Well hello, readers. It's been a while, huh?
I've been going through a reassessment of sorts lately. It started with my disaster of a sewing area. Denise of The Blue Gardenia asked me months ago to be a part of her lovely "Sewing Spaces" series, and I tried to work up the nerve to let it all hang out and show my sewing space as it truly is. I couldn't muster the courage, because that room is a PIT OF DESPAIR:
(And this, dear readers, is AFTER a little picking up.)
Is it a wonder that I hardly get any sewing done at all? When I do carve out some time to sew, my process is something along the lines of 1) make room on cutting table and around sewing machine, 2) spend half an hour looking for essential implement, 3) reach end of sewing time. Repeat process again in two weeks.
For a couple of years I was under the delusion that I could sew my way to freedom -- just bust through that stash, get it to a manageable size, and then organize. Ha! A backasswards approach if ever there was one. See, I am a sucker for the deal -- the fabric store mystery bundle, the eBay lot, the thrift store score. And so I've accumulated quite a bit of fabric that I never deliberately picked out. Considering that in a good YEAR I sew four pieces, I have more fabric than I'll sew in a lifetime. I have WAY too many patterns. Sure, I'll always have a collection, but I literally have hundreds I'm not interested in. The sewing room purge has begun (slowly), with the ultimate aim being to have a space I actually enjoy and use.
The website Discardia has really influenced a lot of my thinking about this. There are a lot of "enjoy life more with less" websites out there, but Discardia was the first I had seen that acknowledged that an avalanche of information and ideas can be just as hard to deal with as a house full of stuff. That in addition to focusing on keeping what you use/getting rid of what you don't, you should evaluate all that "stuff" in terms of what you want to be doing.
I'm an information and internet junkie. And just like Dinah of Discardia, I can go from just reading about someone's experience -- whether it be in sewing, travel, writing or something else -- to assuming that I need to do it, too. Look, here's a blogger draping a pattern and drafting a skirt block -- why am i just using a plain old pattern? I must make my own bias tape! Take up knitting! Make a bra from scratch! And, dammit, I should write a book about it while I'm at it!
That's what makes some of the fabric so hard to let go of: the idea each piece represents. How many times have I looked at a length of fabric and imagined the garment I would make -- and the person I would be in it? But for me it's hit the point of too much. I need to narrow my choices and get rid of the stuff that I'm not going to sew. Life's too short for bad fabric!
But my loss is your gain -- yes, there's a fabric giveaway in the works! Details later this week!