I’m having a dilemma.
Earlier this summer I was making scrap blocks – lots of them. They didn’t have a home, but they were a good mindless project and I made a big stack. I considered making them into a big quilt, but decided yesterday to divide them into smaller quilts.
Of course now that I am looking at them, I wonder if they are “kid friendly” enough for WAS charity quilts. I could try for some more “kid friendly” borders, but I’m not sure.
What do you think?
Yesterday was a good day on the de-clutter count, with more leaving the house today. (But those aren’t counted yet.)
More stuff was shredded (181) and a few things were chucked as I was cleaning the closet (only 11 – so I don’t feel too bad on the landfill count.)
Up to 848 – so the half-way mark is getting close!
Gee, who would have thought – there are hats in the hatbox.
I’ve been continuing to clean out the closet in sewing room. It is easily the biggest bedroom closet in the house, which helps me in the thought that I might stop it from being a closet soon and tuck a sewing machine station in there. I haven’t seen the floor of one of the closets in this house in a long time. As a kid I loved sitting in my closet to read, and I have to admit climbing inside today brought back warm memories. Though I expect I wouldn’t find it as comfortable now as I did then.
When I first started cleaning out Mom’s stuff after she died, I talked about “landmines” – things I came upon in places I didn’t expect that hit me in the gut with emotional impact. The number of landmines are going down (though the Mother’s Day card in the middle of the bills I was shredding the other day served as one). But now I am stuck with things that I don’t know what to do with – things that don’t have the emotional impact of landmines, but that seem wrong to just chuck or shred. I have no trouble chucking some things, like my childhood artwork, but what do I do with a portrait of myself that a family friend made? Or her framed college diplomas?
I know some things are just going to go back into the closet for another round.
Emma’s “big girl” quilt is done. And there is more than enough pink, purple and flowers for any young lady.
You can’t see the detail well in the big shot, but Karen did a great job with flowers and butterflies with variegated purple thread.
(And I have to get my quilt bar mounted so I can hang these things to get better photographs of them. The pink in the top picture looks a little orange because I had to bring down where the flash washed out the bottom of the picture. It looks like the software has adjusted the shape of the image to fit the screen as well….Oh well, not messing with that tonight. )
The declutter process is continuing slowly. Not because I don’t want to, but because I have been working on other things. (Unfortunately, not my pantry quilt idea, which has ended up on hold for right now.)
Sunday got another 21 items out of the house. I went over to Foofsique to pick up a replacement part for my sewing machine and left them the 18 pillowcases that I made earlier in the year for the APQS Million Pillowcase challenge. Then I dropped of 3 very lightly used pairs of sneakers at the drop box by my postoffice. So not only 21 items out, all of them going to charitable locations.
I’ve added a counter on the side of the blog. I kinda like being able to see my progress.
I want to make a quilt.
Hah! I know, like that should surprise anyone reading this.
I’ve been thinking for years about making a “Jar Quilt”. The idea is that the blocks look like jars on a shelf. For kids they are sometimes made with bug/critter fabric to look like you’ve been out catching things, but I want to make a “pantry” shelf – canning jars full of stuff. Something like this one at Diana Lindsley’s website.
This has been a WHIMM for a while (aka – Work Hidden In My Mind.) I even coordinated a swap a couple years ago to exchange fabric, and it is still sitting in the stash.
For a couple of years, it was hard to find the fabrics for “contents”, but lately I’ve been seeing more of them. Yesterday when I went to pick up some parts for my machine at Foofsique, I picked up a FQ of mushroom fabric and of jelly bean fabric because they were so incredibly cute. And then I started thinking about how I could do this.
I hadn’t started it when I did the swap because I didn’t know where I would put it. But a couple months ago VT suggested putting it on the door to the garage at the end of the kitchen. It seemed feasible, but I wasn’t in love with the idea. It seemed like it would be too busy there as you looked through the kitchen
Last night I realized the door to the patio – off the kitchen – would be a GREAT place. And I could probably design it to custom fit the door. Yup, that means Math.
The door is 31″ wide and 80″ tall. I need to cut out for the door handle if it’s going to cover the door. Not too hard. But I want this to look like a “real” pantry. So I want the shelves to be narrower at the top than the bottom. And I want a lot of different “things” on the shelves – little jam jars, big jars of veggies and pickles. I’ve got some cupcake fabric, shouldn’t there be a cake plate of those in the pantry? I saw another pattern that used baskets for some of the things, and wouldn’t potatoes make more sense in baskets than in jars? (Though I have to admit, I’m going to be putting some unrealistic food in jars since that’s what I have!)
If it were a case of just making x number of rows of 6×9″ jars to fit the door it would be one thing. But I want to make it difficult. I have pattern pieces that range from 3×3″ to 12×12″ and I want to mix them up. This is going to take some planning.
Graph paper, here I come.
I am quilting, but most of what I am working on are BRCs.
I picked up the Orange Crush quilt and the Zen quilt from The Quilt Studio on Tuesday and dropped off Emma’s quilt. From there I went to the Sit & Sew at Joyful Quilter and worked on another quilt. Then more sewing when I got home.
But I can’t show you the Zen quilt since it’s a present for someone who sometimes reads this. And I can’t tell you about the other projects or show photos for the same reason. They are BRCs.
So what does BRC stand for? No clue, but it’s an expression in my family that has meant a “surprise or secret that you can’t know about yet.” I expect it came about when I hit the point that I could understand what Mom and Dad were spelling.
Go out Birthday shopping and come in with presents? “No, you can’t look in that bag, those are BRCs.”
What’s in that box? “It’s a BRC.”
Close to Christmas? “Stay out of the closet in the spare bedroom. I’ll get the spare pillows, there are BRCs in there.”
So that’s what I’m working on BRCs. And I’ll tell you after the gifts have been given and I can show them.
This is gonna be easy!
Ok, not really in the long run, but starting with these old family files make for some high count decluttering! I’m still wondering why my mother felt she needed to save 15 years of electric/gas bills, but it gave me lots to shred and clean out! (I’m sure she had a reason, and a good one, if I could ask her.) Of course finding a box that she had labeled “Shred” didn’t hurt either.
But the end result is that I have shredded 629 bills/statements/documents in the last two days! My recycling bin is pretty much full of shredded paper this week and I’m sure I’ll find more as I get cleaning out further. That’s a really strong start to make me think I could actually hit that 2010 mark.
Add in some household things I cleared out and a book I gave a friend and I am looking at a current de-clutter status: 635/2010 – 1375 to go. And net 2 empty plastic storage containers.
Have you heard about the declutter 2010 in 2010 challenge? I’m really not sure of the origins of the challenge. Googling it brings up a couple sites, but none seems to be “official”. There is a Facebook Group, but it is pretty small. I heard about it on the Stashbusters list. I’m hoping my basically competitive nature will kick in and help push me along to get some of this cleaning out done.
As I understand it, the goal is to eliminate 2010 items from your household in 2010. That would have to accomplish something toward decluttering! But the guidelines seem to be somewhat vague as to how to define a “thing” for the counting. I have a 20 piece dish set in the garage to go to somewhere charitable. Is that counted as a “one” or a “twenty”. I’m kind of thinking it might have to be counted how it came into the house – so the dish set in the garage that has never been out of the box is a single thing, but the quilt I made using two packs of fabric counts as a two when it leaves.
Right now I am looking at a plastic box of old bank statements, etc. I guess that means that each envelope containing a statement that I shred is one? If so, I might have a prayer at doing this, even starting in July!
The retreat might be officially over, but I’m still quilting along. There’s no place I need to be today other than a grocery store run, and I think maybe a detour to pick up some frozen margarita mix. (I already found some popsicles in the downstairs freezer.) If I’m going to melt, I might as well melt over my sewing machine as anywhere else. I’ll save the errands for tomorrow when there are other places I need to be as well.
Yesterday I went down to Joyful Quilter for their Sit & Sew and their air conditioning. 
It was pretty quiet, but I got the Zen top assembled. Later in the afternoon both the Zen top and the top I made as part of Bonnie Hunter’s Orange Crush Mystery went to be quilted. She said July is one of her slowest times and I have an appointment next week to pick them up.
I may be doing well getting things done, but I’m also starting new projects. I am trying to be good though and work from stash. Today Bradie Sparrow’s Summer Star Sampler Quilt Along 2010 started over on her A Quilty Kind of Girl blog. There are two patterns, one a straighforward sampler, while the other has a more complicated center medallion. I’m not worried about the level of difficulty, but I am concerned about having enough fabric in the pieces I’ve chosen to do the medallion as well. I’ll start making the stars and decide later where I stand with fabric.
But today’s project is to try to finish up E’s pink/purple top. I’ve got all the block assembled and backing and binding are pressed and draped over the quilting frame. Once that is cleared off I think I am going to try to get something on the Monstrosity to quilt myself. I know I can’t spend the time at the frame I would like (hence why I am sending out a bunch of the bigger tops), but I am hoping I can do a small charity top without clobbering the ankle. Even if it is in the category of pin one day, quilt the next. I need to be nicer to the ankle. I’ve had to ice it and elevate it more than I like which tells me I am trying to do to much.
