Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

So, I have been doing quite a bit of sewing lately. While I do like to keep all my “sewing crap” organized, I have so much of it (a new notion? I must have it!) and the very process of what to do with extra needles, buttons, thread, elastic, zippers, interfacing, seam rippers, bobbins, extra presser-feet, thimbles, wax, chalk, snaps, closures, trim, seam binding, scissors, pins, cutting boards, irons, ironing boards, etc become quite the chore indeed. Right now, I feel like everything is a delicate balance. Like,m if I remove this before that, the whole mess will come crashing down. The only benefit is that I know where almost everything is, except for when I don’t. Last weekend my sewing came to a crashing halt when I was unable to find a pattern! So I did a stop-gap measure where I did a mini-clean, but look, these pictures really do speak for themselves!

First, the obligatory machine photos

My Platinum 730, which I love dearly and hope to have the rest of my sewing life.

My new, cute wee serger. I have heard it debated that this one doesn’t even “qualify as a serger” because it doesn’t do the coverstitch, but I don’t need a coverstitch. This s15 does exactly what I wanted it for, to finish my seams and it does it beautifully and I only had to spend 340 USD to do it. If I decide I need a coverstitch machine when I grow up, I’ll buy one.

So, as you see mu sewing machine and serger sit right next to each other on my work table. While I notice that most people seem to have their machines adjacent to each other or across from each other, I really like this setup. I have a bit less space on my work table, but the serger sitting on the front corner leaves room (as you can see in the pic) for all my iron supplies to fit right behind it, out of the way.

As you can see from this picture. the basket holds my machine manuals, and my pattern holding area. The pattern holding area contains patterns that: I am currently working on, want to work on “next”, want to work on but honestly will never get around to.

This is where I store all my thread. Yes, that is all the thread I own. I am now officially at just-over-full capacity and I am banned from buying anymore thread.

So this is just behind my sewing machine. I bought this big, divided box to hold all my smaller sewing notions. It stores all my machine needles, my needle stash, patter weights, thimble, wax, chalk, fray check, seam gauges, rulers, seam rippers, presser feet, and empty bobbins. I have a wee tray inside my sewing machine that stores feet and bobbins, but some of my feet are too big and I only store threaded bobbins in the sewing machine. I really love this box, but I have a hard time keeping it tidy. I love that it keeps my heavily used notions near, and I don’t have to scramble around to change a needle or whatever. I could get rid of a few things in it, like those pattern weights that I never use.

This is a scary picture! This is the rest of my work table. Ugh. If we just restrict ourselves to the surface only, there is my “dangerous box” which is the black and white open box, where I store my scissors, rotary cutter and pins. The white basket is where I store my current project notions, things like the right thread, my silk tracing thread, buttons, zippers, trim, etc. Then I will have other stuff on there also. Like the mending I need(ed) to do, a small jar of hand cream, my crotch/waist curve, fabric scraps, princess tiara, pincushion, trim bags, etc.

Now, for the really scary, before and after photos. I was really going to go all out and move everything around, but then I realized I was planning on moving my sewing area into the “cold” corner of the room, I quickly changed my mind and did light duty moving.

First, the mess

Are you horrified? I am and was! I cannot believe I was in that for so long. Like I said, I didn’t really get as much done as I wanted, hopefully this spring I’ll still have some of this manic energy left and I can finish the job!

After the purge:

So much better!

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