One at a time

I have been itching to sew something – anything, really – for a long time, but haven’t made it a priority.  My oldest daughter doesn’t take naps anymore, and I find it very difficult to sew while she’s awake. She wants to sew with me. I love that – it’s so sweet to see her concentrating so fully on her little projects – but it makes it tough to do my own sewing. And by the time she and her baby sister are both in bed, I’m beat.

We have had very full weekends for the past month, and haven’t been home much. But today! Ah, today we had a free Saturday. No plans. No commitments whatsoever. It was a beautiful thing. Of course, we had a mile long list of household projects, and one day was not long enough to complete them all. I told my husband that the one thing I really wanted to do this weekend (listen to me with my list of wants on Father’s Day weekend!) was clean up my sewing area. So last night I spent an hour or so doing just that. Oh, it was such a mess! Craft supplies, empty boxes, projects in various stages of completion, greeting cards, my daughter’s artwork, and piles of household papers to be filed.  (And two spiders.) It’s much better now, although still not really clean. While straightening up, I unearthed my project bin. Oh, it is a sad, sad bin. It’s a big, 29 gallon Rubbermaid bin, and it is overflowing with craft and sewing projects. I am tired of it taking up so much space, sitting there staring at me, a big blue to do list, always reminding me of how much I haven’t finished.  It has got to go.

So last night I picked up a project. I’m not sure it could even be called a project, really. It was just a teddy bear with a couple of ripped seams. He was thrown in the bin months ago – maybe even a year ago – because that is where our “to be mended” items go. It took about ten minutes to stitch him up. Now he is on our living room floor; my daughter played with him much of the day. It was so easy to fix him that I started wondering how many other super quick projects were hiding in the depths of the project bin. Tonight I pulled out two more, each taking less than five minutes to complete. One was a pillow form with a 1″ tear in the seam, the other was a shirt with a missing button. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that both of these items had been in the bin for well over a year.

Now my goal is to empty that bin.  Oh, yes, there are much more interesting projects to be done. There’s the baby quilt for my niece, who should be joining our family in about a month. There are birthday crafts for my daughter’s August birthday.  There are pajama pants I’ve been wanting to make for myself. I’m not saying these things won’t happen. I’m not banning myself from all other crafting. I’m just making a goal – and you are my witness! – to empty that bin.

Am I alone here? Does anyone else have a stash of projects, maybe so many that you’ve forgotten about some of them? Anyone else ever put off sewing on a button…for a year? I think we can do it…don’t you? I think we can bust through those bins (or shelves…bags…closets…whatever), cross off every item on that to-do list, clear up that space, and at the end find ourselves with a nice little pile of completed crafts.  You in?