Declutter: baby steps

I must quote my favorite organizing guru, FlyLady:
"Your house didn't get messy in a day, and it won't get clean in a day either."

(My Sweetie says Weight Watchers has a similar saying about how long it took the weight to get there in the first place.)

I am continuing my hour a day of decluttering the house-I-don't-currently-live-in.  The garage sale pile continues to grow.  This week's decluttering zone is the Master Bedroom.  You would think, for a house I haven't lived in for more than a year, there wouldn't be any of my stuff in the master bedroom.  You would be wrong.  I ventured into the closet today.  Items that are now gone: dark green shoe polish; a black velvet blazer I have never worn; 2 Halloween costumes; a flannel sheet that doesn't fit any bed in the house; and on it goes...

I invoked the above quote at the end of my hour: I am often so excited about the progress I am making that I am tempted to move into other rooms, to open more drawers and cabinets, to go out to the *gasp* garage.  But that is mission creep.  I am learning to identify when my clear thinking and feelings of success lead me to try and take on too much.  I start out with a good idea, but it grows and grows until it is just too much of a good thing.

I found one intriguing box in the garage but decided, "I can work on it another day."  Yay!  No mission creep.  Just slow, steady progress.  Baby steps, so I don't burn out on this.

County Fair Update: let your Goals be your Guide

I read a different kind of organizational book recently.  It was Getting Organized in the Google Era, by Douglas C. Merrill and James A. Martin.  One of the themes that came through loud and clear was to let your goals be your guide. 

I kept this in mind as I was working this weekend on restyling my wedding dress.  I am trying to make two items from the dress and leftover fabric scraps (I made said wedding dress, way back in the 80's).  This is a significant constraint, as there isn't an endless supply of fabric, and my two intended items (a skirt and a throw pillow) both require large swaths of it.  I realized that plans for the throw pillow had it turning into a mish-mash of scraps that wouldn't really be pleasing, and I was getting frustrated with trying to balance fabric needs for competing interests.  Then the little mantra repeated itself in my head: let your goals be your guide.  What *are* my goals here?  Do I really need to make two things from this wedding dress?  Assuming I still want to make a throw pillow, what goal do I have for how it looks?

So, the goal for the pillow: show off and preserve some of the construction details from the original garment.  There was a nice lace finish at the neckline; the same piece of lace will be prominent on the front of the pillow.  Ditto for lovely embroidered button-loops; that will become the pillow's closure in the back.  Having a clear goal made this process go much more smoothly.

Now I just have to decide whether to try and update the pillow's dated color (eighties apricot!) with my favorite edge finish: giant piping!  Any piping recommendations for a color that will go with pastel orange and help bring it into this century?

Time on my mind

After the morning I had, it's a wonder I ever get anything done at all...
I spent two hours making a picnic lunch.  (Two hours?!)  This lunch consisted of:
egg salad
cucumber slices vinaigrette
oven-baked potatoes

Mmm, yummy potatoes.




So, at the end of this two-hour kitchen-based black hole, I stopped to assess what it is that made a simple lunch take so darn long.  Was it the ADD-brain going into hyperfocus?  I don't recall being so "in the zone" while I was cooking that I lost track of time.

Was it mission-creep?  This is my perennial problem with sewing: I start one project, get excited about a related sewing project, and end up splitting my time and attention among two or more projects as a result (thus, the four 3 sleeve-related alterations I have going on simultaneously).  Okay, so there was a little mission-creep here: the only dish I was going to make was the egg salad; while looking for some veggies to put in it, I discovered the cucumber looking sad and figured this was its last day.  Also, the potatoes were a late addition.  *But* I stopped myself from adding a pepper-based dish to the mix.  By the time I was thinking about chopping up the peppers, I realized how late it was getting, and consciously decided not to go there.

And...
there was quite a bit of plain, old-fashioned multi-tasking at work in making this a 2-hour ordeal.  Our brains are not suited to multi-tasking.  My brain especially is not served by being split among activities, and yet I get so scattered in my thinking that I end up flitting ineffectively between household activities on a regular basis.  So, along with the cooking, I did a load of laundry (and threw half of it in the dryer and hung up the other half to dry).  I unloaded the dishwasher.  I checked email.  I made myself breakfast and ate it.

Oh well.  The picnic lunch was very tasty.

Close, but not quite finished

Here is the quilt for my bed.  I'm excited about my progress, and really want to be able to claim that I'm "almost done".

But really, although I have done much work, and I have 5 beautiful pieced 18-by-77-inch panels sewn together, there is hard work left.  One of my least favorite things is to sew long seams with lots of points to match.  And thus, I am worried that I will find reasons to avoid sewing those 77-inch seams.  What will become of my almost-quilt?  Will it languish?

I attended a Webinar for adults with ADD recently.  The topic was Follow Through.  The facilitator talked about the stages of projects, and how we can enjoy various parts of a process (the dreaming-about-it  and planning-it phases really catch and hold my attention) but stumble somewhere along the way and end up not finishing what we start.  Yep, I know that's me.

I even have to confess that Dear Son's duvet cover is not-quite-finished.  I blogged too soon: I have buttonholes to make and buttons to sew on.  (Guess what I don't like to do?  Buttonholes.  And pretty much anything involving had sewing.)

So, I must be cautious, lest either of these projects cross over from WIP into UFO territory.  One strategy I have used in the past is to sew difficult portions with other people: take my stuff over to a friend's house, or save those tasks for my monthly Stitch-n-Bitch group at Something to Crow About.  Having people around makes me focus less on the distaste I have for a particular step.  I can talk and laugh (and eat!) and distract myself from tedious portions. 

All things go better with friends.

Good Enough (sleeve redesign)

So, I'm practicing the art of saying "no".  My sleeve redesign project from a Value Village blouse has turned into an un-design instead.

Before (left) and after.  All I did was remove the decorative band that gathered the sleeve.  It was cute, but made me unable to raise my arms.  I had some grandiose idea of a sleeve redesign.  It was going to be fabulous...

But I had a friend help me gain perspective.  "You know the cutest sleeve you could have on that blouse?" she asked.  Tell me.  "Any sleeve you could wear tomorrow."

And so an item in the sewing basket gets an early parole.  I'll wear it tomorrow.  And it will be cute.

DIY Flowchart

My daughter posted a DIY Reality Check flowchart on her blog.  I wish I could re-post it easily here, but I'm not taking the time right now to figure out how to do that. (My easy idea didn't work. Sorry. You can click the link.)

Here's the point that stuck in my mind - the instructions:
1. Make a list of all the projects you're considering
2. Run each one through the flowchart
3. Cross off projects that fail

I worry that my project-acquisition is a bit out of control right now.  Too many ideas.  Too much compulsion to try and do everything.  At once.

I put a box of sewing projects/ideas into the garage, thus taking them *out*  of the sewing area.  I know I do much better with a clean work area, but usually fall into materials encroachment as multiple projects present themselves and then take up residence on the desk or table.

It's clean right now.  That's a start.

Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

Went to the Outdoor Quilt Show in Sisters, Oregon yesterday.  My first time; went with buddies from Something to Crow About (my home-away-from-home quilt shop).  At this 35th annual showing, there were over 1,500 quilts on display.  I know we didn't see all of them, but we spent most of the day seeing many, many quilts.  I took 168 pictures (and I am not a picture-taker!)

My favorite quilt?  Too many to narrow it down like that, but here are the top few, with the reasons why...

Tumbling blocks.  A pattern I have always had a fondness for.  When seen from afar, I thought the blocks might have featured photographs, which to me would have made it perfect.  But, the bordered portions of the blocks were fussy-cut from wildlife-themed fabric.  Although the wildlife isn't my cup of tea, I could picture it with another theme: the sea, or "fun with Dick and Jane" type nostalgia prints.

 It may seem like I'm on a wildlife kick here, but really the stag head doesn't inspire me.  Rather, the setting and the way the background geometry and color provide interest.  Maybe a mermaid or Grecian statue in the lower corner?

 OK, maybe this is my favorite from the whole show.  It's got the Mariner's Compass in the center, and extends to a fabulous Lone Star surrounding it.  Plus some Flying Geese, just to keep my geometry-lovin' self really happy.  The colors are not quite my favorite, but definitely very pleasing in this quilt.

 I haven't worked with Asian prints, but am fascinated by them and attracted to them all the same.  (Son's quilt, as it is currently envisioned-but-not-started, is to be black/white/red with Asian prints.)  I really like the slanted borders here.  And the fact that no actual curves are needed to create them means that I can use this idea in one of my quilts.  Bonus!

Another quilt of Asian prints, this time in a design I had not seen before, Shadow Box.  Saw several Shadow Box quilts, but the large rectangles (all the others were squares) as well as the Asian prints made this one stand out for me.