Rearranging Relief

Zakka Sew-Along - Zig Zag Tote

For the best part of the past 2 days I have been working my way through the pattern for the Zig Zag Tote in the Zakka Style book for the Zakka Sew-Along. It has been REALLY challenging. It is my first bag ever and I am not very good with conceptualising written patterns. This afternoon I was 3 steps away from finishing it, when disaster struck! I could have cried but I was too tired to bother...so I set down my unpicker, turned off my machine and walked out of the sewing room. I need time out from this project. 


So I turned my brain to the rearrangement of shelving in my son's room. Strangely I felt relief!


Expedit Love #2


My husband put together the 2nd 2x4 unit this afternoon and shifted the old 2x2 into big brother's room. So I had to think about what to do with the extra shelf space and storage it created. That's a 'nice' problem to have.


Before                                                                                After

Of course it did involve a lot of tidying up as well. Always good mind numbing stuff!


Before

 After

The New Expedit 2x4 


Top - Ikea fabric boxes with cds of talking books, board books and finger puppets. I alsor swapped the framed pictures because this cute one, from A Little Birdie Told Me, looked better with these colours in the boxes.

Top Shelf - Toy Story tins from Op-shops. Stripey robot and Toothless the Dragon (we picked him up at the 'How to Train Your Dragon' live show last weekend in Brisbane).

2nd Shelf - Disney, Dr Seuss and Charlie and Lola book series. Then a selection of my favourite kids books including many written and illustrated by Alison Lester and Fulvio Testa.

3rd Shelf - Mostly picture and fiction books

Bottom Shelf - Non-fiction. Full of trains, space, dinosaurs and 'Tell my Why?' titles.

Desktop - needed a good declutter. I forgot to take a 'before' shot. It would have been worthwhile -darn! (But it should be a complete mess by tomorrow afternoon...so I may update this post with a photo).

Younger Boy's I-Spy Quilt


This one was also made by my mother when Tristan was barely out of a cot. I love its busyness and borders.

Older Boy's I-Spy

Now I can claim this one! This was my first single bed quilt and first written pattern. I whipped up the patchwork top in less than 4 days in January 2010. It involved a LOT of fun fussy cutting and many, many fabrics.

I wanted Duncan's quilt to be predominantly green. I added a few non-picture tone on tone greens, blues and oranges to give it some 'pop'.

I love all the London prints that my mum gave to me when she de-stashed her kid's fabric. Thankfully the green Dr Seuss had just been released, so I couldn't resist throwing in a Lorax and Sneetch..

A lot of the animal/wilderness prints were from Keepsake Quilting. They do some great I-Spy releases. It was much harder to find 'Australian' prints. I found only 2 - cricket and koalas. I also threw in some Halloween prints too!

Back to the tote tomorrow...can't wait to finish it! The next project the 'House Pouch' started today. I am not sure if I will join in with this one - it had better be easier than this first project! Grrrrr for the idea of following the patterns as laid out in the book rather than building our skills by doing the easier projects first.