I’ve spent a fair bit of time the past month reevaluating the types of crafting that I can do now. It has been a year and a few months since my vision blind spots occurred, and for at least the past year, my vision has been stable.
I had a heart to heart with myself about cross stitching, and decided to de-stash the majority of it. The process was both easy and difficult. Easy because a couple of years ago I gave away a lot of my stash that I had decided was SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy). Difficult because I had to face that what remained was really now beyond my ability. I kept a few projects that were already in progress because I just couldn’t bear to part with them yet. But the rest I de-kitted and gave to someone who stitches and who has friends who also stitch.
I also had a heart to heart with myself about thread crochet. I can still do some larger yarn crochet (and I kept the one doily project that is in progress), but I gathered all of my thread crochet balls (most of them still unopened) and got them ready for donation as well. I don’t know anyone personally who crochets doilies, so I plan to donate them to a local arts and crafts store which accepts donations for resale. Along the way I found several other things that were taking up space in my sewing room and added them to the donation stacks.
My sewing room is still overflowing, but now it’s focused on two crafts instead of 5 or 6: quilting and knitting (and the occasional yarn crochet charity project). It’s starting to feel like I can breathe in there again. I still have a stack of quilt tops that need to be quilted, and I have a few stacks of neutrals and low-volume background fabrics that I’ll need to figure out where to store while I begin to dig into using my fabric collection.
I want to get back to having the space like the left photo, which was in 2020 when I reorganized. I realize I’ll always have projects either on the cutting mats or ironing board and design wall, but continuously having stacks of things on both tables makes it difficult to do any work. And this is actually the after photo from where I’ve been putting things away. Trust me, it was far, far more cluttered and claustrophobia-inducing. So I’m reminding myself of the goals.
It will take time, but as I’m trying not to move more stuff into the room and working on making more quilts and moving them out of the room, it is achievable. I have many quilts for us to use now, and I’ve given many to family and friends. I plan to make many more to give to local church groups for quilting ministries so that I can now bless others as I have been so blessed over the years.
Oh, and if you’re looking for the yarn stash, it takes up most of the closet – a combination of yarns for personal and charity projects. And I look forward to watching that stash decrease as well as I make projects.
I thought it would be much harder not to buy more yarn and fabric, but just going into my sewing room is plenty motivation not to. I’ll try to remember to update progress over time.