Finish it up Friday

I had a good week of finishes, some sewing related and some not. It’s funny how some weeks just come together, while others… well, they almost seems to fall apart! Except for the fresh snow that is still falling outside, (hello! It’s after 10pm and it’s the end of April!!) this week has been a good one. (I’m linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts)

I made a floor pillow for Grace and gave it to her for her 9th birthday. She really like it! Part of the top, where the Yo-yo;s are, came undone and needed to be stitched back together. Which is just fine, except…. she turned 10 this January. And I just now got around to fixing the silly thing!

Months ago I started to organize my scraps. I began to cut things down to 10” squares, 5” squares, 2.5” strips, and 2.5” square. I got as far as the blue and green. The rest of the scrap lived in containers on our counter until this week. I got sick of seeing them, and so made colored scarp bags for all of the pieces that are too small to make into 5” squares (‘cause really, when do I ever use 2.5” squares?!).

Don’t they look all pretty and organized? The cream cabinet in the back there is my sewing desk, and these bags live in there under the drawers, in the lower part of the desk that you can’t see. The large-enough-to-be-cut-but-too-small-for-a-bolt pieces are in a 3-drawer tower to the left of the desk. I forgot to take a picture.

From the other side…

They live in these cabinets, with the red, pink, orange, and yellow on the left side (the plastic bin is where the 10” and 5” squares live).

And the green, teal, blue, and purple live on the right side, with the black, grey, white and brown on the bottom.

At the same time as I was starting to organize my scraps, I organized my larger pieces. They lived in a closed entertainment center, wrapped up in mini bolts. While this was a much better solution then what I was doing, I began to realize that I’m still not seeing all of the potential of what I have. While I was thinking about what I could do, the mess of our games caught my eye (we housed them on top of the book shelf). It occurred to me that I could switch the games into the cabinet and bring out my fabric to the top of the shelf.

Now I see all that I have, every time I sit in the living room. I’m hoping I’ll actually use it! FYI: there is absolutely NO designer fabric there. It’s all various fabrics and sheets. Hey, it’s called “using what you have and buying what you can afford”, right?

The children finished up their spelling books this week. 3 more weeks to go until we are done with school this year! Malachi will still have some of his Reading left to do, about 10 lessons, but that’s all since he’s been done with his math book for about a month now. Next year, I’ll have a 6th grader (Maacah), 5th grader (Grace), 4th grader (Isaac), 2nd grader (Malachi), 1st grader (Nathaniel), kindergartener/preschooler (Damaris), a toddler (Caleb), and a baby (Mr. What’s-his-name), Whew!!!.

Now, if Winter could just finish up and go away…..!