Condensing

Last weekend I started cutting out my next quilt. It's all laid out on my sewing table waiting for me to start putting it together.

Then all of a sudden I got the bug to sort through the bazillion quilting magazines and books that I have accumulated over the years. Now that I have gotten into the quilting groove, I know more about what types of quilts I will make and what methods I prefer to use.

In the picture below there are six magazine holders. I threw out probably the equivalent of five of these full. I ended up with a stack of eight or ten magazines, then went through those and tore out the one or two patterns that I really liked. Those went in a binder. I kept six magazines.

My next task was to sort through all the books that I had. While it felt a little wrong to toss those, at the same time, it felt good to weed those out and get rid of the excess. Like I said, I know what types of quilts I am likely to make, and some of those books did not fall into that category.

Then when I thought I was all done with all the magazines, I discovered another stash of a dozen or so magazines. I sure hope I remember all this the next time I am standing in front of a magazine rack! Good thing there is Pinterest. My quilting board on Pinterest has 244 pins. That doesn't take up near as much room!

As I was thinking about writing this post, I remembered some other condensing I did a while back.

I have always had a goal of making a denim quilt out of old jeans. I raised one little boy. That little boy managed to wear a hole in the knees of his jeans. I would cut off the bottom parts of the jeans and convert them into shorts.

I saved those jean legs:::

These are from jeans my son had when he was about two years old!

I loved the tiny flecks of color in the ones on the left and the boat on the jean on the right were so cute!

So how did I condense? I cut the seams off of those pant legs and cut apart the grown up jeans I had kept over the years as well.

As I was thinking about doing this huge task, I thought about how much my hand would hurt with all the cutting. Then I remembered my mom had some electric scissors she bought at a garage sale back in the 70s, so I asked her if I could borrow them. (Good thing I asked when I did because they were in a pile bound for a garage sale...)

It went a lot faster with those electric scissors!

But soon they got pretty dull, and the motor just quit.

So I bought a new electric scissor. This one worked SO much better.

And no cord to mess with!

After I was all done, I had condensed that pile of jeans my more than half!


Now to figure out more storage for all that fabric I keep buying.... :-/

And to actually make that denim quilt! Someday...someday...