Fabric paper towels

For the past few years, I have been trying to eliminate some of the paper products we buy and use. A few years ago, I made a basketful of cloth napkins with the hopes of not buying any more napkins. With the exception of cute napkins for the grandkids' birthday celebrations, we've done a good job at using the cloth napkins. They add very little to the laundry load and remarkably haven't gotten as stained as I thought they might. So, I decided the next step was to buy fewer paper towels. (I know that I'll still buy paper towels, but hopefully in a much smaller quantity.) I wash my hands a lot during the day, and I don't love having a damp dishtowel sitting around, especially since you never know what else has been wiped up with it since I last used it. I'd seen several blogposts about fabric paper towels, complete with snaps on the corners to put them together and roll them up. I didn't really want to add "snap towels together" to my daily to-do list, so I eliminated that step. I decided they could share a basket on the counter with my dish rags. I used waffle weave cotton fabric and white flour sack towel fabric on the back of pretty fabrics. I made a dozen and will see how quickly I use them up in a day. I also will see which backing fabric I like best.

An Enjoyable Afternoon

We've had Amazon Prime for about two years, but I just jumped on instant video bandwagon. I've watched three movies in the past two days, all while sewing binding on Valentine's Day items. Today I watched The Sum of All Fears and enjoyed every stitch. 

Stash building

I've been surprised at how quickly the bowl potholders sell out. (I shouldn't be - they're pretty handy to have in the kitchen.) I'm almost out of them again, so I thought I'd better build up another stash of them. They're putzy to make, but when I do a lot of them at a time, it goes pretty quickly. Yesterday I ironed fabrics, today I cut fabric and batting squares, this evening I marked the batting (sewing lines/darts) and pinned them all together. Tomorrow I'll sew the quilting lines and darts, and then get them pinned together and sewn. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll be turning them inside out and pinning the opening closed. Then, I can finish the stack on Tuesday. 

Ready to sew!

The week after Christmas is usually when I'm hit with the cleaning and organizing bug. This year, it was my fabric stash and craft room shelves that were my target.

For the past few years, my fabric has been kept in plastic bins in my front closet, lovingly referred to as "the quilt store". That meant that coats and boots were left to roam our great room, usually just being thrown over a couch back or stair railing or left on the rug to trip over. But, they roam no longer. Our front closet now holds coats and boots. Well, mine anyway. Ron still leaves his boots out, where I trip on them (4-5 pair at a time) on a daily basis, but I don't suspect that'll change anytime soon.

I knew I wanted to keep my fabric stash sorted by color and/or category (fall, Christmas, reproduction/vintage looking, baby). After pricing bins to fit my Ikea shelves, I decided to look for fabric bin tutorials online. I found a few smaller bin patterns and used them as a guide to make bins that were roughly 12" square. After several days of non-stop cutting, sewing, folding, and organizing, my shelves are filled with my fabric stash. No more going to "the quilt store" to look for fabrics (which were always in the bottom row of bins). Now, I can pull out just one bin of fabric at a time in the comfort of my sewing room.  Here's the finished product:

I definitely gravitate towards blue fabrics when I'm shopping. It took four bins to hold it all. Everything else fit pretty nicely into one bin each. It was also nice to have a place to put not red/not pink fabrics. The two bottom left wire baskets hold backing fabrics or fabric sets that are going to be used together. The wicker basket holds a variety of ziploc bags that get used over and over to hold projects together after cutting, but before sewing. It also holds a surge protector cord in place. Usually my ironing table is sitting in front of this shelf, and my iron is plugged into the surge protector.  :) I'm glad to be finished with this job!

Welcome!

This may be a crazy move considering I have a hard time keeping up with my other blog, but I decided to start a blog to go along with my Facebook site. Sometimes I want to post more "behind the scenes" information about a current project, but I don't want to fill up Facebook with those kinds of posts. I'd rather have my Facebook site be for finished items for sale. 

It's been so long since I've started a blog from scratch that I can't even remember how to add a photo at the top, so be patient. This may take a few days to get off the ground.