And so it went.

And so it went.

A week ago today, I made my getaway.  I’d spent the week preparing for it, had my my list of projects all ready to go, and I was ready to conquer the chaos.  I made the mistake of staying up quite late the night before, so I was pretty tired and moving kinda slowly, but was determined to not while my entire day away.

I walked into my sewing are around 9:30 and noted that it was a complete train wreck.  The cutting table (which is huge) was barely useable.  The pressing table was even more cluttered.  There were bags of to-do projects laying around.  Fabric was waiting to be organized.  I had to get this organized before attempting any projects.

And so it went.

In the midst of organizing, I realized that I needed to organize my patterns.  This wasn’t on my original list, but I figured it was worth it to spend the time.  I cleaned out a bunch that I never use, and organized all of the patterns I had drafted.  Lunch time came around, and then I got back to work.  I had gotten a whole bunch of fabric from freecycle, so that needed to be organized.  Again, this wasn’t on my original list, but it was practically spilling out of a big rubbermaid bin.

And so it went.

The afternoon was half gone, and I still hadn’t gotten a chance to start sewing!  I started to feel discouraged, until I looked at my “done” list.

1. file cabinet and patterns organized
2. cutting table cleared
3. pressing table cleared
4. fabric scraps organized
5. to do projects organized
6. extra fabric organized

Oh, and I took a few breaks in there to nurse the squish.  Soo, all was not lost, I just spent a lot of timing doing the not fun stuff.  Kinda like spending lots of money on a sprinkler system for your landscaping.  Noone will see it, but it sure will make maintaining the landscaping MUCH easier.

And so it went.

Finally at about 4pm I started working on an actual sewing project.

drafting a pattern.  I was pretty pooped by then, so I can’t say that I was efficiently using my time!  I got half of the pattern done just in time to go eat dinner, after which time the kiddies were put in bed, and I went back to work finishing up the pattern.

I had promised a friend that I would write a blog post about babywearing, so I ended up wasting spending the next two hours writing that up.

And so it went.

Day two of my getaway dawned with me being more rested and ready to sew the whole day.  Alas, it didn’t work out that way.  Between stopping to nurse the nursling, making up the pattern as I went, and a few other interruptions, I didn’t really knock out much of my list.  I DID get a chance to learn some new techniques on my new serger, so ALL was not lost.

My most satisfying accomplishment was the upcycling of a shirt for DS1.  We had gotten this shirt from freecycle . . . it was too big and there were some stains under the soccer ball.

I cut the bottom off and replaced it with part of another t-shirt, and added some blue trim to match the collar and the sleeves.  Then I made the shirt narrower and added long-sleeves.  Here’s how it turned out.

Yeah, I patted myself on the back for a good, long time after that!

And so it went.

So the list of what I accomplised on day two is noticeably shorter.

1. 5 upcycled shirts (the first one had to be fixed because it was too small . . boo!)
2. 3 pairs of fleecified pants for the squish.

SIGH.

Now that I’m this side of my getaway, I can’t say that it turned out at all like I had hoped.  I had high hopes of getting many things sewn and of feeling accomplished.  Alas, neither of those things happened.  It was still a good two days, though.  I’m now have everything organized so that when I DO have a free hour or so, I can quickly work on something rather than flailing about going “now what? now what?”.  And I’m  feeling really motivated to get that list knocked out, come hell or high water.  So even though I returned feeling only minimally refreshed, at this point, minimal refreshment is preferrable to none at all.

And. so. it. went.