Happy New Year!

As usual I am starting the year with hopes and plans for my sewing and one thing that might help me to succeed is a good tidy up and sort out in my sewing room. It’s time for the annual declutter challenge that Karen Brown from Just Do It Quilts runs every year. This is the third time I’ve done the declutter challenge but it’s first time I’ve been able to actually start the challenge on the 1st January, I’m hoping it will help me complete the full 28 days

Karen splits the declutter into small manageable tasks, so we don’t get overwhelmed and give up half way, so one day might be threads, another day it’s books and so on. Day 1 was garbage! Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture before I removed two bin bags of rubbish! In my defence a fair proportion of it was already in my two bins…but a fair amount wasn’t! Today it was squatters, those things that don’t actually belong in the sewing room.

As part of the process Karen also suggests choosing projects to work on whilst doing the declutter, a sort of reward. I’ve decided to do a small wall hanging for my sewing room, it’s one of Andrea’s quilts from Raggedy Ruff, I’ve done several of hers now, this is yet another kit I fell for just recently. It’s in two monthly instalments and yesterday afternoon I stitched the background for the first half of it…

I love the backgrounds on Andrea’s quilts, such a mix of textures and colours. This design is called ‘Autumn Harvest Mice’, it has two dormice and a robin. It’s only 18″ square so a nice size for a wall hanging in my sewing room.

With a bit of luck I might get the other Raggedy Ruff quilt finished too, it must be two years since I started it! Andrea has 50% off patterns at the moment if you fancy having a go at one of her designs.