That pretty much sums up everything for me.

Last week I finished the fourth row of Iqbal’s quilt.

This is a pretty crap photo, but I have no clothesline outside on which to hang them, and this is my design “wall” –sort of. Eventually it will be something hanging there on which to pin things. There is no actual wall space anywhere. The rows are also not in order.

This week I’ve been working on my 50+ year project of getting organized. I know, after all this time working on it, that it’s never going to be completed, but If I don’t keep at it … well, I hate to think how bad it could get. I’ve been lax in the past few years and it’s worse than I can tolerate any longer.

My kitchen floor has been steam cleaned after too long with just quick moppings. It could use a good scrub brushing, but I can’t do that any more, so it will get repeated steamings. Next in the kitchen is cupboards (I think).

Behind those doors in the photo above is a major disaster of storage. I made a pretty decent dent this week. If I keep at it, I might have it functional by the end of the year. Everything is here, there and everywhere. There is also too much. I won’t be purging the sewing stuff yet, but I will be giving a lot of the art stuff away. My granddaughters will get whatever they want, since they lost all (or most of what) they had.

I purged my recycle drawer of 90%. I love the idea of making stuff with recycled materials, but the fact is, I just don’t make much “stuff” anymore. In the drawer next to it, that I’d left untouched since mom had filled it, I found more unused notebooks and sketchbooks. I don’t know what else is there since I still have to empty that one.

The only hard part of the job is moving the furniture. The shelf I did was easy–just lifted it to the top of the cupboards it was behind. Next is the above mentioned drawers , which are a very heavy file cabinet. Shelves on top of that will be easy as they are already 80% empty. The hardest will be the tall pantry cupboard from the other room. I don’t remember how heavy it is, but it’s tall and will need to be tilted to get into the room. It probably should be painted, too since it’s brown and everything else is white. And I need to get the woodwork put back!

The area also needs a plan of organization. So far, all I’ve figured out is that the smaller side right of the center cupboards will be art and the larger left side will be sewing/needlework. The variety of stuff requires a more detailed plan.

Probably the inch-by-inch that has most kept me from working more on Iqbal’s quilt is the file organizing on the computer. Apparently I’m a machine embroidery design addict and since my hard drive crash a couple of years ago I still don’t have them all in order. And being an addict, I’ve continued to get more, and … It’s tedious work and takes more time than I think it should (part of which is the “Look! A squirrel!” distractions.)

Ideally, I want to be stitching out embroidery on the machine while I’m hand stitching another project (or another part of the same one). Also, bad for the computer filing, but good for the hand stitching, my laptop is dying. I do not intend to replace it. I still have two perfectly good desktop computers and a gazillion extra drives. That means when I need to put my feet up, I can stitch or I can read (or I could watch TV, but 90% of that could be stitching time, too).

This coming week I intend to stitch out my laundry basket designs. If they stitch out as good as they look in Premier+, I will be offering them here free to machine embroiderers.

One of the things I’ve learned from Jude is that small cloths, not necessarily made to go together, can go together to make a large cloth. Besides working on Iqbal’s quilt, I want to do more random embroidery, and also just playing on my machines. I enjoy this most as long as I’m not stressing out over what I “should” be doing. I was asking myself what the point was, because a drawer filled with my creations isn’t particularly satisfying. However putting those creations together with or without other blocks (as needed) to make one functional cloth (quilt, throw, wall hanging) will be very satisfying. And my small creations can be quilt blocks, hand embroidery, machine embroidery, felting (flat) and any combination thereof. Very satisfying!