Organizing the Craft Room....

This is a long, possibly boring post.  Ye be warned.

So, if you read the last post you surmised that I have a lot of room in my craftroom.  Well, that's almost true.  I'm in a crazy organizing phase right now.  My condo (where I used to live) had two HUGE closets and 3 HUGE bookshelves to organize all my craft and music stuff.  In my house (with my husband, yay!) I have this HUGE room.  Because of the cathedral ceilings I can only fit two bookshelves (i know, i know, whining about the vaulted ceilings), and I have NO closet space for crafts.  This has turned into a MAJOR dilemma.  Not to mention that after I moved in I went to my parents house and grabbed all of the craft stuff that I had been keeping there.....

The college where I teach doesn't begin until Sept 12 so I've been able to blog, sew, and CLEAN.  Yesterday was a big 'cleaning the house' day so I decided today I would work in my craft room. 

First accomplishment:  I folded all of my fabric!  Somehow I kept finding more and more fabric.....  I'M NO LONGER ALLOWED TO BUY FABRIC.  (seriously, just now, I found another bag of scraps.)  At least (the full size fabric) is organized and happy inside my Goodwill Shelf that I spray painted purple. 

In case you were curious, boas are important for decorating.  Those are old sewing machine drawers, and inside them are mason jars holding fun things like buttons, etc.  The two mason jars on the top are holding all of my hexagons until I decide what to do with them.

scrap bag all dumped out... but still smashed up... there's a lot more than it seems!

I knew I was crazy when I decided to tackle the mysterious laundry basket complete with plastic bags that has been stored at my parents house since 2005.

And this is where we find the buried treasures..... and a spontaneous trip down memory lane.  Fabric can tell so many stories!

What a cool fat quarter!!  I have no idea where it came from!  =)

Random Fabrics already cut into 3 inch squares!  I'm sure I need them...

As I began going through this pile I remembered where some of it came from.  The 3 inch squares above are from a quilt that my little sister and I made when I was in high school.  See, my neighbor gave me a TON of fabric samples.  They were about 10x10 inch squares.  I didn't know what to do with them so we made a scrap quilt!  It was really fun.  My sister was maybe 4 or 5 at the time.  I made it 'educational' by having her set up the squares so nothing was matching.  I wonder where that quilt is.....

wowie!  a finished block!

 This block came from a class that my mom and I took at Stiches 'n Stuffing when I was in high school.

ah, memories

These scraps look meaningless... but one person reading this blog may remember...  In middle school or was it high school? my friends and I were snap, crackle and pop for Halloween!  These were from my costume!

and another memory...

 This lace was a scrap from high school.  My friends and I were can-can girls for Halloween and we made our own skirts using this lace and red satin.  =)  The picture of all of us dressed up is awesome... I should find it

A very pretty fabric sample (from the 90s)

Yay polka dots!!!

I seriously don't think I've ever seen this before.

 So this piece of fabric was labelled with my other sister's name and "3rd period".  She must have been making something in sewing class... huh, do they still even have that now?

More pretty fabric samples!

ANOTHER FAT QUARTER!  Wahoo!!!

Can you say 90s?  Do you think the Fresh Prince would have worn this fabric?  =)

does this scream old table cloth or what?  I don't know where it came from, but I have about 2 yards.  Ideas?

And they are organized (I swear, that's organized)

First Basket: normal scraps.  Second one: 'special scraps' like amy butler, etc.  Third : the ends of the fabric samples.  They had paper glued to the edges so you could flip through them.  Some of the paper wouldn't come off.  I'm thinking I can use them for more Fabric Postcards.

the truth comes out

Remember how above I said I was all organized?  Well, I found more fabric samples.  This time they were attached to the their 'tops'.  OMG, I couldn't believe it when I read Robert Kaufman!  I had no idea that these were 'cool' samples.  I was so young that I didn't know designers.  The dates on them are from 1989-1993.  My husband was rolling his eyes lovingly when I explained the situation.  =)

That's about it for my buried treasure.  It was fun while it lasted.  Guess I need to make another scrap quilt, or 10.  =)  Maybe I should run a 'what to do with scraps' series on my blog, and you all could contribute.  ha!

If you made it to the end, thanks for sticking with me!