Category Archives: stash (busting)

Art Room Organisation

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Dad stayed over in the reinstated guest room recently and it all seemed to go well. I haven’t used the writing desk but it’s accessible. The textile room has had plenty of use since we put a table top on the loom. When I cut out fabric for clothing I do it on the drawing board in the art room or the dining table, but the loom table is good for pinning pattern pieces, and as a place to rest tubs and their contents when I’m looking through habby, patterns and materials (which I do a lot when planning projects).

That leaves the art room. Corners of it were getting used, like the computer desk and the drawing board for cutting out patterns, but when It comes to art I’ve done nothing but some tweaking of oil paintings, a little sketchbook work, and a bit of framing. No new paintings.

Why not? The truth is, I hadn’t properly started reorganising the contents since the big room reshuffle. My general idea was to store the crafts that require a nearby sink like dyeing and printing in the laundry cupboard, and everything else in the art room wardrobe, but other demands on my time left me feeling too physically tired to do all the moving of stuff too mentally tired for decision-making. But when those other matters started being delayed, art organisation turned out to be a good distraction from the frustration. They also forced me to do it in more manageable stages.

It made sense to tackle the laundry first since I knew what was going there. I moved all the relevant items in and did a ‘cull then organise’. After a few trips to buy storage tubs (it’s amazing how downsizing always requires more buying of stuff) almost everything was packed away neatly, and I was pleased to find I had freed up some space.

The art room wasn’t going to be as straightforward. For a start, I was dealing with three to four times as much stuff, including a ridiculous amount of paper and card and an overly optimistic collection of general stuff to repurpose. (I did wonder how I ended up with so much, but then remembered inheriting art materials, adopting other people’s stashes and that I truly believed, at the time, that thing would be useful one day. And at least it was all free.)

How much I culled would depend on how much space I had, so the opposite approach to the laundry would be better: organise then cull. After considering what there was in different categories, I guessed that I had enough ‘grounds’ to fill the left side of the wardrobe. That included canvasses, card, paper and sketchbooks. It turned out that I was wrong about the quantity so all the books stayed on that side, too, which my back was grateful for. The repurposing matter looked like it would all fit into the middle section of the wardrobe, which is a narrow vertical area of shelves and drawers, so I moved everything that didn’t quality into the right side of the wardrobe, which was mainly art mediums, small stationary, tools, framing supplies, packaging for paintings and finished sketchbooks.

A lot of shuffling and culling later, everything had found a new home but for the small amount I culled or threw away. An extra bonus to all this was that I had to tackle some filing I’d been putting off. Also, I didn’t wind up with a multitude of new projects as I normally do after a tidy up, just a small pile of old Daily Art I want to bind into a book.

So much more could have been culled, but with those other matters sucking up time and energy, I’m content with what I achieved. I did test and reorganise all my inks, and cull jewellery-making supplies, and can tackle other sub-categories more easily knowing how much space I have overall. And if another shift in our lives forces more downsizing any time soon, I won’t go into it expecting it’ll be terribly painful. Just… a little achey.

Kawandi-ish Progress

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It’s no surprise that this is quite a meditative project. And yet it can also be addictive. Adding new pieces of cloth is the exciting part, and the stitching is the relaxing bit. I find it’s better to add enough scraps that I can stitch uninterrupted for some time before I need to stop and add more.

On YouTube the vloggers sometimes use dressmaking pins to secure the fabric. I’m using quilting pins. Less chance of stabbing myself.

I’m using a long sashiko needle with a ring thimble, which took a little getting used to, and I really like it. The layers limit how many stitches I can do at once, but it’s much easier on the hands than a finger-end style thimble.

The scraps usually need a bit of tweaking to make the edges sit along one of the rows of stitching. This can be a bit harder to anticipate at the corners. A rectangle might be neatly stitched down a few rounds ago then not be quite aligned once a corner is turned. But having the edges folded under by a generous half inch gives lots of leeway.

I’m going to have plenty of shirt fabric left over, but I won’t be making another kawandi-style quilt from it. I’ve been thinking about ways I could vary aspects of the quilt. Maybe stitching individual patches in spirals instead of the whole quilt? Curved stitching instead of straight? Colourful/fancy fabric? Non-square fabric scraps? Borrow from Boro?

There are so many directions to go in, and they don’t have to be overly complicated. It could still be relaxing and exciting in the same way.

Rainbow Cat Couch Quilt

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When I finally did some actual craft again after the big room reorganisation and craft downsize in May and June, it was to finish this quilt. I’ve waited this long to post about the quilt because it was a birthday present.

I’d ordered some multi-coloured gradient thread, but it took four months to arrive. I do wish online stores wouldn’t list items they don’t have in stock. Still, they were apologetic and kept me updated on the order progress throughout the long wait. At one point I gave up and decided to hand quilt. I gathered and bought some needles, thread and a frame, but I’m glad I never got around to it because the gradient thread is perfect.

I used white thread on the back.

The binding fabric is a piece I noticed in a scrap bin beside the counter at Spotlight while I was being served – one of those lucky fabric moments. I had barely enough, though, which is why the binding is so narrow. It was not easy to apply!

If you knew the recipient, you’d know a ridiculously bright, cosy rainbow cat quilt had to go to them. It’s always so nice when something you make chooses its owner!

A New Quilt Thing

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I decided earlier this year that I wasn’t going to start a new quilt until all the ones from the Summer of Quilts were finished. Well, I completed the last one in July so I was free to start something new. What I’d been most itching to try was a kawandi-inspired project.

The Kawandi approach appealed because I like repurposing fabric and doing running stitch. I already had a half dozen men’s shirts to find a use for, some yellow mercerised thrums that would make a nice contrast, and waaaaay more old sheets for testing sewing patterns than I need.

As it turned out, I also had a piece of leftover flannelette about the size I was thinking for the piece so I decided to use that as the battling/filler. From the old sheets I chose one I’d dyed with indigo ages ago for the backing, cut it 2 cm larger than the flannelette and pressed the excess in as the hem.

Then I started tearing the shirts into rectangles and sewing those down along the edge.

Once I’d made it around the edge of the whole piece, I tucked in the flannelette rectangle as I’d seen done in videos. This was really fiddly, and I can’t see much advantage in doing it in this order, so next time I’ll simply lay the flannelette on top of the backing before pressing in the hem. But at least doing it the fiddly way means the above photo shows the fabric on the underside.

I’m not including the little fabric tassels on the corners that traditional kawandi have because, well, I forgot to add them. Rather than pull the stitches out I decided to keep it simple. It’s a piece to learn with, not an attempt to get it ‘right’ first time.

Slow Stitch Skirt

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Having done two fairly random slow stitched pieces then turned them into useful objects, I was ready to make something more intentional. I had lots of ideas to choose from. What I settled on was a skirt with a slow stitched front. The base fabric will be black and the scraps sewed onto it will be colourful so the result looks a bit like stained glass. Because it’ll be washed in the machine, I’m folding in the edges of the scraps.

I didn’t want to wrangle a large piece of fabric so I’m doing it in strips to be sewn together later. The strips would be indifferent colours, with red at the bottom then purple, blue, aqua and green in turn to the waist.

My small stash of fabric scraps wasn’t going to accommodate this, so I began sourcing more. First from a friend, who supplied most of what I needed from her bountiful stash. Then by buying scrap packs at the Craft & Quilt Show, and at the Embroiderer’s Guild destash sale. I also ordered a random scrap bundle from a quilting shop but the colours were either too muted or not the hues I’m looking for.

I didn’t want the skirt to be as thick and poofy as a quilt so I’m using strips of leftover flannelette from making quilts instead of batting. For the thread I’m using up more mercerised cotton thrums, but where I don’t have the right colours I’m using perle cotton embroidery thread as well. I really like the soft shine of mercerised cotton, and enjoying stitching in saturated colour.

A New Thing

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Of course, trying to finish UFO and organise my stuff is the perfect time to try a new hobby, but in retrospect, it was doing those things that led to the hobby-trying.

Because of thrums.

This is after culling and using maybe a third.

I have quite a lot of them, and recently I’ve tested a few new ways to use them up. I tried combing some wool thrums into fluff to spin new yarn out of, but it was too much like hard work and the yarn it made was yucky. Then I made some wool thrum tassels on a day when only a mostly brainless task would do, and I was pretty happy with the result. They’ll be used as decorations at my next party thing.

These will be party decorations.

Then I realised that the perle cotton and 16/2 cotton thrums would make excellent thread for slow stitching pieces.

Ah. Slow Stitching. A woman I met at a car thing a few months ago enthused about it, and of course I’d seen examples on Instagram and YouTube. With those thrums sitting there needing a purpose, I did a bit of research, brought out my new ‘scrap fabric’ tub and started playing. I made a piece out of blue and green offcuts sewn with natural white cotton thrums, that became a small drawstring bag.

Then I started on a piece in red shades stitched with yellow, green and salmon pink perle cotton thrums.

And somehow I managed to buy a book on the subject. And some little packets of fabric scraps I found at an op shop.

I’m not sure where this is going, but that’s kind of the point. This is very much a journey-more-important-than-destination pastime. The fact is, though, that’s not very me. However, I am able to enjoy the lack of end purpose if I tell myself that I don’t have to decide what the thing I’m making will become until I’m done stitching. As with most new hobbies, the first things I made are more about learning and practising. I may grow more intentional in my choices, but for now… this’ll do.

The Art Quilt

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When the Summer of Quilts ended I was left with a handful of quilts that still needed topstitching and binding. Not wanting them to languish in a tub somewhere, but needing a break from quilt-making, I decided to finish one a month. I think I’m on track. I’ll just check…

In fact, I’m ahead! I finished the Blue Quilt in March, the Purple Quilt in April and I seem to have forgotten to blog about the Bookcase Quilt in May. I finished another one this month but won’t be posting about it until the recipient’s birthday has passed. What I can post about is the other quilt I finished in June: the Art Quilt.

I decided to use serpentine stitch on my machine again in the sections of plain colour, in a matching shade. Going around the squares was fun and somehow the start and end of the stitching always met, or came close. I like how every turn happens in a different part of the wave so you get a different ‘kink’ each time. The threads needed to be tied and hand-sewn into the batting because I wasn’t sure if I could back tack using serpentine stitch. Really, I should have just done a test – it would have saved a lot of work.

It would have been fine to leave the quilt as it was at this point, but the gaps between stitching seemed a bit wide to me. I decided to do more top-stitching, this time sewing around the multicoloured squares with multicoloured thread in straight stitch. Then I did a bit of thread ‘scribble’ in the white centres, which I love. I’d wanted to do that with fabric pens or crayons, but didn’t like the results when I tested them on scrap fabric, so I’d left them unadorned.

There’s just one quilt left to finish now. Only when it’s done am I free to make another quilt. Will I? Maybe. There’s enough flannelette left to make one, possibly two, small quilts. I’m also intrigued by the kawandi quilting technique.

But I am well stocked with quilts now, so maybe I’ll also impose a rule on not making more quilts until I’ve found homes for some of the ones I already have.

Making it Easier – May

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One thing I’ve begun to understand about making things easier, is that it’s hard work. It’s the ‘making’ part of that intent – thinking of the change that would make something easier then doing the work and organisation to get that change to happen – that takes all the time and energy. It’s only after you do the ‘making’ that life gets easier. If all goes to plan.

If I’d decided ‘take it easier’ was the motto of the year, things would have been much more relaxed. As it turned out, May was a month in which I worked very hard to make life easier.

For ages now I’ve been looking at the rooms I use for work and play and feeling something had to change. For a start, two were dedicated to activities I wasn’t doing much any more: writing and weaving. It seemed crazy that I was making art in half a laundry while those rooms remained mostly unused. Adding to the pressure was our cat getting old and suddenly refusing to go outside to toilet. Having the litter tray in the bath isn’t fun for cat or humans. The laundry is a better location, but it was full of my art stuff.

The physical roadblocks for change were mostly physical: I couldn’t see where to relocate the Lotas loom, I worried about doing art in a carpeted area, and I didn’t want to ruin the comfortable combination of furniture I had in place for sewing. I hadn’t realised there were mental blocks, too. (Other than simply knowing it would be hard work.) It turned out that changing anything to do with my writing set up was an acknowledgement that a significant era of my life had probably drawn to a close, and I hadn’t been ready for that until now.

What removed these roadblocks was staying overnight at Dad’s place after he’d had a minor procedure with anaesthetic. It was so impractical, compared to having him here, for reasons too long to list. To make staying overnight at our place appeal to Dad, we needed a proper guest room again and a bathroom free of cat toilet smells.

That meant reducing the area I was using for work and play from 3 1/2 rooms down to 2. Or did it? I realised that a pared down set of office furniture and contents could easily exist in the guest room. Guests would only limit my access to them a couple of times a year at most.

While getting 3 1/2 rooms down to 2 1/2 sounded easier, or 2 1/2 rooms dedicated to hobbies down to 2, it was still an intimidating prospect. I reminded myself that I’d had one room for hobbies when we first moved here (ok, I’d painted in a classroom and hadn’t owned a floor loom) and when we eventually downsize I’ll probably have the same. I’d watched The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. I could do this.

The strategy was this: the office would become the Textiles Room, the craft room would become the Art Studio, the Loom Room the Guest Room. It only involved moving every piece of furniture. Since I don’t have Illustrator any more and probably wouldn’t remember how to use it, I mapped out a floor plan and made cut outs of the furniture. After working out where most things would go, I did a mock move and found that everything had to be relocated in a particular order to avoid double-handling.

The Lotas loom was never going to fit in the Textiles Room. It might go in the Art Studio, or in another part of the house. I can put that decision off for a while because moving everything else is going to take plenty of time and energy, and moving the sofa bed to where the loom is now is the last item on my list.

May’s making it easier tasks will become June’s. And this is a classic example of how ‘making it easier’ turns out to be hard work, both physically and mentally.

But in the end, easier.

Bazaar Times

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So ask I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been doing some yarn culling. First there was the big rug yarn/fabric cull last year that triggered the Summer of Quilts, thanks to me thinking it would be easier (ha!) to just sew up all the flannelette strips into quilts. Then in April I culled some dyeing supplies and knitting yarn. As May arrived the rest of the stash got thinned and I figured it all may as well go into the yearly weaving guild sale. I added magazines, a pin loom, a 16 shaft loom I was going to fix up but no longer want, and circular knitting machine to the pile.

And it was quite a pile.

More like a wall.

Estimated total number of items was topping 100. Aside from the possibility it wouldn’t all fit in my car, the thought of filling in ten forms, and deciding on prices, and labelling it all, and carting it to the guild sapped my will to live. It had me wondering if I should just have a studio sale instead. That reminded me that I’ve seen people hire a table at the Bazaar and have their own eftpos machine. Both Paul and a friend have organised such things before so it didn’t intimidate me. Doing it that way would remove the need for filling in forms and I could change prices or put together bundles as the day progressed. I called the guild and asked if I could do that instead.

After a few days they got back to me, and the answer was ‘no’. So I looked at the pile/wall and figured I had to reduce it to a more manageable size. I decided to donate the knitting yarn to op shops and toss the magazines into the recycling (I’d got them for free at the Bazaar two years ago when nobody wanted them). I was all ready to take the rug yarn to the tip when a weaver I know said that friend of hers would take it. Perfect.

That got the items down to just under 70. It took me 4 hours to fill in the forms and write and attach the tags. It and the rug yarn (which I delivered the same day) filled the back of my car.

And, thankfully, most of it sold.

Looking at the Loom Room now, the difference is obvious. Only half of the shelving and little wardrobe contain weaving things. The rest holds either knitting/crochet, embroidery and spinning items, or empty tubs. I’m not sure what my next move is, but it might involve even bigger changes.

As I always remind myself: nothing in life is more sure than change.

Colour-blocked Corduroy Jacket

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Or is it a shirt? I guess it’s a ‘shacket’, as it works as either.

It felt like I had a lot left to do when I tackled the next stage, since the sewing up is the main part of garment construction. But in truth, it was no more than an easy day’s work. I took breaks for cuppas and lunch, and one to write the bulk of this post before tackling the buttonholes.

This was a ‘just for the fun of it’ project. Though it was done in the spirit of using up fabric, the main aim was to play with colour-blocking. I bought fabric for it and have enough of five of the six kinds to put to other uses, though not for any full garment.

What’s next? Well, some sewing thread I ordered for topstitching a quilt back in January has finally arrived, so that might be next. Or perhaps I’ll fix the wool skirt that got shrunk last year first.