Progress, slow, painful but progress...and some big leaps too...

Well, maybe the painful part is an exaggeration, but yes, things have been slow.  Finally however, some things are coming together.

I should have a replacement battery charger and a new battery for the good digital camera, so I'm going to be able to start taking pictures again, lots of pictures!  Then I can share the things I've been making, and the plans for future projects.  I can also get pictures of things that I'm going to be putting on E-bay, so that my studio can have some open space and room to maneuver!  Yippee!

Which leads to today's big project, though that requires going backwards just a little bit first.  A few weeks ago, I decided to really cull the pattern collection, with the intention of inviting a vintage pattern dealer to look through the discards and then selling the rest on line.  Right now, there are two grocery bags (plastic) full of pattern envelopes - no content - just envelopes.  Not sure how many, but those will be going to that dealer, or online very soon.  I'll probably cull a few more patterns before I'm done.  The pattern collection has truly gotten absurd and it's time to reduce it in a major way.

Well, if I can do that with patterns, I can probably do it in other areas too.  I'd read an e-mail on one of the sewing groups, about a woman who'd found a major load of stress gone after she donated a majority of her fabric collection.  It felt as if I might actually be at that point, ready for that kind of a change too.  So, week before last, I pulled 200 +/- books from my studio library.  It almost seemed as though I hadn't pulled any...the shelves were so overflowing.  Those are going to go away either via e-bay or more likely, via a used book dealer who will come to the house and pick them all up, or so I hope.

TODAY...I looked at the fabric and felt something give way...and set the goal of pulling 100 pieces of fabric that I no longer love, and sending them on to new homes.  I've got 76 pulled and bagged, 24 to go, and that will have been so very easy.  Unfortunately, I don't think I've pulled enough.  If I can get through all of it, I can probably double the number of pieces, the number of bags.

Yes I'm using numbers like 100, 76, 200...I am truly a fabriholic, a sewing supply addict.  It's time for a change.  When one walks into one's studio or sewing room, and feels nothing but the stress of pending projects hanging over one's head, maybe there's something wrong.  Maybe it's time for a change.  Maybe I do not need to be a fabric pack rat, or a pattern collector.  Maybe I don't need hundreds of books to which I seldom refer, either in my own sewing, or in my teaching and class preps.  I want to walk into my studio and see enough fabric to give me inspiration, but not so much that there is no chance of my ever using even a portion of it in my lifetime.  I want to have enough space to work comfortably, even when I've got multiple projects going on all at once.

And today was productive in other ways too.  Actually, 2 nights ago I was looking for some handwork to do while watching a little TV before bed.  I didn't find anything ready for handwork that suited my mood.  However, my mood must have been a little strange because I ended up pulling a project from a year ago, diving in and getting ready to GET IT FINISHED!  I'd taken a Victorian corset class at CoCo last year.  It should have been finished that same day, but I just did not quite get there.  It needed about 6 more rows of stitching for the bone channels, the boning inserted, and the binding put on.  I just had not been in the mood to deal with it for most of the 11 months since CoCo.  I don't know if I just didn't care about it, or if I really thought that I didn't know how to finish.  At any rate, I sat down at the machine, buzzed in those channels, inserted the boning, machine-stitched the edge of the bias to the edges of the coutil, and started folding and pinning the bias for the hand-stitching on the inside.  With the help of a few episodes of Charmed, finally available on Netflix Instant View, I got the bias all stitched in place and it is finished!  YEAH!  Why did I wait so long?

That project being done really did fire me up to get back into the studio and get sewing, which is why I was out there today, in place to have the lightbulb moments that led to the Great Fabric Reduction!  I also cut out a new corset, using scraps from an old project - the lining fabric from my ribbon fabric Donna Karan coat, a project that goes back at least 17-18 years, and STILL needs a fastener!  The lining fabric was a Joann's brocade.  Yes, sadly, it's a poly, but those brocades did/do come in some really pretty patterns and colors and this one went so well with the ribbon fabric for the coat.  I had just enough left to cut the corset.  While weeding out fabrics, I stumbled across a perfect fabric for the lining for the corset too!

I've also set aside the fabrics for the next two corsets - one in a blue-on-blue jacquard, and one in a faux tooled leather.  Getting that corset from CoCo finished, really got me fired up, even though it wasn't my first finished corset! 

Yup, as soon as the battery charger gets here, I'll get set up and start taking lots of pictures.  I'm ready to start enjoying my studio and my fabrics and projects again, and I'm ready to share the fun!