This isn’t quite as exciting for y’all as you didn’t see the “Before.”
This morning, I took all the fat quarters out of this drawer and took them down onto the kitchen table for my family to choose which fabrics they wanted me to use for their masks. When I brought the stash back up to my office, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to restore order in what had become an extremely dysfunctional drawer.
Over the last couple of years, as I’ve been getting Sew Sampler boxes and other things but not having time to do much with them, this upper drawer got stacked. The few times I rummaged through the fat quarters themselves they’d gotten every-which-way and I’d not been good about putting them back systematically.
Now they’re separated and sorted by color again within their categories, as they used to be: batiks in the far left; regular cotton fabrics on the far right; and a few collections that I wanted to keep together plus neutral batiks in the center. Much easier to use. I also sorta-kinda took a pot-shot at cleaning up the drawer below it so at least I can open and close it now. But the only help for that drawer is to actually use a bunch of the scrap strips, jelly rolls, and charm packs that are crammed in that one. Now that I’m back to sewing, I have hope!
In other news, I’ve spent most of the week in EQ8 finding or drawing the blocks from the Eleanor Burns GoCube Sampler book that came with my AccuQuilt. The blocks were super-easy to draw as they’re all based on traditional grids. I just had to move lines around from one block to the next. Now I’m just doing the tedious work of importing them into my Favorites library so I have them ready for easy and fast quilt design. I’m hoping to have all of that done by the end of the weekend.
Meanwhile, I scanned into my fabric library one of the sets of fat quarters I’d rediscovered, and played with designing a small baby quilt/playmat with them, using some of the Eleanor Burns sampler blocks I already had in there. I went for something that would be really fast to put together, and it turned out kind of adorable. I’m ready to rock n’ roll on this cutie!
Look, ma, no gray!
Off-topic, I finally bit the bullet and did my own in-home hair dye job this weekend. I have vivid memories of my Mom doing her own hair when I was young. I hated the smell, and I could see what a mess it was for her to do, so I’ve always avoided it like the plague. When I started having my own hair colored, I was stylist-done all the way. Things have been getting desperate, though, so I “put on my big girl panties” as a friend of mine often says, ordered my color kit online, and tackled it this morning. It was relatively easy and turned out great and I can’t recommend Madison Reed hair color enough! My hair looks fantastic. The gray is completely gone, and my hair is so shiny! What’s best? NO SMELL. And no, I don’t get a kick-back. Just always happy to pass along a recommendation when I have one.
The family’s choices of mask material.
And yes, I spent more time on masks today. This time, though, I tried a pattern that includes a pocket for adding filters. And then I looked at another pattern—the proportions are different on each. I’ve finally ended up doing a pattern mash-up using a modified pocket instruction from one with the rest of the design from the other. But now…I’m almost out of elastic. I have enough to do one more tomorrow (I ran out of steam today), and then it’s pause for a bit.
And yes, I know I have options, but the 1/4” elastic ear loop is my preferred style and my family prefers them as well. And we’re not in a rush.
So I’ve got a handful done but a boatload more I need to get done just to cover the immediate family and my mother-in-law. I guess I’ll just have to stay inside until we get enough elastic to get everyone else’s done, and then mine!