Shoveling out the Sewing Room

If you have been reading this blog lately, you know that we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market.  De-cluttering, re-organizing...and some of it is looking fabulous.  The kitchen cabinets, for example.

Have you been waiting for the part where I cleaned out the third floor, which is my sewing/painting/craft area?

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

The word clean usually does not apply to that area.  But I have been valiantly trying to find the floor.  Actually, the sewing room is not too bad, because I re-organized it a couple years ago.  I just need to get all the projects I have worked on since then off the floor!

Below is a storage area for fat quarters in the cubbies, hand-dyed fabric in the drawers, little cut pieces in the fabric boxes, and some miscellaneous stuff that needs to be organized better.

I probably need to take down the design wall with this unfinished scary lady's face! She got started during a Pamela Allen class when some of us decided to make a fearless woman portrait in honor of Pamela.  But... don't want to frighten any possible future occupants of this room!

It always makes me happy to see this belt hanger on the back of the door with colorful fibers hanging there, ready to embellish some postcard or journal.  It's a little sparse right now, since I have been trying to buy less and use up more.

I probably will have to paint over the stenciled hearts on the door to the other upstairs room.  I will wait until the meeting with our realtor to see if it has to go. 

Behind the cheerful door is a terrible mess.  I hate to show it to you!  I never cleared off my cutting table, and it is a repository of many sewing, painting, and crafting projects.  Somewhere under there is a jacket that I partially completed in a Karen Eckmeier class several years ago.

And my art table somehow works for me, as I can totally ignore clutter, such as all the jars and tubes of various paints and media, but I need to hide most of it away.  I really can't put my feet under the table because of all the stuff down there.  Really, how could anything pretty come out of this mess?

I am feeling a terrible need to do something creative.  As I have been carrying things back and forth between the two upstairs rooms, I have allowed myself to do a little journaling.  I always have lots of different journals in progress. 

This one is a tiny sketchbook.  My granddaughter Lily scribbled lots of the pages with crayons when she was about three.  I then tried to make some of the scribbles into pictures.  On this one I used colored pencil over the crayon, and then applied a layer of Quinacridone Gold watercolor paint.

I purchased the book Stash & Smash: Art Journal Ideas by Cindy Shephard recently. 

One of her ideas is to take paper from your junk mail, paint it, and use it to make a colorful journal.

So, between picking up projects off the sewing room floor, I have been painting some magazine pages and junk mail to make a scrap paper journal.  This page is one of Helen Kelley's quilting diagrams from Quilters Newletter Magazine with some watercolor paints on top.

This painting project is lots of fun, and super quick.  You can take window envelopes from your junk mail, add some paint, and then use them in your journal to highlight something from the next page.

Don't know when the journal will ever get put together, but at least I am splashing some paint around!

Well, you can see I still have a ton of work to do.  But I am still trying to exercise at the Wellness Center and walk the dog each day.  Kasey got her summer shave while we were at the beach.  None too soon, because like the rest of the east coast we are experiencing a terrible heat wave. 



Tomorrow is my birthday, and we are heading for the hills.  We have some things to do before we can get our building permit for the addition to the mountain cabin.  But mainly, I want to get away from the heat and sit by the creek!  (And get away from that mess on the third floor!)  And celebrate that I am old enough to start getting Social Security after five decades of paying in to Uncle Sam!