Time for Tea . . . and other matters!

First of all, I finished my "alphabet challenge" piece. We each drew letters, and mine was "T". Perfect for a collector of tea pots. Rules were that each quilt must illustrate an item or shape beginning with the letter, and using color named with the letter. Besides the tea pot, I have a time-piece, and all is executed in teal and turquoise! I found the tea pot at Sindy Rodenmayer's Fat Cat Patterns. I reduced it 75% to fit into this 14" maximum finished size. I sweet-talked one of my pet land surveyors into drafting the 10" by 12" ellipse for me. He was quite proud of himself when he delivered the drawing, saying I couldn't complain about the "ellipse-service" I had received! I designed the other elements of the block, and finished it off with piped binding. I'm quite delighted with it.

Still up to my hips in re-organizing my fabric stash. I hosted my quilt group Tuesday evening, and took them to the basement to see the effort so far. They were astonished at the quantity of fabrics, but I keep saying, I've been quilting for thirty years! I have to admit, though, it is a bit over the top. I'm sorting into themes, such as batiks, 1920's repros, 1800's repros, sewing themed, tea pot themed, Christmas, Halloween, and fabrics with metallic trim. I still have about eight or ten tubs to go through, but at least four of those are all Christmas fabrics. Then, there's my carousel, an auction bargain from several years ago. I intend to pull each basket off the carousel, and a lot of them are vintage, and will be cut into strips for scrap projects. The first picture is the table where I've been working my way through all this stuff. The second is the far end of this basement room, displaying my carousel, and you can see some of the plastic containers I have emptied on the floor to the right. To the left in the last picture is the result so far. I still have projects on the top shelf, and a few have slipped onto shelves below but they will be removed to limit all the lower shelves to fabric stash only. I'll post another picture when I get further along . . . and then, I'll be able to clean up my studio a bit better, too!

I was surfing around the Stashbuster's web-ring, and came across another title for UFO's or PIP's . . . PIGS, or projects in grocery sacks. I've heard of the "Tote Bag Filing System", where one stores all the components of a project in a souvenir show tote bag. I've graduated from that to individual plastic boxes for each project . . . take a look at those stacks! And, bear in mind, I've moved some of those contents to my "quilt top collection"!