23 April, 2021

Is your creative space working for you?

I have a confession to make, I don't like my sewing space. Ugh, I feel so selfish saying that but honestly I don't. This is what it looks like: 

My sewing space is small, really small. It's actually in my kitchen, if you look to the top right of the photo, you can see my stove, the kitchen table is to the right of the photo. It's not an ideal location but I found it's the only place that works for me. I often sit at the sewing machine & sew whilst I'm cooking dinner or sit at the kitchen table & pin fabric whilst the kids are eating their dinner. When the sewing machine was in a separate part of the house, it was never used. The sewing table is small, too small for my long legs and I can't shift the sewing machine to a more comfortable position so I quickly get a sore back and to be brutally honest, my sewing space often looks like this:
Such a cluttered space, everything gets dumped there because I get frustrated & crabby when I get a sore back from the ill 'fitting' desk. Also, because it's in the kitchen, I often get cold. I wish it was like back in high school when they had the decent heating and you'd kick off your shoes to get toasty warm feet, I'd love to have that in the kitchen, I wonder how much underfloor heating costs.

So, my frustration got the better of me. I packed up the desk into boxes, cleaned it up and sold it! I sold it within a day, way quicker than I had anticipated! So now I don't have a proper sewing space, it's currently a pile of boxes and my sewing machine is on the kitchen table. I've sat down and tried to design my ideal desk and hubby & I will be working on it over the next week or so (building it ourselves). I think I need some better lighting, increased storage and maybe a new chair too.

Tell me about your creative space. Is it working for you? Do you need to make any adjustments so it's a more pleasant place to be? Perhaps you have an actual dedicated sewing room! I'd love to hear about it!

This has been a collaborative blog post.

19 April, 2021

Eco: 'unpaper' towels or bench wipes

 

Have you heard of 'unpaper' towels before? You may call them bench wipes or cloth wipes or reuseable wipes/cloths. You can use them instead of paper towels, use & wash then use again. No waste.

Can you tell what these were made from? 

I made them from the kids old bibs! I found the pile of them in the back of the cupboard as I could never figure out what to do with them when they out grew them!

Yes, I could have donated them to the charity shop but they're old & stained and they'd probably have been tossed in the shop's bin. The wipes were so easy to make, I just sewed a seam across, trimmed the top off then zigzagged along the edge. Easy. A quick satisifying project that didn't even take 10 minutes!

I'd love your feedback, what else should I add to these Crafty Inspo lists? 

I utilise affiliate (aff) links throughout my blog as a way to help me keep crafting. 
If you click on an aff link, I receive a very small amount from it at NO cost to you. 
So please help me to keep CraftyRie up and running by clicking on my aff links!Many thanks, Rie

12 April, 2021

Scraps to usefulness: curtain tiebacks

I 'uncovered' a window the other day aka, tidying up all the stuff in front of it so it lets more light through! So the next thing I wanted to do then, was to let in even more light and the best way to do that is to make curtain tiebacks as they pull the curtain back all the way to let the daylight in.

I couldn't decide on what fabric to use, so I used the one that 'fell' out of the cupboard, old jeans!

I then used all the fancy stitches on my machine along with all the odd remnants of thread to make it colourful. After trimming, I edged in remnant binding stripes and voila.

Curtain tiebacks for the backroom!

And now on to the next stash busting project, I wonder what I can make next!

I'd love your feedback, what else should I add to these Crafty Inspo lists? 

I utilise affiliate (aff) links throughout my blog as a way to help me keep crafting. 
If you click on an aff link, I receive a very small amount from it at NO cost to you. 
So please help me to keep CraftyRie up and running by clicking on my aff links!Many thanks, Rie