We sing that song a lot at our house when it is time put the toys away because that is what you have to do sometimes. I'm starting to think that I need to sing that song in my craft room on a regular basis as well. Perhaps you are better at this than I am - putting your things away.
For me, that means more than just returning my tools to their proper locations so I can easily find them later. To me, that means making sure that ALL pieces of the project make it back into their box, or bag, or whatever that project is being stored in. I have a not so great habit of putting it on the desk to put away "later". Hopefully you are not the same.
It also means that whatever leftover fabrics I have from that project are put away (if there are substantial pieces left) or are cut up into usable scrap sizes. This is a new one for me and this came about because I have been exposed to Bonnie Hunter who makes wonderful use of her scraps. If you haven't checked her out and would like to you can do so here.
I have been trying piecemeal to get those scraps cut up into usable sizes, but to be honest it is a boring job and it doesn't feel like I'm getting very far. I will continue to soldier on, but I do have a rather large Rubbermaid tub to get through. It would make things so much easier if I would just do so at the end of each project rather than trying to do 10 years of project leftovers at once. I'm sure one day I will be caught up...just not yet and probably not before Christmas.
For me, "later" never really comes and then when I do want to spend a good amount of time in there trying to get something accomplished I have work to do before I can get to the fun work. It doesn't make my crafting very enjoyable when that is looming or when I shove the needed work over to "later" just so I can go in and do the fun. It is helpful to do your clean up.
Hopefully yours looks better than mine, or you have better habits than I have. If we have a clean/picked up work space it makes finding time to do our crafting much easier and it helps when we have all our tools in their places so we know where to find them when they are needed. If you are struggling like I am, let's make a pact right now. Tonight spend 15-20 minutes in your crafting area just picking up. Try not to get sidetracked into nostalgia town (I've spent many unproductive hours there as well) and stay on task. I bet in that 15-20 minutes we can get more done than we thought we could. Deal? Let me hear from you.
I suppose that is why my craft room looks the way it does, because I don't always take that time and not just after finishing every project, but also after doing any work in there at all. I really need to take a page from the preschool teacher...
Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Everywhere
Clean up, Clean up, Everybody do your share.
It's time to put the work away, the work away the work away
It's time to put the work away to have a goodly time.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Working out the kinks.
These last two weeks seem to be offering opportunities to work out the kinks. If you have been to the shop during our daytime hours, you will know that there are two littles that come with me. That means that some days are better than others. Thankfully our customers are wonderful and seem to enjoy interacting with the littles while I make adjustments to the machines or quilt. This is also why I normally book one at time during the daytime hours. I gave it a shot for two renters during the day with the littles and we did make it through. A minor victory for me.
It also seems like Mother Nature has been working the kinks out in the weather...I think that she has gotten the kinks of summer all worked out now. Hopefully this 90+ degree heat will soon give way to fall.
Speaking of working out the kinks, are you in the habit of doing a practice block? If not, it may be to your benefit to grab some scraps and try out the block before you dig in to the fabrics specially bought for your project. I know that may seem counter intuitive at times. After all, we know what we are doing right? We've done this before haven't we? Sometimes though, even those things that we think are simple may not work out as we had thought they originally might.
We just finished up a lovely quilt for a customer - and by that I mean that we did the piecing and assembling of the quilt top. The name of that quilt is Snake River and you can find it in Judy Martin's Log Cabin Book. (If you haven't seen this book, you should - there are a lot of great layout ideas as well as patterns) I mean, it's a log cabin block. Why on earth would we need to do a practice for such a simple block. Well, I'll tell you. Sometimes what they put in the book isn't everything that you need to know about making that block. In the example of Snake River we quickly discovered that we would need to trim the block after adding each of the sides to make sure it would stay true to the finished size. Then as we were assembling the border we discovered there was an error in the cutting directions (fortunately making the piece longer rather than shorter) and we went online to find the correction.
Please don't think that I'm picking on Judy Martin. She designs some spectacular stuff and I still plan on using her patterns and just because I am mentioning "difficulties" here it is not the fault of Judy or her designs. Truthfully this type of thing can happen with any quilt pattern you are making. Thus the practice block. It made a lot of sense for us to make one first so we could be sure that we had our own heads on straight as we started the project where we could watch how pressing went and some cutting and finally how all the pieces really fit together.
If you are about to embark on a new project it might be of interest to you to make a practice block to work out the kinks.
It also seems like Mother Nature has been working the kinks out in the weather...I think that she has gotten the kinks of summer all worked out now. Hopefully this 90+ degree heat will soon give way to fall.
Speaking of working out the kinks, are you in the habit of doing a practice block? If not, it may be to your benefit to grab some scraps and try out the block before you dig in to the fabrics specially bought for your project. I know that may seem counter intuitive at times. After all, we know what we are doing right? We've done this before haven't we? Sometimes though, even those things that we think are simple may not work out as we had thought they originally might.
We just finished up a lovely quilt for a customer - and by that I mean that we did the piecing and assembling of the quilt top. The name of that quilt is Snake River and you can find it in Judy Martin's Log Cabin Book. (If you haven't seen this book, you should - there are a lot of great layout ideas as well as patterns) I mean, it's a log cabin block. Why on earth would we need to do a practice for such a simple block. Well, I'll tell you. Sometimes what they put in the book isn't everything that you need to know about making that block. In the example of Snake River we quickly discovered that we would need to trim the block after adding each of the sides to make sure it would stay true to the finished size. Then as we were assembling the border we discovered there was an error in the cutting directions (fortunately making the piece longer rather than shorter) and we went online to find the correction.
Please don't think that I'm picking on Judy Martin. She designs some spectacular stuff and I still plan on using her patterns and just because I am mentioning "difficulties" here it is not the fault of Judy or her designs. Truthfully this type of thing can happen with any quilt pattern you are making. Thus the practice block. It made a lot of sense for us to make one first so we could be sure that we had our own heads on straight as we started the project where we could watch how pressing went and some cutting and finally how all the pieces really fit together.
If you are about to embark on a new project it might be of interest to you to make a practice block to work out the kinks.
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