omg

Holy moley! I just performed what had become the most fruitless task of my day: checked over old blog posts to see if anyone had commented. Guess what? People have been here.
I freaked. I ran around in a couple of poorly defined circles and shrieked down to Husband "Two people read my BUH-LOG!!!" You guys (if you came back and if you didn't I totally understand), I read your blogs all the time! I really admire the stuff you do and love reading the stuff you write. I feel like I'm at camp in third grade and my awesome counselor just told me I make really good bubble letters. It is a really great, childlike kind of happiness. Or maybe a doglike happiness:
So thank you for being so nice!
On my camera (but not yet in my computer), I have some new pictures of my little sewing space, which is newly and fantastically tidy. I idiotically forgot to take Before pictures. I always forget the Before pictures! You think I'd have learned after being the agent of so many dramatic disaster-to-acceptably-organized changes. And dear God, I love before and after pictures. Anyway, I took a photo of some of the scraps I picked up off the floor, but that doesn't really give the sense of chaos I managed to tame in only six hours last week... Right, so eventually I will put up those pictures.
Thank you. Bye, actual blog readers!

Eeek! A fabric sale!

Oh boy. An end-of-bolts sale really feels like the best possible thing. How can one resist when the fabric is discounted once for being almost-gone and then discounted again for being oddly-sized? Let me answer that: one cannot resist. At least not when the one in question is me.
I justified my purchase (we are broke! I am selling shit online in hopes of financing my heroinesque fabric habit! Why can't I lay the &$#% off?) by getting some stuff that I'll use for some kids'upcoming birthday presents. Our 7-year-old niece asked for a yoga mat and I can make her a bag for her yoga mat. Plus there was some really cute stuff with construction equipment, and my nephew does love his diggers.
An aside: the niece belongs to Husband's sister. The nephew is my brother's kid. I call the niece "ours" and the nephew "mine." At first, out of a strange and very noticeable sense of fairness to all the kids on Husband's side of the family, I called my nephew "ours" but that felt funny--didn't thoroughly communicate my L-O-V-E for that little guy--so I changed it. How long until the niece feels like mine and not ours? She's really great and I love her a bunch, so I'm not just fronting when I call her ours, but saying "mine" isn't right yet, either. We will see. If you are reading this for reasons other than mistaken identity, maybe you could chime in? Maybe you appreciate that link to a great fabric sale (even if I did my best to deplete the supplies)?
Maybe there are about 18 billion websites out there and the chances that you stumbled onto this one are astronomical so you aren't reading this? Of course. Please, forgive me.
One of these days I will actually explain in detail why I have a blog if I don't ever tell anyone about it, not even electronically and/or anonymously (like I never post this address when I, however rarely, comment on other sites...)
But I am puffy-eyed and riddled with buyer's remorse this morning, so I'm not going to go into it. I'm going to pour another cup of coffee and take it to my sewing lair and sew like the wind! Or, like I've got a huge bald fat guy with lots of self-inflicted piercings, dressed in leather and a spiked collar, standing over me looking menacing and holding a whip and screaming stuff like "sew or you will get the lash!" and "sew, minion, or we will feed antifreeze to your little dog!"

Three Things

OK. I grant you, it was a small goal. But a goal it was, and I accomplished it! I grabbed that stack of squares, and I rifled through it and I realized that the pile largely consisted of plain squares of fabric--probably two-thirds were just carefully cut pieces of fabric. One-third was log cabins and checkerboards and weird patchworky stuff. It was a bi-ig stack, i tell you! I stared at those squares and I bit my lip and I knitted my brow and I shook my head and I settled on a pillow!
(OMFG SHE MADE A PILLOW! I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE MADE A FRACKING PILLOW OMFG.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddddddd that's kind of it. The rest of the squares are still scattered around the sewing room, looking forlorn and, quite honestly, like they don't exactly go together. I think a quilt requires either far more or a bit less forethought than I put into this possible project. I bought some fabric with a particular magenta-loving little girl in mind, but I didn't consider how much fabric I would need to actually complete that quilt...

So I cut squares out of lots of fabric and I wish now that I had larger swaths of that fabric. This is the kind of experience from which I actually learn. It is concrete: I cut fabric before I was sure the final project would actually happen. I regretted doing so because 6" by 6.5" squares of fabric have limited potential. I see lots of ...well, so far I see lots of pillows and maybe some cobbled-together pot holders in my immediate future. I considered place mats, but 18"x12" is too small and 24"x18" isn't quite right...And I'm not sure I have quite enough squares for four place mats...You get the picture. I feel stymied.

But that's only a neurotic report on one aspect of things that have happened over the last two days. The other thing is that I finished a really beautiful table runner:
(Pictures don't do it justice...) And the other other thing is that I am trying to sell it! And the PILLOW. Holy Moses. I have a store on Etsy. Like, whoa.
I've never been a very industrious person, certainly not in the pursuit of money. But I love making things with fabric and I hate being unemployed. I want to contribute and pay for the sewing supplies I buy. So here it goes.
I know I still don't tell anyone that I have a blog, so it seems completely crazy to be "announcing" my Etsy store on this secret blog. But just because it's a secret, unknown-to-the-world blog doesn't mean I can't treat it like something people actually read. And you never know when someone will just accidentally surf onto this web address, or onto this one: SadieSewedonEtsy.

If you are reading this, will you look? And consider buying one of the two whopping things I've managed to list? No? You're a Hungarian mobster whose seamstress ex-girlfriend shares a nickname with me? Sorry. But seriously, dude. If you need a table runner, I am your girl.

What it feels like to create

Found this blog late last night, and it has really gotten under my skin--in a very good way. As I've been sewing and embroidering and being intentional about making our house lovelier, I think I've also been getting a little gentler. The crafty-girl blogs I've been reading (especially this one) are so positive and delighted with the world. And I think I used to be more like that. But I've gotten more critical and snarky and sarcastic--it all adds up to a kind of negativity and stinginess that have no place in my prodigiously happy, love-filled life.
So--as the flowers rest under an unseasonable layer of frosty cold, I will put my faith in the inevitable warm-up, and let my spirit set a good example for the plants: I will bloom a little bit. And then I'll bloom a little bit more.
I know this about myself, but something about my inner compulsive procrastinator keeps me from consistently acting on it: when I have an outlet for my creativity, I am happier and somehow clarified. Like butter! I finished a table runner late last night, a project I started on a whim after finally finding a non-Wal Mart fabric source in my town. Our rarely-used table (shameful fact: we almost always eat while watching "Jeopardy!") was set for a while with the loveliest, if fortuitous and accidental, color combination. Orange candles, yellow tulips and daffodils, and a fruit bowl with lemons, Granny Smith apples, and oranges.
Anyway, the only way I ever manage to create something pretty like that is by accident, and accidents like this one don't happen too often to me (I'm not as observant as truly talented artists are). So it stuck with me--orange, yellow and bright green have been on my mind for a month now. And the fabric store had two fabrics--one orange and yellow, one green, white and orange--that I just knew would go far in duplicating that table.
Reader, I bought them.
I promised Husband I would do no such thing after a fairly brutal trip to a store in Columbus, during which I squandered all my birthday capital. (It was worth it!) But this stuff was reasonably cheap and I got out of there with 3 1/2 yards and some thread for only $32. Not bad, compared with the (eek!) $125 I spent in Columbus (double-eek!).
The original plan was to make a runner for one of the many radiator covers we live with--they're in at least one corner of every room in our tiny house, shrinking the furniture-arrangement possibilities. But this turned out so beautiful that it will forever be a centerpiece at our dining table.


p.s. it's reversible! Amy Butler's lotus in cherry--solid. pretty!