A Productive Week With More Spare Time - Part One - W/E 10th February 2024

This week started with a few days off. I wasn't working over the weekend and my hours for this week got changed, so I was working less shifts. I was very happy about this, as I'd previously been down to work five evening shifts this week.

As a consequence, I had a few consequetive days off, which meant that I had lots of spare time to do a few things that I'd been meaning to do for a while.

On Sunday, I had a nice walk with the dog, as OH was cycling again. Later, I decided to do the weekly shop a day early, as we'd run out of a lot of the foods we eat regularly. I stayed local and went to our local Lidl again. It does help to keep me away from the temptation of going into some of the many shops on the out of town retail parks where I normally shop.

I did a bit of patchwork on and off over the weekend, which was nice, as I hadn't done any for quite a while and then on Sunday night, I felt like I wanted to do something creative, so I went through my scrap basket once again found lots of scraps I wanted to work with to make another project bag. This time, I chose purple and burgundy scraps and added in a few other fabrics from my stash to make a big enough piece of fabric to work with. I set them out on the bed in a way that I thought would work well and then set them aside to sew together another day. This definitely scratched my creative itch.

On Monday, I didn't need to go anywhere. OH was walking the dog and I had done the weekly shop, so I got to spend the day at home. OH and I finally got around to putting the Xmas tree and decorations back in the loft, which cleared a lot of space in the sewing room, so I did a bit of a tidy in there.

Later, I went down for breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning deconstructing a patchwork project that I wasn't a fan of (more in another post). In the afternoon, I did a bit of painting. I'd picked up a small set of wooden drawers off the street, on the way to the gym a few months ago and I finally got around to giving it it's first coat of paint. I had a couple of tester pots in the cupboard that I used for this, so it didn't cost anything to do.

Here's the before:

There were a couple of drawers missing, so I painted the front of the bottom and determined to line it with pretty paper to make it into a shelf. I planned to put the drawers in the sewing room alongside others that I have. 

I was going to paint the second coat in the evening, but I got a call asking me if I would work, so I got ready and went in for a few hours to help them out.

On Tuesday morning, I got up and ready to go to my usual class at the gym. I had an hour to kill before heading out, so I put another coat of paint on the drawers. It felt good to get this done. It's a small job to spruce these drawers up, but I just hadn't found the time or inclination in the madness of the last couple of months.  It's done now though and I'm very happy with the results. Good enough, for something that cost me nothing but a bit of time and effort. Here's a photo of the drawers finished with pretty paper lining the drawers and 'shelf':

Here's another picture of them insitu in the sewing room:

I proceeded to fill them with things that I need to get access to easily when I'm sewing. Baby steps towards better organisation in the sewing room and hopefully making it a less cluttered and more easily useable space.

I then did some sewing on my machine on Tuesday afternoon and made up another piece of fabric using scraps to make into another project bag. Here's a picture of the fabric made:

This is a much bigger piece than the last one, but it actually took less time to make, partly because I'd made one before and knew better how to assemble it and partly because many of the pieces were larger, which also made it quicker.  It should, hopefully, make a much bigger bag/basket. I cut some fabric to size for the lining and made an inside pocket from more scraps and now I just need to sew it all together.

As I've been quite productive this week, I've decided to divide this post into two parts. See you in the second one.