Fiber Babble: Archaeological Dig

Archaeological Dig

February 08, 2009

"Yeah," I said, "That will do fine." "Walking Shadow" by Robert B. Parker♦♦♦◊◊

In the first part of January, one of the forums I visit was organizing a UFO challenge. The plan is to list 10 steps (I think it's 10) such as "Number One: Put borders on this UFO" and "Number Eight: Finish piecing that UFO", and every month someone will draw a number and we'll each work on what we had listed as that step.

Since my sewing room was a complete Disaster Zone after the holiday projects, I decided to go in and pick ONE pile on the floor to disassemble and put away, knowing full well that I'd find a UFO or two to put on my Challenge List. I picked the stack closest to the door - the FIRST one I have to walk around when going into the room.

Here's what I found:
4 sets of fabric for aprons
1 almost-finished apron
2 apron patterns
1 tube of E-6000 glue
various scraps smaller than a FQ
5 UFO's
3 lengths of garment or crafting fabric
3 lengths of interfacing
5 skeins or balls of yarn
various weird-a** knitted/crocheted THINGS (I have NO idea what I was thinking!)
1 knitted teddy bear
4 lengths of batting
2 bras
2 cold-weather knitted items that I could have used last month
20 FQ's
35 pieces of fabric that are larger than FQ's but smaller than "yardage"
43 "yardage" fabrics
2 finished potholders
1 MQ test sandwich
4 shirt plackets (not the shirts, just the plackets with the buttons)
two printed-from-the-internet quilt patterns
1 fabric wallet
1 purchased wallet (both empty, alas)
and
2 substantial lengths of binding; one PURPLE and one black

I tend to look at these stacks as archaeological digs - when I go through them I remember what I was working on 'back when'. The bottom of this stack was so old that some of the fabric I found was completely foreign to me!!

I listed the UFO's and put them in a fancy little basket in the guest room. I folded all of the fabrics and put them away. I put the yarn into an OTHER Disaster Zone (one that can be hidden by closing a closet door). Other stuff went to wherever it's "supposed" to live.

So, then (after some re-fueling and sharing my embarrassment in a forum post), I started on a second pile, which, while much less tower-y, still held some interesting finds:

TWO more UFO's...

...along with a sweatshirt and a pair of socks (sounds like a hotflash), a brand new pair of felted slippers, a lint brush, gauge swatch, fabric & strips for a knitted t-shirt, the partially knitted t-shirt (oy, two sizes ago, I'm sure!), a set of 6 coasters*, a length of fabric plus narrow sashing or binding strips cut from it, a cone of metallic crochet thread, a skein of wool and a coffee-bean candle...

And then there were the UFO's that slid off the top shelf and beaned me when I was putting away the batting...

Yeah. I seem to have issues.

The good news is that I can walk again in my sewing room - or at least in most of it! I've made my UFO list - not all of them, for sure, but I'm breaking up the elephants into bite-sized pieces. I've also listed the BOM's and stitcheries and -Alongs and other things that I think I'm going to keep up with each month. I almost had to get a bigger whiteboard!!

* The coasters that I found are based on instructions I got when my 386 was a killer computer:
Penny Pennington's Easy Holiday Coasters.

To see a clever use of cute coasters, check out Jen's post from a couple of years ago.

Labels: babble, sewing