Wednesday, August 5, 2015

A Finish!

No, unfortunately, it's not a quilting finish ... it's a puzzle finish.
I'm ready to start another ... but before we can do that, I need to haul out my GO cutter and cut my connector hexie fabric into 2-1/2" squares. I'd like to think that I could get all the hexies basted while we're traveling next month, but I'm not sure. 600+ hexies ... our trip is going to last 2-1/2 weeks, so that would mean that I'd have to baste 35 hexies/day. Our time on the Island is usually pretty slow-paced, so it could be possible.

A year ago, we converted the closet in the spare bedroom that I use for sewing (we call it the sewing room, but I get about a third of the space in that room) from a standard bedroom closet to a stash closet by having shelving installed. Previously I had my fabric stored in a couple of very large plastic storage tubs ... with no organizational plan at all. So if I wanted to use a fabric, I had to basically take everything out of one tub to sort through all the fabric. Of course no matter which tub I pulled to dig through, the fabric was almost always in the other tub. After we got our shelves installed, I transferred the fabrics to separate plastic storage boxes ... each color had its own tub. That worked fine for some colors (yellows or purples for instance), but NOT for my blues, reds and neutrals (my go-to colors). It had gotten to the point where those tubs were so full that I couldn't lift the box off the shelf to dig through to find the fabric I was looking for ... and because there were so many fabrics in those large boxes, I had to dump out all the fabrics to paw through them all to find what I was looking for. I'm not sure that the new system was all that much better than the old system. Last week I purchased some new smaller storage boxes ... just big enough to hold my fabrics, wrapped around comic book cardboard. That means that I have more than one box for some of my colors, but I will sort them by category or piece size. And because I'm folding the fabrics around cardboard, I can see at a glance what is in each box. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Ha! Here's an after of one of my neutral boxes.
 And to give you an idea of what a huge improvement my reorganization is making, here's a before of my reds.
 One of the benefits of taking my time to reorganize my stash closet is that I've come across some fabrics that I'm pretty sure that I'm not ever going to use. When I finish this reorganization project up, I'm going to have to take a look at those fabrics and see if I can't find them good homes. ;-) And yes, I said WHEN I finish this up ... I was making good progress when I ran out of cardboard. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I'll have more here on Thursday, so there's an end in sight to this task. In the meantime, there's fabric and boxes everywhere in that room. It looks like a tornado touched down. :-o I can't say reorganizing was a fun way to spend my afternoon, but it will definitely be worth it when it's done.

I didn't spend the entire day in the sewing room ... I was able to get in an hour or so with my needle and thread, quilting on my Kiss quilt, between finishing up the puzzle and starting in on the stash reorganization. I hadn't sat down with it in a week, since last Tuesday ... at this rate, I'm never going to get that quilt finished. I hope to spend a fair amount of time quilting today ... I'll be watching my Ts this afternoon, but not until 4:00. That should give me plenty of time to quilt.

Can someone tell me why smoke detectors wait until the wee hours of the morning before they start chirping to warn us that the batteries need to be replaced? At 2:00 this morning, I was rudely awakened by the detector right outside our bedroom door. DH replaced the battery ... no change. I suggested that he try resetting it by pressing the test button, which didn't accomplish anything ... no end to the chirping and more importantly, no test pattern. Hmmm, perhaps the detector had gone bad and needed to be replaced ... nothing we could do at 2:30AM. So DH went back to bed (this is one time when having exceptionally poor hearing is not a problem). After another 20 minutes or so of enduring that awful chirping, I got to wondering if there was a circuit breaker that controlled that detector ... sure enough there was. I tried turning it off (just until we could get the detector replaced), but the detector kept beeping. This made me think maybe it was the battery, so I decided to try resetting it myself. Success! The silence was heavenly! Of course by then, I was wide awake ... there was no way that I'd be able to go back to sleep. What else was I to do with the three hours before DH would be up? Why quilt, of course! ;-)

I hope that whatever you planned for today included a little something that brought some joy!
Kathy

23 comments:

  1. I laughed at your finish! Hubby does puzzles all the time and is always asking me if I saw what he did on it...I admire them, but I don't do them. I love, adore, am jealous of your box of neutrals...ohhhh, they look so yummy!

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  2. What lovely neutrals! That chirping is not fun... went through that with the one really high up a few weeks ago. Glad you got it fixed... bummer on the sleep but... quilting time was a plus. I was almost up at that time - splitting headache last night so I was in bed by 8:30. Fully rested this morning =)

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  3. Your puzzle looks like the Linn Cove Viaduct on the Blue Ridge Parkway; a lovely spot. Your fabric organization looks wonderful and your problem resolution skills are sharp... even in the middle of the night! Well done.

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  4. I am so impressed with your progress in organizing your fabric! We've started doing puzzles on the computer because somehow we always lose pieces to playful dogs.

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  5. Hope you enjoy your fabric reorganization. I know I use much more of my stash now that it is somewhat organized. Hope you find some nap time today - 2AM is just too early to get up!!! ~Jeanne

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  6. take the battery out and the detector off the ceiling and get a new one today - that usually works for me. I had the chirping sound just last week but it just needed a new battery and was kind enough to wait until morning before it went crazy.
    love wrapping fabric around comic book boards - looks about the same as what you do. I do that for some of the fabric I had that was too disorganized and have them standing on one of the shelves.

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  7. Your new organization is lovely. I'm back to several large boxes for the time being, and I miss my organized stash! It's so much more inspiring when you can find your fabric.

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  8. Good job on the puzzle! Love it.

    Your organization looks very nice. I need to get more organized with yarn. It's so hard to find what I'm looking for.

    Smoke detectors can be a real pain sometimes. haha

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  9. oh how I could use you over here if only to give a suggestion or two to organizing my stash mess. I have it all in drawers.....a LARGE chest that sits beside me, and my mother's entire old dresser as well. I try to have it organized by "type" of fabric....all flannels, all knits, all quilting cottons, all regular cottons, all my warm and naturals, and on and on....It looks good for awhile but eventually is cat pawed as OF COURSE there is NO WAY to really see anything unless I dig through it and take it all out! Soo frustrating. I have seen your method done and it HAS to be the best.....perfect really. But the thought of wrapping all my scraps and stash around cardboard stresses me out sooo badly I could cry, lol. I'd never have the patience for it. I will just have to admire and envy yours, lol. Enjoy your day!

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  10. Oh...the organization is lovely!!! Those smoke alarms are such a nightmare. We had our security system beeping on and off last night too. I have no idea why.

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  11. Love the puzzle. Very impressed with your organization! Yes those darn detectors always pick the very worst time and it scares the dogs.......

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  12. Nice finish. : )
    Your organizing is very effective. Must feel good every time you finish a box.
    What a night you had with the smoke detector. I had a friend who was so tired of her kitchen detector going off every time she even burned toast, that one day it was just one time too many. She took her broom and beat it off the ceiling. That stopped it. *LOL*

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  13. I want to live in your header photo. Where was it taken? Don't get me started on smoke detectors. Every time we replace a battery, it still chirps. We've finally discovered that it takes a few minutes for the new battery to do its job. Can't explain it. We've probably thrown out a lot of perfectly good batteries in the past. Have fun with some quilting!

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  14. OK... you're confusing me with the "have a great Sunday"... haha... I wish I wasn't at work :)

    the hubs & I are ready to start a new puzzle. I love the relaxing AND brain work of it :)

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  15. You had me fooled for a minute with thte puzzle. I fold my fabirc and stack it on shelves for the same reason. I like that yours is in boxes where they can stay dust free and you can take down the box to get what you need. I pull out of my stack and then the whole stack needs to be redone.

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  16. Haha! You really had me going there for a minute, expecting a beautiful quilt finish LOL!!! It's beautiful, but not what I expected of course :) You will be so thankful for your efforts at organization going forward. I have been amazed at how much nicer it is to work on any project in my studio with my fabrics folded neatly and in order! And I can't tell you how many times my fire alarm has done that to us!!! And ALWAYS in the wee hours of the morning :0

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  17. Kathy, Love your puzzle... it looks like a beautiful view is to be had there too...
    So happy you are getting such a great handle on your kind of fabrics and what you will use and not use... your organization rocks too! I am currently half done with organizing mine.. my honey wanted to make me the boards and did make me a bunch but I used them all.. now he needs to make more! lol
    Hope you got in some slow stitching or some 2 1/2" square cutting :) Kathi

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  18. Congratulations is due all around, for the puzzle, organizing those tubs of fabrics and conquering the smoke detector!

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  19. Oh wow, the Linville viaduct on the Blue Ridge. That's a lovely ride. It's been 18 months since we've been in the mountains. That puzzle makes me want to go again. Alas that will not happen. But the picture brings memories. Than you.

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  20. You know, we drove across that lovely bridge and then realized what we had driven across and turned around and went back. :)
    Oh, smoke alarms! At least you knew which one it was! I have shut off power to the part of the house where the smoke alarm was chirping and hubby was out of town. Thankfully, it was a guest room and bath and we had no guests.
    I am going to file away that way of organizing fabrics. I definitely need to do something with my stash!

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  21. Oh, my goodness, our smoke alarm started that crazy chirping last week in the middle of the night. Total aggravation!!! I love the way you now have your fabrics organized, a woman after my own heart. 35 of hexies is a bunch for a day but you might succeed. Keep us posted!

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  22. Wow, that's a lot of fabric! I love the way you are organizing it by wrapping it around cardboard though.
    Smoke detectors...they always pick the worst times to start 'chirping'. So glad you were finally able to get yours quiet.
    Kathy (from Reflections by Kathy)

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  23. You are really going to be organized when you get done. I use the same cardboard for my stash & I love them :-D

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I am SO glad you stopped by! No proving that you're a robot here ... I want to hear what you have to say! ;-)