Sunday, October 29, 2017

Taming The Chaos

Whew! That was a job. After sorting, inventorying and repacking my sewing patterns and fabrics I'm exhausted! I knew I had a lot of stuff but this is ridiculous. Really. And there's still the attic space with old old fabrics and patterns to sort out. I may just purge most of it. But I'm not ready to go there quite yet. I'm still reeling from this go round.

This is what the studio's sewing area looked like during the count:


According to my Sortly app I have 250 yards (or metres) of fabric there. Plus some extra scraps and remnants that I didn't count. Some of these pieces are quite old - as in decades! Some weren't even purchased by me but acquired from well-meaning friends and family. Most of them have an imagined purpose. A few need to be dyed first. Can you see that a lot of them fall within my usual earthy colour palette?


Browns, greens, rusts, a wee bit of blue, greys and black. There's a lot of white pieces too though I never wear white. I have an uncontrollable compulsion to pop anything white immediately into the nearest dyepot! I've had this affliction since I was a teenager and first discovered the miracle of creating my own colours. What's fashionable or seasonable or "true" colours be damned. Also notice there are very few prints and those are mostly batik and tie-dye or a mottled overdye. Just personal preference. I like to see something of the hand of the maker rather than a more regimented manufactured look. So call me an old hippie. I was actually there. (And I mostly remember it too!)

I also discovered that I use (and wear) knits the most so the majority of these unused fabrics are...you guessed it - wovens! I need to get on that and find more woven patterns that work for me. And speaking of patterns, I've only used approximately 1 out of every 7 or 8 of the 125 in my inventory. Most of my makes are based on my personal blocks and TNTs. I realised this is partly because a new pattern needs a lot of work to fit properly and I'm always afraid it won't look right when I'm done so I tend to fall back on what I know works. Laziness and fear holding me back. Who knew? That and perhaps a hint of FOMO. You know, when you see someone wearing a fabulous make and you want that pattern to make one (only different) too? 

Well, I guess I'm not too afraid of patterns because I just took advantage of a sale on Butterick patterns and some newer Katherine Tiltons are on their way to me. My inventory tells me that I've been sewing more of her patterns lately. (She says, justifying her purchases.) Plus I got a couple of digital patterns too. These are definitely on the sewing list. More on this in another post.

So after a lot of vacuuming and packing away the studio finally looks like this:


You can see two of the pattern bins under the table. The other two are on the opposite side. The fabrics are all either in those 7 boxes under the skylight, scraps in the two big drawers in the old chest beside them, or in the repurposed stereo cabinet under the window:


Now I can get back to sewing the shirt for Thom that I started before I got inspired to make a mess!

I'll sign off now with a few fall photos. The weather has been absolutely lovely for the last several days. True sweater weather. Yay! Gotta enjoy it while it's here before the winter rains set in.





Love the contrasting blue swing and red leaves. Sigh. This time of year is so darn beautiful it makes my heart sing. And I wish autumn lasted longer than just a couple of weeks.

5 comments:

Sharon in Surrey said...

I love knits too. They're so easy to wear, don't need as much adjustment, more forgiving, don't wrinkle as much & just don't need as much finishing especially lingerie fabrics!! I met a woman who got all her clothes MADE for her from the same pattern. She had a comfortable set of pyjamas that she lived in at home & had a pattern drafted from them. Then got several sets of them made in fabrics that worked together & made a working wardrobe that could mix & match. That's the sort of thing I'm drifting into.

Heather said...

Congratulations of your very tidy and organised studio! I'm still moving fabric from bin to bin trying to make sense of it all.

Louisa said...

It didn't stay tidy for long! And I'm doing the same thing. I call it rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

Louisa said...

Ah yes, Sharon! "Comfortable" is the top checkbox on my list right under "fits my body" which is a big part of the comfort level anyway. Mix and match is good too as well as layering possibilities.

Sue @ A Colourful Canvas said...

LOL....rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

Based on your after photo...you've really had a good go at your studio space. I'm impressed. It looks good! More importantly, I hope it feels good!