Creative Space

The craft room/office is coming together nicely. And by coming together, I mean not just a bunch of random boxes strewn throughout.

Yesterday my goal was to get the craft room/office in order so it could be better utilized than a room our female cat uses to hide from everybody and everything that isn’t us. With so many places to conceal herself it was the perfect place. However, we started putting stuff in place and the room is starting to take shape. Well, I mean, the room is square, which is a shape, but beginning to look like people use it for something other than storage.

After figuring placement for both of our filing cabinets (one ended up in the closet) I decided to bring in two of the four remaining bookcases from out of the garage. My plan was to use the large one for fabric storage and display and have my husband use the medium sized one for books and computer related stuff. He says he doesn’t need it, but we’ll see. I won’t complain if he doesn’t.

Setting up the entire room, according to calculations made in my head, should’ve only taken a couple hours. Alas, my brain’s calculator must be off. I will say it is nice to see that, once I started unpacking and refolding the fabric to fit onto the shelves in a somewhat orderly fashion, I realized I don’t have nearly as much as I thought I did. However, then the realization that there are still boxes and my old sewing bag with fabric in them too out in the garage I haven’t brought it. Of course, refolding takes a good amount of time to get all the various sized remnants and yardage into uniform widths for stacking, and I’m sure that is where a majority of my time was spent.

I still have to go through at least two more bags of quilting fabric and then almost all of my upholstery weight fabric before I begin working on the rest of the sewing space. I’m thinking it might be nice to bring in my canvas and denim from the garage too and maybe make some market bags like the one my friend Sarah gave me so I can replace the Crap-Mart reusable bags I end up taking to the grocery store quite embarrassingly. Okay, so if they indeed said Crap-Mart instead of The-Store-That-Must-Not-Be-Named I’d probably use them. Oh, so many ideas getting in the way of what I was setting up my sewing space up for originally! I must tell myself to stop thinking and start quilting.

Stamps or Fabric

I’m torn because of a silly dilemma deciding between two crafts, rubber stamping and quilting. Something tells me one of the two is going to stay boxed up and in the garage.

Okay, so a few years ago I decided to completely overhaul my craft room to make it not only a functional space to actually, well, craft, but also be a guest room that didn’t scare the bejeezus out of our guests. Part of that meant wrangling in my scrapbooking obsession, so I went to IKEA and got a wall cabinet big enough to hold two full-grown adults if you wanted to smuggle them across the border and a stainless steel desk to stamp on, figuring any mistakes could easily be wiped off a metal surface versus a laminated top along with a few storage bins to put the actual items to be scrapbooked in. This looked amazing, with the cabinet filled with rubber stamps and inkpads and pens and glues and pretty much stayed in place unused the entire time we lived there. Oh, I made a few cards here and there or started working on our wedding scrapbook when I’d get inspired to do so, but honestly a part of me got overwhelmed when I realized just how much stuff I wanted to scrapbook I had. A really, really big part of me.

That’s when it hit me. Something about organization curtails my creativity. I mean, I can organize a project as I’m working on it, but if I see everything laid out in front of me ready for the taking, part of the thrill is just not there. I kind of enjoy having to search for what it is I’m looking for, which makes me nervous to instead use the cabinet to hold my fabric stash and put it above the wall where I plan on having the sewing machine here in the house we just moved into. I mean, it’d be a perfect way to contain all those precuts and the typical small yardage I keep on hand, but I know that if I do this I’ll probably end up in the same boat as I did with my scrapbooking stuff. Or will I?

Currently all my fabric, except for the bolts of fabric I have, are in the garage in boxes, for the most part organized into potential projects contained within plastic bags. I’m eager to get it all out, but at the same time, eager to paint the ceiling in the craft room/office white instead of the current blue, which is making the golden hue we painted the walls look dingy. Of course, I’m also eager to get the chickens and all of our fish over here too. Anyway, I suppose I don’t necessarily need to make up my mind just yet as the cabinet is still at the old house, of which the auction was postponed yet again so technically we now have until mid-July to be out, so I guess I should focus on the unpacking process of other things. Of course, the craft room/office really is the last major part besides organizing the garage, but with the garage being the hub of all things unpacked, we really can’t focus on it until we bring in what we want. Then again, we do still need to paint the bathrooms too. Ugh.

Of course, with us currently using the desk as our computer desk, which is great because it is so sexy, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to instead use the cabinet for fabric. Perhaps I can simply organize it in a way that it isn’t really organized. Should I separate by color families or lines? Should I keep all my precuts in one area and yardage on the other side? Or perhaps I should simply shove it all into the cabinet and close the doors and find out what happens. I’m thinking it’ll be a process. Then again, I want the process to be done so I can start sewing again. With so many projects on my mind right now and the inability to work on anything, I’m beginning to get a little stir-crazy.