Craftology

My favorite local craft store is putting on a competition where you compete to win a schmancy new sewing machine by actually making the things you've pinned on Pinterest. I signed up to do it, but first I had to clean up my mess of a craft room. I'm nowhere near that. but here are some before pictures...

I hadn't finished cleaning the floor OR pulling up the tackboard...so that was my first order of business.

Piles and piles and piles and piles. Ugh.

My manky shelf I'm not quite sure what to do with...I want to replace it but am not quite sure how or with what yet...or that I even want to replace it because I have a tendency to just pile up crap.

I was however given a painting from a dear friend, which wrapped up this wall! So that makes one half of one wall finished. Six more halves to go? The good news is that my sewing table/station is clear and good to go.

This is the pile of stuff I have to mend. So, I started tackling it one piece at a time.

I wear a lot of tights, and just started a new West African dance class, so I decided to patch 'em up...

...in a not-so-subtle manner.

And this is my favorite maxi dress. It ripped, like, two years ago.

So I fixed it!

That's all for now. I've got a ton of projects to wade through, and hopefully I can win this thing!

Making it Work

I had the bright idea to make a bedspread for my guest room that would bring some color into the place and be all whimsical and fun and transcend seasons. I fell in love with 8 fabrics at CityCraft that I got just a bit of, thinking I could get more later. And that's what I tried to do, except like, 6 months later. So of course the same fabrics were not there.

Sigh.

I like to think that what I lack in forethought I make up for in creativity (perhaps directly related to that lack of forethought thing). I may be fashionably late to the style party but I am OBSESSED with chevrons at the moment. That's my inspiration for the rest of the quilt. This morning, Kyle said to me, "Are you going to make the horizontal stripes the middle instead of the side now?" My man is a genius. Here's the work in progress:

Lady Jane

Once upon a time I lived in Spain and then London for a summer. It was in the English countryside that we came upon this cute little town where I bought a pink shirt with white flowers on it.

Well, I am long-waisted and the shirt was very short-waisted (hence the white tank underneath), and then every time I washed the shirt I had to iron the flowers down. Needless to say it didn't last very long in my wardrobe rotation. I saved the flowers though, for just such an occassion, and every time I see them I am rocketed right back to that English summer and my wonderful housemates Jane & Jim.

This is the first official item that is going up on my Etsy shop! Hooray!

Claire

I have a LOT of leftover Ikea fabric from my guest shower curtain that I made a few years ago. It is a home decor weight fabric that is fun to look at, and I love making bags and wallets from this material. Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of a dear friend who I knew loved my shower curtain so I whipped her up a tote bag. Henceforth, anything with that outer fabric and red lining shall be under the "Claire" line.

I am attempting to make a matching wallet but so far I keep screwing it up...I'll post as soon as I figure that one out.

*update: I gave up on the wallet completely after dozens of ripped seams. Seems the interfacing I bought was too stiff for it and I just could not get it to turn out or top stitch and then my attempts at adding a bias tape around the outside totally was not the way to go. Back to the drawing board!

epic stashbusting

Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? So here's me admitting to my dirty little crafting secret: I, Christina, am a fabric hoarder. I am obsessed with pretty fabrics and designs and new patterns, but it seems that when I get the fabric home and washed and halfway stitched, another pretty piece of fabric and pattern calls to me softly and I'm off again, pursuing some other sewing endeavor. What's more is that when I do finish a project, I can't bring myself to just discard the leftover strips and such. Oh no. What that leaves me with is what you see above, what happened when I dumped out a huge box of fabric. I got to thinking about what I wanted to do with it.

There are a ton of unfinished projects in here, and since I am no longer working and we're operating under a new budget, I have decided to tear through my stash before I get or start anything new. So, I grabbed a box of freezer bags and a sharpie and started organizing my pile of stuff into projects:

This way, when I get the odd blessed hour or so for nap time, I can pull out a bag, work on a project, and put it back without the eventual destruction of my craft room.

I have a bunch of gift projects that I'm working on, but I also have a whole lot of fabric that isn't purposed for anything in particular. That fabric I stored by color or texture so that when I want to make a blanket or a baby girl dress or wallets or applique some onesies, I know where to reach. 

I have been overwhelmed lately, feeling like all I do is vacuum, change diapers, feed people, and haven't had the time or the energy to be creative, which is a HUGE part of what makes me who I am. In the interest of preserving my sanity and staving off the dark clouds that gather above me when I am sans creativeness, I scheduled some lovely ladies to come clean my house to help me keep on top of the deep cleaning stuff that let's face it, is just not my forte. Because I function largely from the right half of my brain, I am prone to this overwhelmed-ness when there is no order to the chaos, and I HAVE to put structure around myself or else I'll end up a frazzled grumpy pumpkin or as K likes to call me, "a super hot mess."

What this also means is that I'm going to open up an Etsy shop because I get lots of requests from friends who want the stuff that I make. This, too, will help me get through my stash and help me work out some kinks on designs that I have as I figure out what I want to specialize in. I am going to take this stash busting opportunity to build up some inventory.

Stay tuned - this is going to be fun!