On the move

My sewing room is all packed up and half of it is already over at the house we're officially moving into tomorrow. Big "mahalo!" to the owner for letting us have the keys a week before we start paying rent. Professional heavy-lifters are hauling the furniture on Tuesday, and by then we should be done with almost everything else. All we'll have to do is "out-clean" this place (I so wish I had the budget to pay someone to do that!), unpack at the new place, and settle in. That shouldn't take more than, oh, most of the rest of the summer.

Early last week, when I should have been packing, I was grabbed by the "use it up" bug and whipped up a bunch of quickie skirts from large scraps and some fat quarters. I don't have photos of any of them yet (and am not sure where the digital camera is... it's either hidden in the not-yet-packed debris that litters this place, or went into a box days ago), but they were so quick and easy to make, and are so comfortable to wear, I'm hooked. Best part is each one combines at least two gorgeous fabrics, which is so much more interesting than just one. Drafted the pattern on freezer paper from "Sew What: Skirts!" basic A-line instructions and added a drawstring waist. Just pull on, tie, throw on a T for the top half, and go.

The first skirt was so successful I couldn't help making a few more. I've been wearing them all week as I pack and haul (and sweat). I may never bother to make anything else ever again except for more of these quickie skirts. Okay, I admit, that's not likely to happen, but it's how I'm feeling today.

I'll post further details on super-easy skirt construction whenever we get around to unpacking the camera. The new house will, I think, offer much better fashion-photo opportunities than this one does, so perhaps I'll do better about having pics of what I've sewn to show here.

Other Indulgences
In the midst of packing up all my fabric I also ordered more (gak!): Hancock's had an Amy B. print I've had my eye on for a while on sale ("trailing cherry" in the new colorway):


...so I picked up a few yards of that plus a yard of what I hope will be a good a coordinating print:


If the two don't play well together I'll just play with them separately. Parcel is still in transit, but confronting the fact that I'd succumed to yet another fabric-shopping indulgence prompted me to update my 2009 yardage spreadsheet to see how far I've fallen behind in my "sew" vs. "buy" stats.

Turns out, I'm doing better than I thought: so far this year I've purchased 59.5 yards, and have used 42.5. So, I'm only 17 yards behind.

Which got me thinking. The new house only has blinds on some of the windows; I'll need to make curtains for the bedroom and my office, and probably will do a cafe-curtain treatment for the kitchen window. And although the guest room/sewing room does have blinds, I want to make the curtains to coordinate with daybed cover/bedspread that I never got to while in this house. And our two shabby-looking papasan chairs, as well as two large floor cushions, are all in desperate need of fresh covers.

A lot of that can be done from stash: I've got fabric on hand for the papasan chairs and the guest room curtains, and if there's any guest-room fabric left over I'd love to use it for the kitchen, too, because last year I recovered the kitchen chair cushions with some large scraps of the black colorway.

And surely I can find fabric in the stash to cover two floor pillows. Quickie guesstimate of yardage requirements for those three projects: oh, probably around 17 yards. So if I can channel my creative energies into home decor projects, and resist more skirt temptations, it looks like I can close up that buy-sew gap.

The truly clever thing to do would be to approach this on the incentive plan. How 'bout I'm not allowed to buy fabric for my office curtains until I've "made up" that 17-yard short-fall? That would put a bit of a fire under my butt.

The downside of all these plans is that I've been telling myself (and my husband) that once we're moved in at the new place the sewing machine is going to stay in the closet for a while so I can catch up on the 1001 other things that need my attention...