Cleaning the beast

My sewing room is so unbelievably chaotic. It's never been great, because when we first moved in I didn't have much of any decent storage. So random plastic tubs morphed into piles and spills and avalanches of fabric. Add to that having a houseful of wonderful kiddos, and I'm in and out to get projects done, and don't spend time on straightening any of it. But this last year Fred bought and put in some great wall cabinets and shelves. I love it! Still, the mess was overwhelming, and I didn't quite know where to start.

Recently, I came across an online quilt festival from last autumn. And as I've been admiring the hundreds of amazing creations, I've seriously caught the quilting bug. I'm determined to figure out machine quilting (after some serious crashing and burning with my previous tries), and I'm going to make a few bigger quilts. Trey saw a Whirlygiggle quilt over my shoulder and said how cool he thought it was. So that's up for his birthday. And I'm totally in love with strip quilts, especially this stunning kaleidascope style with the white borders through each block. I'm going to make one for my bed. I imagine that it will be quilted in straight lines with the walking foot on, because I can't quite wrap my mind around stippling something that large without a long arm.

And my carseat cover inventory is quite low, so I need to start sewing together a bunch of the ones I've got all cut out.

BUT, the disaster in my sewing room has been totally daunting. Getting anything sewn for Christmas was a major undertaking because of it. So today I dove in. Sorry, I'm not taking a before photo. I'm too embarrassed. But when it's all nice, hopefully in the next couple days, I'll post the after pic so you can oooh and aaah!

So there are my new year's resolutions. No losing weight, getting rich or other silly things. It's all about sewing for me. Though as an aside I have lost 6-7 lbs in the last 2 months by doing nothing other than switching to always eating meals from a small plate. I'd read that it was a good way to help keep from over eating. Amazingly, It's really working. I still sometimes have 2nds if it's really good or I'm super hungry, but most of the time when my plate is clean, I'm comfortably full so I quit. Hooray for me!