I have spent a good portion of the last three days attempting to clean off my cutting table. The sad fact of the matter is that I have an 8-foot table, and only about 18 inches of available space for cutting.
Bad. Very bad.
I took this picture after doing quite a bit of tidying and it still looks pretty much untouched.
The available area clean enough for me to cut is just outside the photo on the lower left side. That entire long end has been stacked and packed with fabric, past projects, and miscellaneous accumulations for absolutely ages. I can't even fathom a guess as to how long it's been since I last saw the actual table surface buried under all this stuff. And the picture above is after I've already cleared quite a bit.
Of course, as is typical when attacking a big job leads, it naturally leads to attacking others. All the fabric piled up there had to be put somewhere. So first I dealt with fat quarters. I have for a long time kept most of my fat quarters stored in a dresser, originally in color order. In recent years, the order had become a bit chaotic, and I had all the colors mixed up and scraps mixed in, as well. So that needed to be addressed.
So, over the next day or two, I will delve a little deeper into how I've been managing this cleaning effort. It involves organizing the contents of the dresser below, as well as a lot of managing of excessive scraps.
I will illustrate the work that awaits me: here's the picture above with some added mark-ups.
The blue arrow shows you the very next thing I will do - cut these scraps into usable squares or strips. The yellow circle indicates a tub of scraps waiting for the same - cutting into squares or strips. The green arrow indicates a stack of patterns that need to be filed. The orange arrow indicates a stack of fabric - larger cuts - that need to be put away.
A side note: in that yellow circle you will see two fabrics on top - orange and lavender. To illustrate how long it takes for me to deal with scraps, those are from 2011 when our youngest was a high school senior; those fabrics are from the costumes she wore in the school musical. Yeah, that is a fair example of my inability to deal with scraps. I will further explain, these have NOT been ON the table; I cleared out an area under the table (how one thing leads to another, you know), and those scraps were in a tub with some random fat quarters. Makes no sense, but that is a pretty fair representation of my lack of organizational skills.
Wanna' come help??
Happy Quilting, Friends!
I know just how that goes! My 8ft cutting table has the end up against a wall, so if I push such piles in that direction, I know they won’t fall off before I get to them “later”! I look forward to reading of your progress, and any helpful tips.
ReplyDeletePauline, SA
Good luck with your plan. I have been trying to organize also then I see something that looks fun and there I go on that direction.
ReplyDeleteI also struggle with scraps. I finally just sorted everything by color. I do a lot of scrap quilts that I cut with my dies so I don't usually cut anything down into strips and squares until the scrap gets very small. I do have a big pile of patterns that I need to go through and organize though. I keep putting it off and the pile gets larger and larger. I have all kinds of binders to put them in, just need to bite the bullet and spend 15 minutes a day, but I always get distracted by the next shiny thing. LOL
ReplyDeleteWell, at least you are not the only one. I thought I had some of my stuff organized until I look in another room, haha. I'm sure I would be using that dresser for fat quarters because I'm using my spare bedroom that way.
ReplyDeleteMy cutting table looks much the same as yours. Cutting for projects would be so much easier with a larger clear space, but I just keep piling up the scraps/fabric piles/patterns, etc. Time to clean it up!
ReplyDelete