Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Biting off more than I can chew...

Or, 'Whatever Made Me Think This Was Restful?'

For those who are joining us late, I'm spending as much time as possible at home, supposedly resting up and recovering from mononucleosis.

However, I don't feel particularly ill. I just have no stamina, and an annoying low-level sore throat.

I'd be better off if I were miserably sick. At least I wouldn't be tempted to work beyond my strength level.

But.

Now, I have been puttering about in the sewing room. As in, the last day I sat down at the machine late last week, I sewed the continuous lap on a sleeve. I didn't press it over and topstitch it down, I just sewed it on. That was all I could manage.

But my recent fabric acquisitions have been filling up all the available space in the sewing nook. It has been a while since I swatched and cataloged and put away...so I thought, Hey, that's just sitting at the table with some scissors and index cards; I can do that without expending too much energy!

So, little by little I pulled fabric out of the cabinet that I have down there. I pulled fabric out of boxes that were making it difficult to access the ironing board. I *didn't* get the fabric in box on the sun porch where my cutting table is...I'm still under the delusion hopeful that I can get something made from it soon.

Turns out it's been something like THREE YEARS since I last cataloged my fabric. I was slack-jawed when I saw the pile that I have:















I'm astonished and chagrined that I have so much fabric piled up...and now I had to do something with it.

Now, when we moved into this house I claimed the near end of the attic over the garage as my fabric storage area. I had everything arranged neatly, and I could find stuff.

But about 2 years ago, we re-roofed the house and My Sweet Baboo installed a skylight over my sewing nook...and the reflective tube passed through the eave space behind my fabric storage. He moved all my fabric stuff to other areas of the attic so he could access the eaves, and after the skylight was installed, well, things didn't get put back in any kind of order, and all kinds of other stuff was mixed in with my stash. It was depressing.

So, I had the bright idea that, since I have all this new stuff that needs to be organized in with the old stuff, AND the attic needs a good cleaning anyway, the guys in the family could bring the stash bins downstairs, I can slowly file away all my new stuff and give everything a good shaking out. AND, whilst all that is out of the attic, there's room to do some cleaning/purging of stuff up there to make room for, well, stuff that actually needs to be up there that isn't (just an aside...oh, to have a basement...).

Anyway. They brought the stash bins downstairs last night. I'd forgotten how much stuff was there...



Obviously, some of the mixed-in stuff got brought down, too, but not much. This is about 25 years of fabric accumulation....maybe more, actually, as a bit is from my Grandmother's stash.

Aside from the emotional impact of seeing all these dreams and hoped for projects, which is probably another post, whatever made me think I could do this while I'm recuperating from mono?

But it DOES need to be done.

Sigh. I think I'm going to be looking at that pile in the living room for waaaayyyy longer than I'd like.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, that's why I leave mine out so that now that it no longer fits into the fabric closet, it can slap me in the face every day! Good luck with getting it all sorted but seriously take it easy...mono is nuthin to sneeze at!

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