Organ'I'zed. I think I can

I have already written this post once.  On Saturday.  I sat down.  Wrote it.  Published it.  Then, I took a long hot bath and thought about it. I then came back and deleted it.  Since I have been writing on this blog I have NEVER deleted a post.  I'm not sure why that one felt so wrong to me, but it's long gone and here I am re-writing it because getting organized is an important part of me trying to work daily on quilting.

A few posts ago, I made a commitment to accepting 15 minutes at my machine working here and there rather than trying to be so focused on long periods of time.  Sure, I am much more productive when I have a long time to work, but for now, I don't have the time for that.   I'm taking what I can get and learning to let that be enough.

My friend, Francyne, made the suggestion to get well organized.  That way, when I sit down to work everything is there waiting for me and I can just jump in.

At first, I thought to myself,  "I'm organized."  In my life I consider myself to be a relatively organized person.  I have to be in order to be involved in as much as I am and to do as much as I do.  I like my house to be orderly, not necessarily spotless clean, but orderly.  I like to know where things are so I don't have to search for them.  I like for things to get put away when we are finished with them.  And don't even get me started on how I've got my craft supplies organized.  When storage space is a prime commodity a girls got to be super diligent about how things get stored.  One day, I'll bust out the bead box (sterilite container) and show you what it looks like.  Between the bead box and the fact my fabric stash - which is not only color coordinated, but also divided by gradation has led my kids to think I'm a little obsessive about order.

The more I thought about Francyne's suggestion, the more I realized how much I was fooling myself thinking I had it all worked out when I sew.  I realized I was nurturing the chaos around my machine and using it as an excuse to not sew.  Somewhere in my subconscious I was sabotaging myself.  I never folded fabric back when I was finished and I didn't have any neat piles to go to.  Everything was scattered all about my table.  I even convinced myself this was how I worked best - looking at it now, I realize this is not how I work best.  Truthfully, more often than not I was frustrated by my own mess.  I needed to believe I couldn't get there in order to be ok with not getting there.  I don't know if it makes sense to you, but it is crystal clear in my mind.

How often do we do this in our lives?  There is all this talk of manifesting what we want and then we do something that keeps us from creating what we want. The worst part is we do it without even being aware of our doing it and our own undoing.  The more I think about this, the more I realize how often this happens to me.  I think I'm all focused and on the right path to my goal and then something happens and I get all down and depressed.  I start feeling like some external force has thrown me off - I want to blame everyone but myself.  The hard lesson is when I sit down and really think about it and what I need to do to change things more often than not I realize it is usually of my own doing.  My own attitude waiting for something to go wrong.

Now that I see it clearly, I'm determined to get organized and I'm working on making the change to keep my space ready for me to work at it anytime.

I have all my yellows organized by color and there are 6 fabrics in each stack because each flower has 6 petals.  They are all neatly folded and ready for me whenever I'm ready.  All I have to do is pick which shade of yellow I need next.

I have also traced more flowers than I will most likely need and then when I'm ready to start a new flower I've already got one traced.

 Thanks to my handy dandy thread shelf, I don't have to go looking for thread.  It's all color divided.

I've pulled out the spools I'm using and having them right there by my machine ready along with my free motion foot, the screw driver and the three different pairs of scissors I typically use when working on a project.

Everything gets put away as I finish with it and the best part of all.  It makes working in those small spaces of time a lot easier!

Thanks Francyne for getting me going and helping me realize I was a big part of my time problem.

And one more thing... starting tomorrow, I will be posting a photo India took during the previous week on my blog.  It's a great opportunity for her to have folks see what great pictures she takes and helps keep me from spending a long time writing posts since Tuesday in supposed to be no computer day in house.  We haven't come up with a quirky name for her Tuesday photo spot, so if you have a suggestion, we would love to hear it!

Now, back to those flowers!