Finally, after I completed the reorganization of my fabric stash, I have had some free time to do some sewing. As I have mentioned before, it is always difficult for me to get started on my next project after completing my previous project, especially if the last project I was working on was involved and complicated. Since the reorganization of the fabric stash was very involved and very complicated, it has taken me longer than usual to get my sewing mojo going and get back into the swing of things. I have wanted to sew many times recently, but every time I sit down to the machine, I would just drawn a blank on what to make next and lose all desire to sew. I knew that once I started sewing something, my mojo would return and my creativity would take off, but the project needed to be a simple one that I would enjoy but would not be that involved or complicated. And so the answer ended up being baby sleepers.
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I had already left some fabric out of the sleeper box while I was boxing up my baby prints, so I did not use my newly taken stash pictures to search the stash for the fabric to make the sleepers. It was just sitting there waiting to be sewn up. Because I have made so many sleepers recently, it was easy to cut out three new sleepers and start to sew them up. To make it easy on myself, I cut the smallest size for all three of them. And only one piece of fabric had any usable scraps still remaining after cutting out the sleepers, so there is now two less pieces of fabric in the stash, and the third piece is quite a bit smaller than it was before. I have not decided yet if this scrap will return to the stash or make its way into the good will box instead. The sleepers sewed up easily and were fun to make but because I was making three, they took some time to get completed. The sleepers were not very quick to complete, but they were very simple to sew and not very involved and complicated. Two of the sleepers were from fabric that had a pre-printed design so they would not be embroidered on. I was not going to embroider on the third sleeper but as I sewed it together, I decided that I did want to embroider something small on it. So, it is not completed yet. I will wait to complete it until after the next time I am embroidering something else and I have all the stabilizers and threads out to embroider with. The sleepers were a fun sew and I could feel little sparks of my mojo returning, but once the sleepers were completed or at least as much as I was going to complete them at this time, I had completed a project and the sparks started to fade.
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Now, what would I do for my next project? Something for me? Something for the husband? Something for the little neighbor girl? I could just make more sleepers but what about when I finished them? I determined that I needed a plan, so I sat down in front of my patterns and started to look through them. It was not long before I found three patterns that caught my fancy. One is for a fur vest. After learning so much from the fur jacket, I have wanted to make more with the fur so I don’t forget what I have learned, and also I feel I have more to learn before starting my jacket so a vest would be great option to learn more skills while sewing with fur. I especially want to learn more about lining the fur and the vest pattern would do well to accomplish that. The other two patterns are for flannel pajamas. Since I purchased over 25 yards of flannel from Fabric Mart recently and I found lots of flannel in the stash in pieces smaller than I would use for blankets, these two patterns would be a great next project too. Plus, one of the patterns has piping on the pajamas, a sewing technique I am not skilled at yet. So, by making these patterns, I would use up fabric from the stash, and learn a new skill. It seemed like a win-win to me.
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I have currently traced all three patterns and I have the pattern pieces cut out and ready to be used. And I tested my reorganization of the fabric stash by searching my stash photos for just the right piece of fabric for these projects, identifying which box the wanted fabric was in, retrieving that box, and retrieving the chosen fabric. It worked great! Now I am off to the cutting table then the sewing machine. I am so excited. Let the sewing begin!
Sew Forth and Sew On 