Destashing

A few months ago, a few people came over to Do Doll Things, and one of them had been organizing and had a car load of fabric (and craft books) for everyone else to pick from--anything left was getting donated on the way home.

The same people are coming over again this weekend, and I've taken it as an opportunity to sort out some cloth that I've haphazardly acquired (mostly via thrift grab bags) that I know I will not use.  No, not even as hypothetical sewing for other people.  I will freely offer this cloth, and then the rest will be donated.

Please note that all those 'bed-in-a-bag' bags were originally the containers for the thrift cloth grab bags.  And there is good stuff in there!  It's just not me. (and the cardboard box on the left is full of patterns to give away.)

And I have a lot of cloth left.  A lot.  The main difference is that it now all fits into the allotted storage spaces.

Yeah that's not pretty, but it's still way better than it was.

The bits inside the table are mostly intended for larger projects, like curtains and patchwork blanket tops, although there are also lengths that currently have no clear use (including some of the cloth chosen by the kiddo for potential Obnoxious Shirts, which he may or may not be interested in any longer.) The suitcase cloth is largely bits that have been sent to me for doll use, as well as cloth from the doll person's destash, and, yes, thrift store grab bag cloth.  I really do have the (possibly deluded) idea that I can sew through enough of this that I can put away the suitcase and work the last bits of this cloth into the dresser that holds the doll cloth I've (mostly) acquired intentionally

Yeah, it's full.  And the box on the left, with the three round stickers, is full of fancy embroidered interior dec samples and vintage handkerchiefs, because, y'know.  Sewing.

Still, it's a nice feeling to be approaching the end of my "three months of no buying cloth or dolls" experiment and be...eliminating cloth...?

Now, to work on using what I do have.

Flighty

So, OK:  I don't do New Year's resolutions  So when I realized that my desire to, like, just stop buying hobby materials (read: dolls and cloth) for a year might feel more possible if I broke it down into three-month chunks, and, at that time, it had already been two weeks since I'd bought dolls or cloth, I decided to go with it.   I have a bit over a month left before the first three month period is over.  And, if I do go back to my old...ah...excessive acquisition modalities, well at least there'll have been three months of not buying every quirky/shiny/interesting thing around.

I thought I'd Make So Much Stuff!!! during this time.  I didn't.  But I'm starting to?  A big hindrance was the fact that the weight I gained in 2017 is looking like it's here to stay--I'm (mostly) OK with my current shape

BUT

Everything I ever sewed, and all of the beloved patterns I had...nope.  And I'd look at all my fabulous me-made clothes hanging in my closet and mourn.  All the work, all the happiness I got from the finished items (the items that didn't make me so happy...those were already gone), and I'd never be able to wear them again.  I also felt like donating them was not the best idea, because...mmm, maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't think a lot of thrift store shoppers in this area are going to be interested in things like side-zip shirts made from vintage patterns and Halloween prints--and be the appropriate size.

I did consider cutting everything apart and re-using the cloth, likely for patchwork, but, honestly.  "More cloth" is not something I need. (see first paragraph.)  So I put out the word on social media: Huge Lot of Quirky Handmade Clothes, Yours For The Cost Of Shipping!  and the one mutual who has a big following reblogged it and hey I mailed them all off yesterday.

And now I can start the adventure of discovery, going through the thrifted patterns I'd accrued in sizes that used to be too large ("I can use these to sew for friends!"  I thought to myself and then never did--although I still might!) as well as re-examining the size ranges of patterns that I've had forever and...uh...and never used...  There hasn't been a Chain Fabric and Craft Store super duper pattern sale since I admitted my need for new patterns, so I haven't bought anything new and I'm not sure if I will?  Because I still have a whole lotta patterns.

And I have way more cloth.  So I need to get sewin'!  I have started a project, using a few yards that someone gave to me.  As usual, I'm deviating from the pattern-as-given on the fly, and tomorrow I hope to sew it all together to see if it works.  Today, though, I embellished

(and I obviously did not iron)

Will I sew a lot this year?  Dunno.  But at least I won't be held back by the idea that I don't need to, because I had all those cute things I already made...just need to lose about twenty pounds first... Well, I mailed off about 20 pounds of those cute me-made things.  So.  Let's go.

So, what to make next?

I was ready last night to jump in to cutting something out, deciding to do an idea I'd had for a while...then realized that the reason I hadn't made it yet was because I hadn't yet prewashed the intended cloth.  It was late, but there was enough time to get it washed and into the dryer (note: we currently live in a HOA-controlled subdivision, clotheslines aren't allowed, sigh.)  I pulled out a stack of vaguely similar color prints and got them all into the washing machine and out of the dryer this morning.

(Picture taken pre-laundering.)

Will I now proceed to use them all for projects in the near future?  Ummm...

But

Whenever I do decide to use them, they'll be ready!

Little Refreshes

So, Tumblr user FallenWithStyle posted a picture of her adorable cat flopped on her ironing board, and I noticed that we have the same iron, which led to follow up pictures of the fortune cookie slips she taped to the iron (no, really, it makes complete sense), which led me to decide that it would be fun to put stickers on my iron.  Which I did today.

And then I decided that, if I wanted to take pictures of this iron in its native habitat, then I really should make a new ironing board cover .  The cover I'd been using was not only stained, but it also didn't fit with my current aesthetic mode and it was just a pillowcase sloppily safety-pinned in place, anyway.  Heh.  So I cut it off in a way that could be used as a pattern and improvised my way into a new, neutral, elasticized replacement with which I'm very happy.  (No pictures of just the cover, though.  That seemed a bit too boring even for me.)

Then, since I had the stickers out, it seemed like a good idea to replace some of the worn and faded old stickers on my serger.  I had, once upon a time, thought about removing all of the stickers, but they've been on so long that the bare plastic is more or less its original color where they were and yellowed where they weren't.  So, hey, since it's splotchy anyway, might as well add more stickers, right?

I'm still working on removing dried paper and adhesive residue where one sticker wrapped around a corner...and then probably a lot more stickers that aren't visible here, because I've learned that paper stickers don't always hold up well--clear plastic and holographic foil stickers are the way to go. *nods*

As long as I was taking a picture of the serger, might as well take a picture of the lockstitch machine.

I thrifted this machine almost three years ago and still adore it.  The bobbin area is very quiet--I tend to think it's out of thread when it's not.  (The noisiest part of it is the badly-designed-attachment of the plate on the handwheel side, which wants to rattle/buzz alarmingly at certain speeds.  That was solved by strategic application of a length of washi tape.)  When the bobbin does start to get noisy, that means it's time to clean out the lint...

And, finally, I took a picture of this just 'cause

It's probably one of my favorite sewing gadgety things.  Does anyone else have one of these?

Andrea's #1 Rule for Mixing Prints

If you sew them together, they go together.

(I have more complicated personal guidelines for choosing which prints I think coordinate well, which I might go into at some point, but, the above is the ultimate rule for me.)

Busy with the sewing *room*

Husband and I decided to swap hobby rooms, exchanging  his gaming books in the odd bedroom upstairs for my sewing and doll stuff in the odd bedroom in the basement.  So now I don't have to be a basement hermit when I sew, yay.

Here's the sewing desk, cheerful by the window, although it's a north-facing window, so there won't ever be a lot of direct sunlight in here, which, ah, is good in terms of keeping things from fading...?  I'm not sure if I'll fill that currently-blank wall with pictures--I certainly have enough that I could fill it, either with lots of small or with one huge, but I kinda like the idea of having one wall not punctured with nail holes.  (There aren't many of those in his house *grin*)

Looking to the left of the space above, you'll see the door to the strangely-large closet and the old display shelves now holding my cloth:

Ooh, that's messy.  Um.  Well, the stuff stacked in front is all destined for eBay, so it will go away. Eventually.  On the other side of this closet is the dresser that holds all my doll-specific cloth, now crowned with the doll photo stage:

...and next to that, just visible at the left edge of the photo, is the file cabinet with my patterns and interfacing and ironing accessories. (On the right are the pictures I mentioned that could fill the blank walls...)

And, lessee, what else...  Oh, yeah, zippers and notions and extra machine feet and serger cones and the like are in various decorative boxes on the bookcases by the sewing machines, along with a few sewing books

but the eye tends not to be drawn to those.

So, now, all I need is to get over this nasty cold and actually want to sew again.  Yay.

Well, here I go

Hi, I'm Andrea/Dolls Ahoy! and, hey, look, I finally started a proper sewing blog.  I plan to make a post showing everything human-size I sewed in 2013, and maybe another post for doll-size stuff (although, probably limiting that to the non-Etsy stuff...), and then write about whatever sewing projects I find myself doing, as well as ramble about sewing stuff in general.  We'll see if it's interesting!