Wednesday, January 6, 2015
There was still snow on the ground this morning so I was in no rush to get out to do my errands. As I was stitching my last Itty Bitty block I realized I could order the fabrics I wanted from the online store. It was probably much easier to find all the fabrics in the various lines I wanted by doing a search on their website than it would have been had I wandered through the shop looking for them in the various bins. On the other hand, I’m sure it cost me a lot more because I was able to find all the fabrics in each particular line. I’m not saying I won’t look at a few other fabrics when I go to pick up the order I made today, but if there is nothing left by the time I get there I won’t mind.
The parcel that was headed to the post office wasn’t a rush so I decided to wait another day. We have to go out tomorrow anyway so I can take care of it on the same trip.
That left me with a miniature quilt that needed to be quilted for next Tuesday when we have our Mini Meez meeting. The one I’m doing is a Christmas wall hanging but it is one of the projects that I’ve been avoiding for a couple of months. I needed to clean and oil my machine and figure out a quilting pattern for the piece; I knew it would involve some free-motion quilting and I still fear starting that.
So what did I do to avoid it? I changed my sewing room furniture around. I have a long desktop that was pretty much useless to me because one side butted up against my sewing machine table and the other side had packing boxes, wrapping paper, give-away bags and all sorts of other crap that made it almost impossible to get to. It was at an awkward height that hurt my back whenever I leaned over to to anything on it. On the other hand, my cutting table is just the right height but it was too handy to everything else and was always covered in stuff that should have been put away.
By switching the two around I’ve lost a bit of space in the centre of my room, but I think my useable space is larger now. The cutting table only has my cutting board and rulers on it, and the desktop has a few of my tools but the rest is clear.
I tested the setup out this afternoon as I sandwiched my wall hanging. With the exception of one side I can pretty much move my stool around so I can sit to do the pinning. Another bonus is that I often struggle with my shadow when I’m taking a photo but this arrangement doesn’t have a light directly above it and seems to avoid that problem.
I can’t avoid it any longer – it’s time to get down to some cleaning, oiling and quilting!