Finished by Friday: Front Porch Sewing Room

I'm declaring this project finished, even though I'm actually only nearly done. I'm waiting on a couple of things I have to pick up at Wal-Mart -- some storage boxes and a power bar.

Allow me to present --


-- our front porch sewing area! Looking at these pictures, it still looks cluttered, but honestly, I know where everything is. Just ask me. I'll find it for you.

We have two sewing stations set up on my Grandma Root's old kitchen table, with my Pfaff and Miss B's Kenmore side by side.

Beside that, in the corner, is the World's Best Napping Cot --

-- and underneath that, neatly organized and labeled boxes of fabrics.

Over here on the front wall are the old bookshelves from the school auction a year ago this spring. The books are back in boxes so that I can put sewing stuff there.

Top shelf: My button jars, out of their dark lonely storage box to where they can sparkle and entice.
Bottom shelf: The Shelf of Shame, full of unfinished projects. At least they are now out in public where they can mock me until I finish them one by one. They were easy to ignore when I couldn't see them.

Here are those bread boxes I told you about last week, filled with fat quarters and other small pieces of quilting fabrics. Accessible, yet if I close the doors they don't get dusty.

Threads and notions in that little cabinet on the bottom, more fabric in the crate and suitcase. I love old suitcases but they really aren't great for storing fabric simply because you can't see what is inside, so you go buy more of what you already have. Or maybe that's just me.

Finally, I'm starting to put fabric in that Hoosier type cabinet there against the wall. The curtained part on the bottom would be ideal for fabric except

someone else had other plans for it. I gave up and just put an old scrap of soft velour there and it's now a cat storage area.

One thing that I have learned from obsessive reading of Unclutterer and Debt Proof Living is that clutter and too many possessions steal your time. You spend so much time moving them around, searching through them, trying to keep them organized, and so much money in providing the space for them, or worse yet, buying more when you can't find what you already have. This project has driven that lesson home quite nicely. It took a lot of hours to set up this place where Miss B and I could finally use the stuff I had accumulated. I found a lot of duplicates, which means that I re-bought when I didn't know what I had. And I ended up throwing out a lot of things and donating even more to The Way Station. So I really didn't need it, wasn't using it, and I wasted part of my life and my family's in refusing to get rid of it till now.

*sigh*

Lesson learned, I hope. Though it is ongoing.




While I have you here, what do you think I should do with this fabric? It was a gift from my secret weapon, my neighbor who still does hand quilting. She had hung onto it for a long time and never found a use for it, so she passed it on to me. It's a wonderful printed cotton, very soft. There are actually two pieces of about this size. All I can think of is backing to a quilt or pillows. I don't need any more pillows, and I don't make many pink quilts - too frou-frou for my tastes. Any suggestions?

Other Finished by Friday projects out there:
Nicole at Sister's Choice did TWO tops this week