Dividing the Reds

Lest you think I have forgotten the original task for the month - sorting, organizing and cleaning the sewing room - I am still dealing with a few things. At present, it's the reds.  

A few posts back I shared a picture of my fabric tubs lined up in the hallway. I'd moved them there to facilitate cleaning the stacks and piles of fabrics accumulating on my cutting table and other surfaces. 

These five tubs lived in the hallway for the better part of a week earlier this month. In the foreground is the tub devoted to that blue KF quilt I will return to as soon as Lucy is finished. Meaning this tub will stay close by and easily accessible.

Next are the green tub, the brown tub, and the white/neutral tub. I have tidied these and returned them to the closet. Tidying involves some refolding, restacking, and yes, revisiting all those luscious fabrics waiting to be turned into quilts. This whole process totally motivates me to sew-sew-sew!

While I was in the brown tub, next in order of full-ness to the reds, I pulled this combination of fabrics, and I've been dreaming of a quilt for them to become.

But I digress; today's topic is the red tub. 

At the far end of the hallway lineup is the red tub, a veritable riot of reds and far too many to snap the lid shut on the tub. This tub has camped in the hallway all month awaiting - what? I have been unable to  come up with a way to manage this situation.

I spent some time Thursday addressing all (all?) the issues, and have made progress. First, I took every bit of fabric out of the tub. I sorted large cuts from small cuts. I sorted dark reds from light reds. I separated burgundy-reds from red-reds. In handling all these fabrics so much, I discovered that I also have purply-reds and brown-reds. Some separation was necessary.

Here are some things that I removed.

The piece above looked too pink, so I intended to move it to a different tub (pink and purple). When I refolded it, I discovered that it was a half-yard cut of Paris Flea Market. Ha! I have a Jelly Roll of PFM, so this is still out and likely on it's way to a project tub.

This fabric was in the red tub, but just as easily could go in the blue tub. I have not moved it to any tub yet, because the thought occurred to me that it would be perfect for a backing on a patriotic quilt. So now, I am considering options for yet another project.

All of the fabrics above were in the red tub. See what I mean about brown-red and purply-red? These are stacked together and I think another project has been born. I know they do not necessarily 'match-match,' but they go together well enough for a quilt. And believe it or not, I already have a quilt in mind for these. Awesome!

This stack also came from the red tub, and honestly, I do not know what to do with these. What a mish-mash. I will let them sit out for awhile as I work on other things. Perhaps an idea will niggle its way to my brain. Two of these have already been used in quilts, so they could go into the scrap-cutting stack. Thinking...hmmmm...

The red tub that went back into the closet looking like this. Neatly folded and easy to identify. Bonus: the lid snaps shut. Looks pretty good, right?

From the reorganizing described in this single post, let me tally up how many new or pending projects were born: 1, the brown grouping; 2, Paris Flea Market; 3, something patriotic; 4, the purply-red grouping. Four. Four potential quilts on the horizon, in addition to those listed on my 2021 goals.

I'm good with that.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Fabric Storage

Thank goodness for closets. A few years ago when DD Emma helped me move from a normal-sized bedroom to the bigger bedroom, I gained not only more space to spread out, but also a bigger closet. And that closet is mostly full of storage tubs containing my fabric stash.

I have finished quilt tops on hangers waiting to be quilted.

And below the quilt tops and on the other side of the closet are the tubs of fabric separated by color.

When I was clearing the clutter off the cutting table last week, I needed access to these tubs and having them stacked was not especially conducive to my efforts. So I pulled the main color-tubs out and lined them up in the hallway outside my sewing room door. With the lids off, I could add the fabrics to the correct tubs with more ease.

I think - perhaps - I really like red fabric. The red tub is so full that the lid will not be going on until I do some additional sorting. I have the whites, browns and greens all cleared away now.

For these reds, separating red-red from white-red or from burgundy-red might be an option. I will need to see what I've got first and proceed from there.

I learned the 'separate-by-color-method' from my Frienzies, the home-ec teachers. Kay, Sherrie and Susan had the home-ec room at school in tip-top shape all the time, and they kept big tubs of fabric on top of some built-in cabinets in the sewing part of their area. If separating by color worked for the professionals, then it ought to work for me. And it does.

I have pretty much finished with the sorting and organizing that came from the top of the cutting table. I still have scraps to cut, and I must not let myself get too far removed from this task. If I do, it may be a long time before I get back to it. 

My attention span is short-lived.

Have a wonderful Sunday, friends, and have a great week, too!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Cutting Scraps

 With the price of quilting fabric getting so high in recent years, quilters are protective of their scraps. At least this one is. When cutting out a quilt, I try to conserve as much as possible, and I save pieces that some might consider discarding. Habits like mine, however, soon results in an overflow of scraps. And now, after 30-40 years of sewing and quilting, I have many boxes and tubs of scraps filling too much space in my sewing room.

Time to attack this problem!

It is not a new attack, however. I began 2020 with this same mindset, and I did make good progress. Then I stopped. My method, though, was working for me, so I am continuing it now as I return to scrap-busting.

 Whenever possible, I cut squares. I have determined that I am most likely to use 3 sizes: 2.5 inches, 2 inches, and 1.5 inches. Above is a tub of 2.5-inch squares. Some have already been sewn together in twos; they will eventually all be made into 4-patches for an as yet unknown quilt.

The 2-inch squares fill another bin - some have been stitched together (plus there's a 2-inch strip needing to be cut down).

I likewise have a tub dedicated to only the 1.5-inch squares. They are pretty small, but make a pretty block - I played around last year with these little guys, and came up with this pretty creation.

Now sometimes, the scraps I come across are bigger, and I really don't want all those 2.5-inch squares. When I happen upon larger pieces of scraps, I will cut 2.5-inch strips (like jelly rolls strips) or larger squares - 6" or 5" or 4" or 3".

The pile of strips is becoming quite large, and I really don't have a clue for using them at present. I will have to begin looking for a suitable project.

My bin of larger squares is not too full; I definitely have scraps that will be good candidates for these sizes, and since I am getting a bit overloaded with jelly roll strips. Maybe I should consider doing more of these larger squares as an alternative.

 Here are more jelly roll strips - Yikes! - that's a lot of scraps! And a lot of future quilts as yet untold!

It just so happens that I scrolled upon an Instagram pic from All People Quilt that dealt with fabric storage. I discovered to my delight that I am on the right track with some of my methods of storage. I think you might like to check it out.

I have been making pretty good headway on my newest start of 2021 - Lucy, a pattern by Carrie Nelson from her book Farmhouse Favorites. I plan to bring you up to speed on that soon. I chose a wide variety of floral fabrics for my Lucy; Sharon will be making one with me, and she has chosen French General reds and creams for her version.

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine where you are! After about 11 cloudy, dreary days in a row, we have had a couple of gloriously sunny days - so very welcome to we Ohioans!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Cleaning, Storage, and Scrap Management

 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!

Terry's Fabric Storage

Don't you find it fascinating to see how other quilters organize their sewing spaces and the items in those spaces? I sure do. I am curious about what works for my fellow quilters, and I wonder if I can find a few ideas that I might also use.

A few weeks back I had occasion to visit Terry's sewing room. She was thrilled about the cleaning and organizing she had been doing, and was more than happy to show off her newly straightened fabric closet.

Her closet has lots of shelves of varying widths. She organizes her fabrics in several different ways. Up top, in the area that you can barely see, she has all her homespun fabrics.

Then, under the homespun, she begins organizing quilting fabrics by ROYGBIV colors. So neatly folded and easy to see. Look at those yummy stacks of neutrals. And blues. And reds and greens.*Sigh.*

This shot shows the lower portion of the closet. There are tubs in various spots. Those tubs over on the right are project tubs. On the hangers are bags of kits Terry has purchased.

I did not take a picture of another closet across the room, but it is filled with nothing but Civil War reproduction fabrics. Oh, my gosh, is that something to see! I should have gotten a picture of it;  maybe I was awestruck. Do you think??

Well, this gets me to thinking. How do you store your fabric stash? I will take some pics of my own stash and share that with you in the coming days.

Happy Quilting, Friends!