It's All About the Org.

Take one glance at my "guest" (hahahahhaaaa) room or my basement ::shudder:: and you would never know I am capable of great organizational feats. Well, you would never know I'm not a complete disaster. Well, (hey if I keep digging down for the truth on this one it's gonna get ugly...)

When our Dear Jane club leader challenged us to document how we organize our quilting stuff I had to laugh. I can't even quilt right now -- that room is *that* bad. 

Still, I wanted to show up for class and not have to say the dog ate my homework again. So I pulled off an adrenaline-fueled cliff notes kinda thing and here it is:

C L E A R  .  P L A S T I C  .  S T O R A G E  .

Why?  It's see-through. You can see what you have. It's a little more elegant than colored totes with colored lids. It minimizes the cluttered effect of a very cluttered space. You never need to worry about matching anything or getting enough cause if it's all clear/white, it will always match. I stand by it.

Magazine Storage. I keep a handful on file - design reference only...

Panning down we see my wide array of plastic storage options... Bins, large & small, envelopes, folders, shoeboxes... OK, this looks pretty bad I suppose, but it is actually organized. That box that says "Bills" is just to see if you're paying attention. There really aren't any bills in there. I can't go any further down though, it wouldn't be pretty.

Little bins in big bins... This is what remains of my craft & scrapbook supplies... I'm completely converted to quilting and I don't think I'm ever going back.

Large bins for large collections... I swear these were folded when I put them in this cabinet.

Fabric by type: modern/colorful, 30s repro, sock monkey, batiks... My largest collection, the civil war repros are broken down further by color and value. When I started my 'Jane's Addicted' quilt a couple years ago I went through the whole shebang and reorganized specifically for that quilt. I think I need to hit it again though...

Smaller bins for smaller collections...

Plastic pouches & ziplocs for needlework...

Smallest bins - my collection of charm packs.

Teeny tiny boxes for teeny tiny projects... Here are my hexies... So cute. 

B O O K S   &   B I N D E R S

This is about a third of my creative books/catalogs. I keep old Hancock's of Paducah catalogs for fabric reference... You can't see this but there are a zillion post its sticking out the other side of all of these.

Besides clear plastic storage, the other thing I'm a little obsessed with is Binders and sheet protectors. This is from my fabric binder. For awhile there I was printing out swatches of every fabric line that interested me. Organized by manufacturer, then designer, then line. I couldn't keep up with it but I wish I could.

Sometimes I use it as an inventory tool... I just note what I have of each fabric. Again, good idea but hard to maintain. The little tabs on the side are handy for customizing your binders.

N E E D L E W O R K

Just a bunch of silk floss in a bag. Gotta keep things contained. I got most of these
at a thrift store (!!) for a couple bucks total. Yee haw.

These clear plastic envelopes are great for a needlework project. The plastic is rigid enough that it helps protect a pattern book. The clear is handy cause you can see at a glance what you're packing. And they fit neatly in your briefcase...

Another needlework storage solution. Large plastic vinyl zippered pouch for the instructions and fabric. These are very durable. Probably at least water resistant - maybe not water proof... Small one (or ziploc) for the thread and other notions.

Q U I L T I N G   .   P R O J E C T S

I use 12x12x6-ish totes with a handle on top. They stack and you can easily pick them up and take 'em with you when you're leaving the house. I wish mine had clear or white lids but they have blue. Yes, it annoys me but what can you do.

In the bottom I put the bulkier/uncut fabrics.

Then the cut scraps.

Then the finished blocks or block components...

Followed by the design notes & pattern.

Finished quilt top on top.

Here's another example... larger fabric pieces on the bottom.

Scraps.

Design notes and pattern. This one is done but it's out for quilting...

Always helps to put a color, large-ish photo of the project on the end of the box so you can see at a glance what's what.

T O   .   G O   .   K I T S 

Our club leader Val is a master at this. I could learn a thing or two from her on this topic - and have ! Here's what mine usually looks like... english paper piecing templates, fabric scraps for that, finished pieces, mini sewing kits, smaller scale notions... 

Tins and little cases are handy. I really love that thread bobbin tin. The magnetic grommit is great for holding threaded needles.

That's it for now. If I ever get the floor cleared off and reorganize the room I'll post pics. : )

Cynical Cyndi posts her Happy Hat Adjustment

Hello, Happy Campers!

Well, it's election day and I am feeling happy, anxious, relieved, on-edge... My default is really Cynical Cyndi, but I am gonna try to give myself a little Happy Hat Adjustment here...

Happy Hats:



1) I started decorating for Christmas yesterday... October was kind of a month from hell as my little boy had a bad fall and ended up having to have surgery pinning both his legs near the hip bone. He will make a full recovery but it's been stressful to say the least. I could have waited a few more weeks to take on Christmas, but I was ready to make a change, so... I de-Halloween'd, did some cleaning, located all the necessary "infrastructure" (extension cords, etc.) My son was delighted to come home from school and see the lights up on the mantle. Every time I had to reconnect something, he yelled at me for turning off the Christmas lights. : )




Poor Thanksgiving gets no respect in this house. I am a Christmas freak! I have two full-sized trees, two medium trees, and countless miniature trees. Well, not countless - I've counted them and they are finite. But I just can't remember the number right now.



2) I'm meeting my "Happiness Project" partner tomorrow. Are any of you guys doing this? Or has anyone read the book? Our next project was supposed to be to work on a vision board, but we're behind. I've done these before and I think they are awesome.



3) I have a wine-tasting Thursday night downtown!  Spain at the Palmer House Hilton. Kick ass! Looking forward to hanging out with good friends and learning more about wine.

4) Next week I'm heading to Amish Country for the Dear Jane Retreat! wahoooo! finally! I need a little personal retreat anyway so this will be good. Hopefully, I can get a chunk of sewing done while I'm there too. Are you going?

Tracking Spreadsheets...

Block # of Pieces Tally - I adapted this from someone else's spreadsheet.
It allows you to enter the number of pieces you used for each 4.5" block, triangle and corner kite
and then automatically tallies them, subtotals and totals them. Handy!

Jane's Addicted block tally spreadsheet. This one is a comprehensive tracking tool of each block and every possible detail I could think that might be worth tracking. The spreadsheet tracks blocks started in order by number, name, wave (trip around the world), name of wave, general color grouping, date started, date completed, time to complete, original position, Jane's Addicted position (where the block will be positioned in *my* quilt), foreground fabric #, line, designer and manufacturer, and background fabric #, line, designer and manufacturer, number of pieces, assembly method, and type of block (4.5", triangle, or corner kite).  Next up I will be adding a column for Jane's Addicted block name as I couldn't help but start giving all the blocks my own name. heheh.

The Stash.

Well, it's a fairly serious situation in there. If you're a quilter I know you know I know you know what I'm talking about. There's a large tote of 30s. Another stuffed with Amy Butler and Joel Dewberry and Denise something. There's a bunch of American Jane, some miscellaneous Moda. A little Kaffe - although not as much as I'd like... a smallish, heavy bag of sock monkey coordinates... You're getting the picture.

But the heart, the soul, in the belly of the beast are the civil war reproductions. Ahh, just typing those words fills me with feelings of 'happy tree.' How did I end up with a collection of - wait, whut? something with 'war' in the title? Well, that's a story for another day. Suffice it to say it's quite a large collection and I had a collector's sensibility about collecting these treasures - learning names of manufacturers, designers, lines, and organizing everything by designer and line. Upon closer inspection, I realize the number is double my first estimate of 1000. I think it's got to be closer to 2000 different fabrics. Uh, which is not only enough to achieve my original goal of having 'no repeats' but more like 8 or 9x the number of fabrics I actually need for this undertaking. Yeah okay, maybe I got carried away. As I confessed earlier, it was a genuinely classifiable (certifiable) hoarding situation, no doubt. But as i stood on the brink of starting 'Jane's Addiction' in earnest - something I've been planning for years - I knew the stash would have to be tamed.

...soooo... I spent many many (many) hours this past week going through five big bins' worth of civil war repro scraps, fat quarters and yardage. Since most of it was organized by designer and line and not by color/value, which is what i would need for selecting fabrics for individual blocks, I had a lot of work to do. I worked my way through the bins, sorting by hue and value, and also pulling out the large florals and the high contrast prints I've pretty much decided I'm not going to be able to use... I had to go through the various project totes and pull fabrics from those and deal with finding the odd bag of stash that never quite made it to the mothership - or the piles that fell off the back end of the table... Ooh, there was some good stuff in there. Ok, and I'll admit, I did take some quality time just getting reacquainted with these old friends again... They've been away on a major holiday. Locked up in a castle dungeon more like.










Once I had everything grouped by color and value/hue within the color, and had the oddballs sorted out and banished the uglies and the scratchies, I took a loose count of each grouping to be sure I had enough "medium blues" to cover all the diamond shaped blocks, for example. It was quite a project but even though there are still a lot of unknowns, I feel better prepared now, knowing approximately which blocks are going to be made using a given color group, I can now start making these little puppies. I am starting with Indianapolis in green. Next up will be four stars in yellow.

Side note: if this were a book this would be a sidebar... I'm doing this 'Jane' in a TATW (trip around the world) which means there will be concentric diamonds of blocks that carry both a common pattern theme and are in the same color family (e.g., blocks with circle motifs in pale pink). The 'original' did this in color but not in motif or value so it was harder to decipher that TATW pattern visually. My idea, quite a few years back already, was to reorganize the blocks based on motif and value (light/dark) and then reassign position and color groupings based on that. It took some doing but I achieved that, thankyouverymuch. And yes, that took quite a bit of time but it was definitely a labor of love - or at least an attack of compulsiveness I don't regret. And thank god I saved a few printouts of the design because the dear Jane software (probably user error) did not save my masterpiece! At the same time, I really like the overall color impression of the original so I want to keep it looking somewhat scrappy - not 'too organized,' not 'too clean.' Sounds like a challenge... Can she do it?

The Jane A. Stickle Quilt

So yeah, what's really fueling this whole thang is I'm finally starting on "the quilt." I'm talking about the famous "Jane A. Stickle" quilt aka the "Dear Jane" quilt. It was made by one woman during the civil war and simply, poignantly signed “In War Time 1863. Pieces 5602. Jane A. Stickle.”






The quilt is known for its originality and many, many tiny pieces. Bajillions of people all over the world make reproductions of this quilt so there's a lot of great info and camaraderie out there. It's a community tradition to give your quilt a name. Surprise: mine is called "Jane's Addiction."

The original Jane A. Stickle quilt

225 unique, pieced blocks - no repeats.

• 169 pieced 4.5" square blocks
• 52 pieced triangle and
• 4 pieced corner kites

The intention to make a recreation of this quilt has been there for years. In fact, a few blocks have even been made - mainly because I absolutely couldn't help but to make them. The jane-driven compulsive fabric-hoarding peaked a few years ago already, declined and eventually leveled off. In the meantime, a huge stash of civil war reproduction quilting fabric was accumulated. Binned for longer than I'd like to admit, it's been freshly reorganized by color. ::little old lady adam sandler voice:: "Oh, I love touching my fabwic!" Well, that was embarassing - but honestly, that's how I get.

And of course, I had to redesign the whole layout of the quilt. I love the individual block designs and the overall color of the original, but being all graphic designery and edity all the time I decided what it really needed was to be reorganized by block style, value and color. Three years later... (just kidding). As I am student of 'creative process' I will share photos of that progression at some point. There's a book. There's software. There are 100s of patterns to be printed. There are 1000s of pages of tips and advice to reference. And I haven't even mentioned yet how lucky I feel that my favorite quilt shop finally started a 'Dear Jane' group for those of us who've been wanting to take on this project. Suffice it to say a lot of work has gone into this and I haven't really even started, ya know? But I love this quilt so much and am dying to get up to my neck in it proper. Since this is such a large project I wanted to document it. A lot of people seem to do that and I am getting on board. Block by block I want to take notes and keep track of details (how many pieces, how much time it took, fabric used and method) and other ephemera.

As for scope, I'm not yet sure if I will limit my posts to "Jane's Addiction" but I'd like to think general musings on the pursuit of happiness would be welcomed here as well.

- JanesAddicted.

Begin the Beguine.

I love the scene from 'A River Runs Through It' where the beleaguered home-schooled kid is forced to edit down his essay - again and again... "Again, half as long..." barks the dad. When he finally gets it good enough, he's freed and tears out of the house with fishing gear in hand, running off through the tall grass in the direction of his passion. While no one ever successfully taught me how to write with economy, I can relate to the feeling of keeping your joy and passion at bay. A million must-dos cue up in front of those elusive heart-and-soul projects. Why can't we feel free to dive into what really makes us happy? Why do we allow all the other nonsense to stand in our way?

Well, after years of waaannnntttting to take on this project, and kinda sorta starting it but not really, and perfectionistically planning and tweaking my way out of ever actually making a go of it, I'm really for sure for realsville starting it this time. Yeah, did you notice I didn't commit to finishing it there? : ) but for me, the joy is in the _____________ <--?

Jane-HO!

- JanesAddicted.