.

There I have purged and told all. There are no more secrets in that room.
Now onward and upward. I am bent on cleaning and organizing the mell of a hess (to quot my dad) and bring order once and for all to my favorite room (after the kitchen).
I do plan on enlisting some help. I will be using the Fly Lady and the Slob Sisters since they are the ones that understand the cluttered person's mind and do realize that we are not lazy but just don't have a clue about order. Sorry we just don't get it but we ARE able to learn and do work very hard. We just need pointers. :o)
So I would like to issue the challenge to any of the rest of you out there that have been living with a deep dark cluttered secret and would like some public help to get it organized, to do just that. Go public and get it done. We will all be here to cheer you on.

I issue this challenge to everyone that reads this post.

***edited to add***
My plan for January:
Set the timer for 15 minutes everyday and de-clutter in the sewing room for those 15 minutes.
When the timer rings, turn it off and walk away.

Why fifteen minutes - you can do anything for just 15 minutes. It is long enough to get some real work done, and short enough that you don't burn out. The ADD person can keep on task for 15 minutes at a time.
The key is that you stay on that task ONLY for your 15 minutes. If you find things that need to be put somewhere else then put them in a basket, bag, or box and put them away when the timer goes off. If you don't you will distract yourself into another room or other task and get nowhere fast.
Now we will see what that does for me and I will take pictures again on Feb 1st and see where I get. :o)