Found the Floor in My Sewing Room

The holidays makes me clean house and clean my sewing room. I suspect I do it because I know that the kids playing pool will be eating in my sewing room. Not that the kids really care what my sewing room looks like, but I guess I do. Or perhaps it is just the holiday routine of sorting out my sewing room.

These first pictures should make you feel better about your sewing space. Isn't it just motivating?!

The other reason I like sorting my sewing room is that it is like finding all new projects. I find things that are just one seam or button away from being finished. I find things that I really need to pass on to someone else because they really aren't that enchanting anymore. I ask myself questions like, "will I really ever macrame in burnt orange polyester in my lifetime?" (The answer is NO.) I sort and dig and eventually can see the floor well enough to vacuum it again. I stack the projects up all over again and make a resolve to tackle them again.

However, as I have MATURED, I realize that I don't have to keep something because I think it is wasteful. I don't have to keep things because I would feel guilty if I discarded them. I have had the challenge of having to clean out houses for loved ones who really had no plan for their belongings. The pain of sorting through precious mementos for people is a real challenge as you ponder WHY they kept these things and you feel the weight of responsibility for safeguarding their decisions to keep things along with your own. As I look forward, I think about the things I want my sewing to say about who I am as a mother, a wife, sister, friend and as a person who really believes I should leave the world having taken my gifts and shared them as amply as possible.

This picture is a START of my sorting all the bindings into one place. I am sure I will use them now!

With all this in mind, I dig through my sewing room. I share my sewing room with the pool table and the air hockey table. I also share it with the other people who sew in our family. At holidays, it is nothing unusual for our daughters and me to be huddled in the sewing room sewing away at a project with a glass of wine. We talk about our sewing. There is teaching and learning. But best of all, we just pick up right where we left off the last time we got together to sew. To some extent I clean the sewing room for some semblance of order. But to a larger extent, I pull it together that the kids can sew with us.

Nowadays, Victor is brushing up on his sewing skills. He sewed three quilts as a young 4-H kid. Now, he has tackled machine quilting. He has yet to join us in the sewing room except on his tours through. It will be interesting if he comes to the point of putting his projects alongside ours and pulls up a chair!

Therese is teaching Monica about the beauty of Smart Piecing Techniques. It was a real AHA moment for Monica. Of course, this is one of Therese's favorite topics. Therese is well known around our house for being a puzzle piecer and loves Sudoko. Smart Piecing goes the natural direction of her mind.

Cleaning the sewing room motivated me to sort my office. So, guess what I found?! Yes....the yellow binding from the Just Ducky Quilt. I put it on last night and am now hand-stitching it down. As Brenda Lou said, you usually have to cut the new binding before you find the old one. It was really funny that Therese found one of HER bindings in her bin at our house. She was so exasperated about that one that she is talking about removing the substitute binding from the quilt and installing the original one. Now....that is a little fussy. However, I know that the Kaleidoscope quilt is one of her most favorite quilts and she has complained that the substitute binding marred the quilt. It IS her quilt.

All the Best to You, jill