So technically by now you should be seeing the finished 40's dress from February but alas it remains unfinished. There are several reasons why I have procrastinated but I will save those for the next post which should be the finished dress (hopefully by the end of next week, I am so close to done). This post is less about why I am procrastinating and more about what I am doing instead of finishing the 40's dress.
Well for those who have been on the instagram (angelic_cow) you will have seen I have been collecting the necessities for the next big costume a renaissance inspired simplicity pattern I have been dreaming of for about a decade. I have only some velvet ribbon to source and I will be good to go and expect to start this week.
However, the major procrastination project has been to get all the textiles we have stored under the house and move them to a safer storage facility. This was pushed by the removal of a cot and mattress last month from storage under the house and discovered the mattress was moldy. Queue concern for my entire fabric stash.
I could have just brought up boxes as they were and moved them to storage but that would not be procrastination, and so I decided to catalogue and re-organise the entire fabric stash. To be fair its been a long time coming. My reasons to do this now is that the bulk of the fabric was being stored in large 120 litre tubs and I can not move them. Worse I can not convince my husband to move them. So those big tubs are being broken down to smaller tubs that can be easily managed. Secondly as previously mentioned I need to work on clearing out the stash and so I need a way of knowing what I have.
I have previously planned out this sort of thing even started big spreadsheets of length, width, thread count, ideas for it, cost of it and so on..... and on.... and on. This time I have decided to keep is simple and I am finding that I am getting to the bottom of things rather quickly. I am recording no more than the length and width with a small swatch carefully measured and cut. Nah, just kidding I'm hacking off from scraps or selvage edges at random. I was smart enough that I have recorded the measurements in lead pencil so that if I use some but not all I can just change the measurements to what is left. I used a hard cover notebook that my husband had laying around. Because it is a cleaning out kind of time, so use what you got right?
As for the organisation on the other side, I am trying to some extent to group fabrics in some way so each box can be labeled. It started more simplicity with just costume, children's and wearable fabric but I have since expanded to having a specific suiting and wool box, because as it turned out for that box I could be more specific. I have not referenced the box to the book as yet since I assume I will end up resorting at different times.
On top of all this I am (gasp) getting rid of fabric I don't think I will use. Yes I know I will have a use for it about a week after getting rid of it but at the same time I do just need to cut back on some things. At this stage using only stash fabric I could continue to create well into my 80's and much of it is not a good quality fabric. Do not fear though I am not sending this to landfill and if a friend doesn't take it I will drop it off at the sewing basket to support Achieve Australia.
I estimate maybe another 4 or 5 boxes of various sizes exist under the house so this project may go on until the end of March, but once that's done I guess I can start re-organising trims and notions.
Anyway with luck I will have the 40's dress up next week and have begun the hoop and Renaissance projects of March even with all the organisation.
No comments:
Post a Comment