thrifty thursday

Something I DIDN'T get at the quilter's garage sale:

I did pick it up at another garage sale, though. The basket tin was bought at a flea market years ago.

The decal makes me so happy. (It's hard to see because the cabinet is kept in a little hallway off the kitchen that gets very little light.)

Buying it solved a storage dilemna in my kitchen. This house is about 80 years old and I love it, but it has a kitchen that's a "stand in one place and reach everything" size. Not really a problem for someone who hates to cook, like me, but it doesn't allow for many places to put things I need to have handy.

The cabinet is now my home office. It came with four shelves: two were original (they have the red edging) and two were newer. I added the shelf trim from Susie to the new one to give it a little charm.

And for Susie(who aked me to post more "helpful hints"), the tin is where I've stored my receipts for the past few years. Inside is a check organizer from a discount or office supply store. I cut the bottom and top flap off so that the files could expand to fill the space inside the tin. Each tab is labeled with a month. All the receipts I collect go in the proper file at the end of the day. When the calendar rolls over to the first of the month and I need to move to the next spot in the file, I pull out the receipts that are in there from the previous year. Most are garbage and get recycled. Those that need to be saved for warranty purposes are refiled upstairs with important papers. There are only a few of those a year. We aren't buying a lot of big ticket items all the time around here. I might have one or two that I think I should hold onto for another year - I'll just put it back in that month's slot. The following year it'll get pitched most likely. Receipts from charities get filed in the front of the organizer so Chris can grab them when it's tax time.

Tomorrow - news on the gardening front.

like sorting buttons

There's a down side to having a great year of thrifting. Somehow it all needs to find a place to live once you get it home.

I returned home from vacation two weeks ago to piles and piles of things I've acquired over the past few months. Most had no place to go. Even with all the studio moves and reconfigurations I've gone through this year (which is why I've yet to post pictures), there just wasn't much room or a good system in place for new things. It seems I'd carve out enough space for what I had in the stash and then when I brought home new fabric I was back in the same boat.

Two things have happened over the past month. First, the kids have lost more space in the basement to my crafting. I really did feel some guilt over it at first. When they saw the pile of toys I was thinking of selling or donating though, not one of them flinched. Ellie and Glenn flat out told me to get rid of them. I then discovered that when I moved things out to make more room for crafting, they actually wanted to be down there with me a lot more. Amazing what a little room to breathe will do for a space.

Second, I purged my own toys, I mean fabric. Ruthlessly. Two large laundry baskets of fabric and a few other odds and ends have made their way to my quilting group for others to use. (One quilter's trash...) It seemed only fair to bring what I didn't need to the place where I've gotten so much.

That's left a lot of room for what I'll really use and some room to grow. Now that I think about it, that's where last week went - my basement - weeding, sorting, putting away.

That part of the process took a lot longer than I anticipated. How do you sort your stash? By fabric type, color, potential uses, amount of yardage? It starts out innocently enough, but there's always a pile that doesn't seem to fit into any particular category nicely. I've gone mostly with color, but even that threw me when I got to the odd greens - or are they more blue - or aqua? And what about this lavendar/periwinkle one? Do I put the solids in their own pile away from the prints? I think I've got something that will work for me in the end. More importantly, there's room at the top of each pile so I can get fabric out and put the pile back neatly. The key to keeping it organized isn't about shoving it away, it's about ease of retrieval.

The buttons are from the garage sale. Luckily, I already have a pretty good system in place for storing those. They're where they belong now.

project bag

Just a quck little bag I sewed up using a Valori Wells sewing card. I like the way the casings are applied to the exterior, though I did make mine more narrow and longer than the pattern calls for.

The fabric is several years old, but I love the women on it. It's lined with the same fabric that was used for the casing.

All in all, a nice little tote for a small hand project. As she states in the pattern, once you understand the construction of one, you can alter the dimensions to make larger sizes. Mine's about 9 X 11 with boxed corners that make it about 1 inch deep.

gifts for the kids

It's getting harder and harder to come up with things I can sew for Glenn. This was the only last minute thing I made this year, mainly because the idea didn't come to me until a couple of days before Christmas, but it went together quickly. Basically, it's a bedside organizer that attaches to the upper rail of his loft. (You can see bits of his unmade bed in the background.)

The main pocket is large enough for a magazine or book. The two gusseted pockets are meant for his glasses and nintendo DS. The plaid pocket on top was made by sewing two strips of ribbon together to be deep enough to hold his ipod. It passed the likability test with him. We'll see if it keeps his stuff any more organized. I won't hold my breath.

Trixie got an apron that matches this one. I realized that I'd cut the pieces for both over 4 years ago. I remembered thinking that it would be big on Ellie, but I should size ahead to give me time to make it. And now it belongs to her little sister. (Don't tell.)

It came in handy for her newest interest - washing dishes.

She also got a set of her own puppy lunch napkins from some scraps I had. There's been more than one battle over the cat ones I made for Ellie.

I'm hoping to have all the artwork hung in Ellie's room tomorrow so I can take pictures and post her big gift.

inspired

These pictures showed up in my email a few days after Trish got home from her Halloween visit.

While she was testing my sewing pattern, I was purging fabric and reorganizing the closet to make room for the new stuff. I had no idea it was so contagious.

She even broke out the label maker!

This brings me one step closer to becoming my idol, Peter Walsh.

stashed

Nothing could come close to making me as happy as yesterday's election results, but this puts on a smile on my face.

I finally finished laundering, folding and putting away all the new fabric acquisitions.

This is the closet in my basement sewing studio. It will never look this neat ever again, so I'm glad I have visual proof that it once was pristine. All the stuff in here is 1/2yd or larger cuts. (Fat quarters and scraps are kept elsewhere.) I put upholstery goods on the top shelf, most garment fabric fills the second shelf. From there on down, it's generally quilting cottons split up by color. The bolts are three yards or more of particular fabrics. Hidden in a basket behind them are some wool sweaters that have been felted and are waiting to be turned into something else.

These got their very own space.

Yes, I labeled the shelves. It's a sickness.

easy garment bag

It's getting near the time to put away winter clothes. I made a couple garment bags last year out of some thrifted pillowcases to store my fall and winter jackets. Standard pillowcases work fine for kids' coats and shorter jackets. King sized cases are great for longer jackets.

They're incredibly easy to make:

1. Turn the pillowcase inside out and lay a hanger at the short, closed end. The hook portion should extend just beyond the fabric.

2. Trace along the top of the hanger directly onto the fabric. Be sure to extend your lines from the short seamed side to the long sides. Sew on those lines.

3. Open up a few stitches of the seam on the short end right in the middle where the hanger's hook needs to go through the fabric.

4. I didn't bother to cut the excess fabric off the corners in case I ever wanted to use the case for something else. They fold down just fine over the the hanger when the bag is in use.

5. Turn the case right side out. Slip over your jacket. Done.

See? Easy.

sewing room accessories

Problem: I have a tendency to buy novelty fabric and then not know what to do with it. I couldn't resist the vintage needlecase design on this yardage (I even have a few of the designs in their original form), but it's not like I'm going to walk around with a skirt or handbag made from it.

Solution: Make stuff for my sewing room. Both items are patterns I made up as I went along.

The machine needle organizer has some timtex in the middle to give it structure. The clear pockets are vinyl, edged with thrifted bias tape.* Once I had the center part done, it was bound just like a quilt with binding strips.

The pouch is a little trash basket that hangs from a hook underneath my sewing table. I'm trying to break myself of the habit I have of throwing snipped threads and fabric on the floor. So far, this bag has only helped mildly. The top portion has a channel through which I threaded a wooden embroidery hoop to keep it open when it hangs.

I couldn't resist making a an actual needlecase out of one of the motifs. The fabric is appliqued to wool felt with a blanket stitch.

*I learned all about dry rot when doing this project. In all the time I've bought vintage trims I never had a problem until I opened a package of old bias tape for this. It literally turned to black dust in my hands.

resolution update 1

I thought a monthly progress check would keep me from the insanity of this past holiday season.

With that in mind, I've managed to:

Learn how to add links to the blog(but I still need to add the crafty links) - thank you blackbird!

Start the Beatrix Potter cross stitch I want for next Christmas. I estimated that there are about 12,500 cross stitches in this one. I'm about 1/8 into it which is exactly why this one needed to be started now. I have a tendency to work on these a lot for a few weeks and then I won't touch them for months before starting up again.

Burn CD's of all of our pictures from the time I switched over to Picasa(Oct '07) through December. Then I figured out how to make a CD of various pictures from the entire year for family using that program. Okay, this wasn't on my original list, but it REALLY needed to get done. Hear that grandmas? I have CD's for you. Finally.

Up in February, hopefully more of the fun sewing on that list.

better late than never

Finally catching up with posting the gifts I couldn't show you before the holiday.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that this bedside organizer was a gift for Christmas 2006. Fortunately, Trish is a patient woman. She chose fabrics that she loved and a pattern from In Stitches. There's an identical organizer hanging on the other side of the bed. The pattern was adapted slightly since Trish doesn't have a need for a pocket to hold reading glasses - yet. It's hard to see, but there's a large magazine pocket that has an opening right where the comforter meets the top of the organizer.

Now I shouldn't mention that part of the reason this didn't get made ages ago is that I was waiting on a measurement from her... The pattern calls for a piece of fabric the width of the mattress to which both organizers are attached and since mattress sizes vary slighlty from manufacturer to manufacturer I didn't want to just measure my bed and call it a day. I settled on this as a way to make sure it would fit:

I cut two pieces of fabric for the part on the mattress slightly shorter than the pattern called for. Another piece was cut to be inserted between those two and had large pintucks run through it with a basting stitch. Once Trish got it on the box spring she could release as many pintucks as needed to make it fit properly. Pretty pleased with myself over this one.

notes to self

Okay Angie and Jackie, you wanted organizational stuff, this is all I can manage when I'm not holed up in the basement trying to finish up gifts - unless you want pictures of the million lists I've made - which, sadly, do not magically get all the items done just by writing them down.

I started doing this a few years ago. Instead of opening the box of garland every year and spending hours trying to figure out where each piece fit(and swearing a lot), I labeled them one year. When each one comes down in January, the tag gets tied on with bright yarn before I cram it back in the bin. The following year, I'm greeted by these little cards that make decking the halls much faster.

I don't even remember writing this note to myself. I must have seen something in a magazine after I'd already decorated or taken things down.

I'm pretty happy with the results. It's like a little decorating time capsule.

This has nothing to do with organization, it's just to make Angie smile after oral surgery. It's my go-to outfit for all holiday parties this year. I have to make sure I'm fashionably late though, so everyone can see the coat in all it's glory before I have to remove it. It belonged to my grandmother and has awesomely huge buttons covered in the same velvet. The collar is like a scarf that runs though a beautiful bound buttonhole on one side. The 3/4 sleeves show off C's grandmother's long black gloves. And to top the whole outfit - my new sequined Vera Bradley anniversary edition bag.

My face is not in the picture because I forgot to make sure my son was standing on a chair when taking the picture. Upward angle = many chins.