Today is day one of the quilt along. I’m hoping I can start cutting the pieces tomorrow as I don’t think I’ll have a chance to do it today.

I hung my ribbon rack and started to bring some fabric into the sewing room when I realized that I have a serious issue with buying fabric. Why do I have so much fabric?! It’s insane!

Anyway, as I’m putting together this sewing room and trying to come up with attractive ways to store and display things and keep it practical so that I won’t need to go digging, I’ve come across a problem. The problem is zippers. I can’t think of a practical way to store them that keeps them accessible and neat and sorted. I know this blog doesn’t really get much traffic, at least not yet, so asking anyone out there for advice on organizing and storing zippers is probably pointless but all the same, if you’re out there and you’re reading this and you have some advice, please do share.

I’ve been Googling away trying to find a neat way to store my zippers but all I keep coming up with are sites telling me how to install a zipper or just general craft storage with no practical zipper storage advice to be found. It seems silly to make a fuss about storing zippers but I’d rather not throw them all in a little plastic container if I can help it.

Ah well, back to questioning my sanity as I sort through all this fabric. Sometime this week, once my money comes in, I’m going to buy shelves to install in the closet. I took the door off today and once the shelves are up I’ll start trying to organize all this fabric and hopefully keep it neat and accessible. I’ve seen so many great ideas for fabric storage but the ones I like best would require a bigger room than I’ve got so I’ll stick with stacks on shelves for now. Maybe I should invest in some fabric boards… If they weren’t so expensive I probably would!

I’m back from my trips to Toronto and LA. I’m going to start working on my sewing room this week. Hopefully I’ll actually get to sit down and do some sewing soon too. Today I slept in way later than I intended but I hope to get back into my regular schedule tomorrow. I still need to find a table for my sewing machine though!

I’ve decided to try and do the Fat Quarterly quilt along. Hopefully I can keep up with it. I’ve got about a week so I’m going to hustle and try to get the room ready and organized so that I feel comfortable starting a project like this.

I think I should make those curtains for my sewing room too! It’s good to be back home to my sewing!

I present to you, the sewing room!

These are the before photos. I was away last week and I’m going away for a week tomorrow so I won’t be able to start working towards “after” until I get back. I’m very excited.

I always have design envy when I start browsing the web and see great looking websites. Of course there are many not so great sites out there too but so many of the sewers out there have these really nice sites. I’ve yet to find a Word Press template that I really really like.

Additionally, I’ve been trying to re-conceptualize my sewing site, Polite Façade. I am planning to hire someone to design a logo for me. It won’t be until September, probably, because I’m traveling for the next two weeks. I’ve gone back and forth and around in circles with different concepts and finally came to the realization that in order to be truly satisfied, I’m going to have to hire someone and get it done right. Unfortunately, I don’t know that I’ll ever move beyond sewing as a pass-time so shelling out the well-deserved money to a designer is not really something I have a budget for. I wish that I did. I believe very strongly in supporting independent designers and I believe in paying for quality. I just wish I had more money!

My web design skills are fairly minimal and I can’t seem to settle on something for Polite Façade. I don’t know what I should put up on there either. Initially, I tried to keep a blog there that was just devoted to sewing and then leave this blog as a more personal one. I realized that just left me with two blogs that were almost never updated. The best thing to do is to simply blog here and if I want to talk about sewing, then talk about sewing I shall!

So what to do with my site? If I were ready to launch a store, I’d know what direction to go in but at least until the sewing room moves from dream to reality, that just isn’t going to be the case.

I feel myself trying to cling to summer as it slips away. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want the fall to get here. I don’t want cold weather. I also want to be able to stay home and sew. But… I’m a single woman. I need to make ends meet and that means moving forward despite the fact that I’m digging my heels in. I guess I’m not alone in not knowing what I want to be when I grow up even though, at this point even I will admit, I’m grown up. Sometimes it feels like I’m alone. When you have so many friends who are married and who have chosen careers and are following that path, it’s hard to justify wanting so much to be Peter Pan.

The reality is, I like staying home. I am fortunate in that I have been able to go through school, earning 2 university degrees and working on a third. I am fortunate that I have been able to avoid settling for less though I’d love to settle sometimes. I know what I want, a job I can do from home. My own hours, for the sake of my health and my sanity. The freedom to be mobile. The freedom to devote time to creating. I envy those that are able to do it. I also envy those that are content to go to an office or building every day, wear uniforms or suits and do so with no regret. That isn’t me. I wanted it to be me, very badly. I know, now, that it won’t ever be. Armed with that knowledge, I am lost and grasping in vain to the last strings of summer and this freedom.

I finally made myself a bag I’ve been wanting to make for months. I used Echino fabrics for the exterior and the lining. The pattern is the Highbrow Hobo from U-Handbag.

It’s a nice bag and I really like it. There’s no inner pocket in the pattern and I really wouldn’t want a bag without one so I added a double pocket. The only part that I really had problems with was the faux piping along the top. Every time I got by the snap, it got messed up. I ended up just not doing it after ripping it out twice. There just wasn’t enough room even using the zipper foot.

If I were doing the bag again I would do the straps differently. I don’t like that the short ends have raw edges on them. I couldn’t be bothered coming up with a different way of doing them this time around but it’s definitely not something I would have left if the bag was for someone else.

I’ve gotten tons of compliments and lots of people have said they wanted my bag so I guess that’s a good sign! And here it is!

I wanted to finish the bag before I go away. I’m going to Toronto in a couple of weeks so I wanted to have it for then.

I’ve been reading a lot. I read the entire Sookie Stackhouse series in the span of 2-3 weeks. I’d read the first one a little while ago and then I read the other 9 plus the collection of short stories all this month. Since I finished them I don’t know what to read. People have tried to suggest books to me but I really am looking for something in particular, something I guess I can’t really describe but I will know it if I should ever stumble onto it.

I really enjoy the Sookie Stackhouse series. I think the writing and character development in True Blood is better but that doesn’t take away from how enjoyable the books are in the least. I really wish there were more of them so I could keep reading.

I just watched Repo Men and it was incredibly boring. I guess when you rip off your ideas from another movie you can’t really produce anything of substance. I thought I’d give it a shot even though when I saw the preview I was really not impressed that they’d copied the premise of Repo Man – The Genetic Opera completely. I’ve got to say that was probably a waste of 2 hours, it wasn’t really worth watching but since I have nothing to read I didn’t really have anything else to do!

I wish the summer would never end. I’d like to stop things right now and just stay here forever…