bag beginnings

I've started a new project!  I'm going to make a diaper bag using Joel Dewberry's newest line, Notting Hill.

After scouring the internet for the perfect diaper bag pattern, I settled on a Joel Dewberry pattern, too: the Pockets Aplenty Diaper Bag.  It's not exactly perfect.  I wanted something a little bigger and with more inside pockets.  But this one looks really good and I'm sure it will work.


I've never made a bag before, and it's a little intimidating.  I completely love this fabric, though, and the satisfaction of carrying something I love every day is plenty of motivation to make me face the challenge! 

Da-da-dah! The After photos!

I did it, internet!  I let the shame of having terrible Before pictures of a horribly messy sewing/yarn room motivate me to clean up and achieve a perfect(-ish) After state!  And I did it within the month, too.

Take a tour:

I organized and stored all my fabric into tubs, and I put all my patterns in the basket.  They're not really organized, but they're all in one spot, and fairly easy to flip through.  The yarn on top is Stylecraft acrylic that I'm slowly using for a blanket. 

I pulled out all my yarn and organized it as I put it back, bulky on the left to lace weight on the right.  I threw out a few old things, and weeded out. 

I pulled out a little side table I got from goodwill a few months ago and set up a winding station!  No more taking the swift down and putting it up on the ironing board, shaking everything off it while I'm winding.  Speaking of the ironing board, look what's on it!  Just the iron!  Aha!  Now, the key of organization is Know Thyself, and I know that stuff will pile up eventually.  But I can pile it up on the winding table, not the ironing board.

For months, I've been ripping things out of magazines and saving special cards, wanting to put them on my bulletin board.  For some unexplainable reason, instead of pinning them up, I've been storing them in a box below my table.  What?  How long does it take to pin something up?  That's the whole point of a bulletin board--easy access to items you want before you.  So I pinned them up.

And if you're thinking that looks like a brand new sewing machine, you're right!  My parents very generously bought me a new Janome for my birthday.  More on that later.

There's one thing you will not see: the closet.  No one will see it.  If you open it, you will be buried.  But whatever.  The rest of the room is spectacular.  I'm ready to go!  Bring it, 2013. 

Holy Complete Mess, Batman!

I'm doing something very brave.  I'm posting before pictures on the internet without any after pictures to immediately counterbalance their horribleness.  I'm doing this for the accountability, people.  So here it is: the modern world's messiest sewing room.

Please, stick with me!  Don't click away in disgust and horror!

You know when you're on vacation and you see a gorgeous vista and you try to take a picture to capture it all and the grandeur is reduced to something sort of uninspiring?  The same thing is happening in these pictures.  Trust me, in person, it feels like this room is going to eat you before you'll ever be able to fight your way out. 

I blame 75% of this mess on Christmas.  In addition to extra-intense sewing and crafting, we used the sewing room as a catch all for random stuff as we were cleaning the rest of the house.  This is not my normal, acceptable level of slightly creative clutter.  This is code red craziness. 

This is clearly fabric abuse. 

I had a thought that I should take pictures before cleaning this up, so I could do a before and after post.  But I've done that before, and you know what happens?  Things get better, but I never really get to a beautiful "after" point.  At best, I get to the "in progress" stage.  So I had a brainflash.  I should post the before pictures to motivate me into actually getting to the after pictures.

My game plan is to make the timer on my phone my new best friend.  Since this is all so overwhelming, I'm breaking it down into 25 minute cleaning sessions.  Twenty-five minutes isn't even half an hour!  Less than half an hour is totally doable.  (See the mind games at work?) 

I've already started by going through all my fabric, refolding it, and stashing it into three bins: big cuts, small cuts/garment left-overs, and quilting/crafting fabric.  I also have a bag of muslin fabric.  So I'm headed toward that after picture!  Watch this space. 

Hello, deep end. Mind if I sit down?

Woah.  Pinterest.  I finally found it.  And kow I know what people have been talking about!  It's simultaneously overloading my brain (so many inspiring things!) and providing enormous mental relief (so many inspiring things that I don't have to try to remember locations of!).  Last night I was so hyped on beautiful images, I couldn't sleep.

One of the things I'm committing to this year is our home.  I'm tired of living in a place that looks like an Ikea yard sale.  We need a style.  We need some color.  We need some furniture, unless you count wooden TV trays and $25 Office Depot printer stands furniture.  But here's the leap I've never been able to make: it costs money to upgrade from "dorm room practical" to "adult style."  Yes, Crate & Barrel has amazing items for every room in the house.  But really, we can only afford actual crates and barrels.  How do people afford to make their houses stylish and still pay for things like ... everything else?

I'm slow at this sort of thing, but Pinterest is speeding up the learning curve considerably.  Example: we need a TV stand/entertainment center.  Do we have $400 for a new one?  No, and they're all uggo anyway.  So I started wondering if we could maybe retrofit a second-hand dresser as a TV stand.  Pinterest, what do you think?

 

Wow!  Okay, so now I'm obsessed with finding a dresser and painting it.  And covering our brownish couch with a clean slipcover.  And finding more furniture to paint.  And making curtains and pillows.  Looky!

 

Through the magic of the internet, these are on their way to me as we speak.  

Hmm.  Apparently, knitting is my gateway drug to full on crafting.  I resisted it for a long time, but sewing was a chink in the armor.  Now with Pinterest, I'm all in.