Wash The Dishes, Dry The Dishes, Turn the Dishes Over!

I have joined another swap (as mentioned in my previous post). I haven't done one of these for a while. This one is called "Wash the Dishes Tea Towel Swap". I just love tea towels, especially pretty handmade ones. I have decided to do embroidery on them using doodle stitching. I had drawn up a couple of doodles and thought this would be a great place to use them. Unfortunately I can't post any pictures until the swap is over, so you will have to be patient.

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Rearranging Complete

Here are the before and after photos of our creative space.

Before


After

I ended up sorting through my magazines and kept all of my Homespuns but only kept the others that had projects in them that I knew I would use. I actually have a notebook that I had written projects in that I have used or knew that I would use so that made the job a little easier. The plastic crate and green shopping bag that you can see in front of my craft table are FULL of the magazines that I am getting rid of. I am not sure how I am going to move them as they are really heavy.

I am so glad that we finally did this as it feels so much roomier and I can even extend my table out now when I am doing paper crafts.

I put one of my magazines to good use and made some of these fabric buckets. The pattern was in Patchwork and Stitching Vol. 7 No. 3. They were actually called Easter Baskets, but I left off the handles as I thought they may get in the way for what I want to use them for.

The January Stitchery of the month arrived last week and it is by Bronwyn Hayes of Red Brolly Designs.

I am not sure what I think of this one. I will probably have to admire it for a little while to get used to it.

Finally, I joined a Tea Towel Swap here and am looking forward to creating something for this. I signed up to do 2 towels and am thinking stitching on one and maybe applique or patchwork on the other. I have until the end of March to complete them.

Until next time

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Under Construction

We finally got around to rearranging our Study/Craft room. It is quite difficult when you have to share your creative space with tech geeks, but I think that we have come up with a very good layout that keeps us all happy. I now have the daunting task of culling my craft magazine collection which I started in 2003. Due to the new layout I had to get rid of my bookshelf and downsize to this one (it actually lies across the floor horizontally) so therefore there is not enough room for all of my craft magazines. I have lots of Handmade, Patchwork & Stitching, Australian Country Threads and Homespun. It is so hard working out what to get rid of, even though most of them I don't even look at anymore, I think it is the knowledge of the accumulative cost over the years but I think I need to be ruthless. I will take them along to my craft group when it starts back at the end of January and see if anyone there would like any.

Any way enough procrastinating and more doing. I must say I am looking forward to getting this all sorted and set up how I want it so that I can get to being creative again.

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