It all started off so well…

Some time ago, Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict posted this picture of her new quilt cabinet, and the idea got lodged in my head.  I kept thinking, I have a glass front cabinet behind my living room couch that holds a good portion of my quilting supplies, and to be honest, it looks more of a mess than a beautiful display.   In fact, getting my supplies out of that cabinet is a bit awkward, because the space between my cabinet and the couch is barely enough to open the doors.  Why not move my supplies to one of other cabinets and display my quilts? It would be win-win!

Sunday morning, actually for much of Sunday, I worked on taxes and student aid applications.  Not something to put one in the best of moods.  Around 3 pm, I finally decided enough was enough.  No more taxes or financial aid.  Instead, I was seized with a desire to CLEAN THINGS UP.  No, that doesn’t mean actual cleaning…it means reorganizing.  When things get a bit out of control, or overwhelming, I like to throw things out and reorganize my personal space.  Usually it is my clothes closet, which gets this treatment several times a year.  This time,  I decided to move all my fabrics and quilting supplies to the easy-to-use cabinets, and put my quilts on display.

Now, you probably realize immediately that putting all my fabric in the easy-to-access cabinets means something else has to come out of those cabinets.  I pulled all the folders, boxes, games, paper, and miscellaneous stuff out of the games and computer supply cabinet.  I pulled all the mysterious containers off the shelves of DH’s no-longer-used computer desk.  I carefully folded and sorted my fabric and began to organize them in their new homes.  I have quite a bit of fabric.  Quite a bit.  By the end I was not carefully organizing so much as finding temporary homes that may need rethinking later.  And I still have a few more shelves to clear in my original cabinet.  But I ended up with this:

Admittedly I was losing steam here…

And this:

Not sure my quilt cabinet completely works with the other decorative items…but I’ll live with it for a bit then decide.  And I do like having all my fabric easily accessible and not in plastic bins.  So far so good.

Unfortunately I made a few discoveries as I was sorting and reorganizing.

1.  I have a lot of fabric that no longer makes my heart sing. They are not horrible necessarily, but they are definitely the product of past enthusiasms.  I made a landscape quilt some time back, and thought I would make quite a few more, so I bought a lot of fabric that could mimic sand and dirt as well as leaves, grass and trees.  And at some time  I bought lots of florals that could be used for watercolor quilts as well as in the landscape quilts.  This quilt on the right is the only landscape quilt I ever made, and I was never able to make a watercolor quilt.  Could never get the blending right… The fabrics aren’t terrible, but I have a hard time imagining them in the kinds of quilts I make now, and I would almost  fabrics I have bought more recently.

2. I have more fabric than I care to admit that I now find very unappealing.  This is a step below the fabrics that no longer make my heart sing.  The very worst of it I have given away now, but there are colors I just don’t like, and patterns that just feel very tired to me.  I think I need to make a scrap quilt or three and use up as much of this fabric as I can.

3.  One day is not enough for reorganizing my quilting space.  Though my fabrics are now fairly well organized, thread has a way to go, and I need some shelves or dividers for some of the space I have conquered occupied liberated. Worse though, I also have this:

And I remembered too late that I have a guest coming tomorrow.  I think my next task is to hide all of this in my son’s bedroom and hope that it miraculously sorts itself out.  If you don’t see me for a while, I’m either searching for scrap quilt patterns to use up my no-longer loved fabric or have gotten lost among all of the stuff I have hidden in my son’s bedroom!