Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Rockin' Wednesday

There is a happiness in knowing who I am even if what I do makes me smile at myself. When I was growing up, there was a standard in my home for organizing, for cleaning, in caring for our possessions. Like all kids, I resisted the work and the essence of it all. And of course, here I am, being uber organized.  

Recently, I posted on Facebook that I was adding labels to my WIPs (works in progress). Someone emailed me with a concern for my well-being. Guess they took it that I was organizing my things for someone else to step in. 

Organization, in my opinion, is about easy retrieval. I want to be able to go into a bin and see what I want without having to tear everything apart.

Yesterday I finished cutting the second group of fabrics for one of the Mystery Quilt projects I am doing. The author made her pattern corrections and so now, both groups are cut and ready for the next step which I will do when I come home from my trip to the midwest.

My next step, however, was to put away the leftovers. I read somewhere that when you shop for fabric, you buy an extra half yard so you can cut it into two fat quarters. One goes into a fat quarter container, and the other can be cut into various pieces. 

Wow, that was easy. I am in between project deadlines and so this is a perfect opportunity to keep doing the organizing.

I pulled out three bins from my closet and pulled the fabrics out. No one is standing over me telling me how to do this or what to do. I am on my own. This morning, I sorted the fabrics into four piles; One is smaller scraps, one is larger squares, one is strips and the last one is larger pieces. 

What I plan to do next is to cut.

I looked up the standard sizes that fabric companies sell and how their fabric is cut & sold. I plan to go through fabric piles from my stash and cut them into the largest parts first, then sort into color and label them all.  Label for organization, for retrieval. Some cuts include the following & there are probably more:

  • The mini-charms (2.5" squares) 
  • Charms (5") also called nickels, 
  • and they go with the 10" squares (called layer cakes) making the five & dime combo. 
  • There are jelly rolls (2.5" strips) 
  • and the dessert rolls (5" strips).
  • Then there are fat quarters (18" x 20")
  • and fat eighths (11" x 18").
  • A regular quarter yard is 9" x 44"
  • 1/8 yard is 4.5" by the width
  • 1/4 yard is 9" by the width
  • 3/8 yard is 13.5" by the width
  • 1/3 yard is 12"  by the width
  • 5/8 is 22.5" by the width
  • 2/3 24" by the width
  • 3/4 is 27" by the width
  • 7/8 is 31.5" by the width and 
  • 1 yard is 36" by the width.

Of course I smile at myself this morning. All that grumbling I did when I was a child learning this standard was part of the experience. I think about the patience Mother must have had to deal with me over cleaning & being organized. Suddenly, with this new enlightenment, she attains sainthood where before she was the embodiment of the Wicked Witch of the West.