Friday was what I actually consider my “vacation” because today (Saturday) my husband and I drive north to spend the 4th with my daughter, sleeping on her pull-out sofa bed. It’s somewhat comfortable. For a pull-out. We’ll be doing some 4th kinds of things like eating a picnic lunch in a park and roasting hotdogs over a campfire on the beach of Lake Ontario. There aren’t any fireworks shows scheduled due to the C-virus but I’m sure lots of people will be setting them off over the lake, so we’ll have something to watch.
Back to my Staycation activities: I had decided to do whatever I felt like doing when I stepped into my sewing room on Friday. No plans, no “I have to get thus and so done,” just pure “do what feels good.” I’d originally thought I’d probably knock out another couple of Cosmos blocks but as I reached for that project box on my cutting table, I realized I’d hit my block-making limit for the week. As I looked around at the other projects in bits and pieces around the room, I just wasn’t feeling any of them.
I realized, in that moment, that what I was feeling was a bout of organization coming on. I needed to clear the decks, so to speak.
I had gotten tired of my overflowing thread drawer in my sewing cabinet earlier in the week and hit up a Joann’s sale online. My Artbin Thread Storage case had arrived on Thursday.
I didn’t think to take a “before” picture—I was too anxious to get at it. However, to describe…
I have a thread drawer in my cabinet with grooves to hold spools. It had spools stacked on top of each other, and my round silicone bobbin keeper didn’t actually fit well between the drawer dividers so I often had to shove things around to get the drawer to close. I realized I didn’t often go into the drawer to find thread because it was too annoying.
My spool rack on the wall is impossible to overload, but my color organizational system had broken down somewhere along the way. Plus, for whatever reason, I’d always thought it a good idea to keep my go-to neutral Aurafil piecing threads on the top rack. Every time I had to find a thread for piecing, I’d have to stand up and slide around the side of my cabinet to reach the rack.
I did that for about 10 years.
Enough, I thought. Time to get more efficient about thread.
It took me about 45 minutes but now I have a much more workable system.
All of my variegated, metallic, invisible, wool, heavier-weight, and other specialty threads are now in the Artbin case and on a shelf. These are threads that only get used once in awhile (and you can see several that have never been used at all). The only thing that bothers me about this thread storage system s the number of spools I’ll have to pull out and look at to figure out what they are. There’s no avoiding that, though. The number of times I’d be inconvenienced by having to do that will be minimal compared to how much easier it is to use the rest of my thread now.
I’ve moved my go-to piecing threads to the drawer in my cabinet, within easy reach. I also uncovered several spools of bobbin thread I’d forgotten I had as they’d gotten buried in the detritus. Those are now separated out (far left dividers). And now I plan on actually using them.
I was then able to organize the thread rack on the wall by color. Who knew I had so many dang blue threads? The reds and pinks had to get relegated to the remaining space in my drawer.
I’d gotten a bobbin holder in a Sew Sampler box a few months ago that I realized would be perfect for this space. I took the foam bobbin holder out of the plastic container and am using that part in my drawer. It fits much better and actually holds more bobbins.
True confessions: I did end up throwing out two or three spools of thread. They were cheaper brands that I don’t like. Clearly I’d bought them for some special project that needed an exact color but didn’t end up needing them. Or something. By now, I’d spent the money on them so many years ago it no longer mattered. As organizer Peter Walsh used to say on the TV show “Clean Sweep” (which I really miss!), “Real estate is costly. What real estate are you giving this object in your space? In your mind?” Am I likely to ever use it? Nope. In the trash it went.
By the way, most of those smaller spools of Aurifil were from when I’d briefly subscribed to a monthly thread club. It was fun to get the colors but I quickly realized I’d be drowning in thread. You can see I haven’t used most of them yet. However, now that I’m back to sewing regularly, I plan on seeing what spools I can empty!
My next job was the cutting table. The side towards the wall is where I tend to stack, and stacked it had gotten. So projects that needed a project bin were given a project bin. Items of projects that had been waiting for me to finish them for several years were finally stored somewhere else. Fabrics that I’d planned on scanning into EQ8 were finally scanned, folded, and put on my fabric shelf.
I packaged up and mailed the two BOTM puzzle quilts and backings to my longarming friend, plus a book that had been set aside to mail to a work colleague—they’re now on their way. I returned some library books that had finally come due after the library reopened. Loose ends. Tied.
Ah. Space. Physical and mental cleaning house.
It feels good to be able to breathe again.
”Clearing the decks” has always been an important part of my process once I finish a project. That time taken to put things away and clean up has helped move that project out of my mind and gotten me ready for whatever I want to work on next.
I have no idea what I want to work on next, at the moment. But at least now I have some mental space to figure it out.
So now we’re off for a day and a half—we’re planning on being home again by lunchtime tomorrow. I’m not sure if I’ll be in my sewing room tomorrow as I need to make sure I’ve got everything in place to hit the ground running when I go back to work on Monday. It’s been a great Staycation although I feel like it flew by. Sum total: two completed UFOs, two UFOs now on to the next stage, three embroidery blocks done, three classes taken, three blocks from Cosmos done, three novels read, one batch of strawberry ice cream made (did I mention I bought myself an ice cream maker this summer?), one afternoon with a friend, two afternoons hanging out poolside in my backyard, and an overnight visit to my daughter. Not bad.