Happy New Year! Getting Organised.

Some of my new pinboards with various samples pinned on

By Annie

Happy New Year!  Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.

I don't really make New Year resolutions but this year I am definitely going to attempt to get more done creatively and make it a priority. Part of that is making sure my environment is more conducive to creativity. For me that involves being able to see everything but also having everything tidy enough to have mental breathing space and also space to work! I'm practising tidying up after myself and not letting the end of each task remain on the desk but back where it belongs.

I'm midway through a partial reorganisation of my creative space and it feels pretty good. I can see my entire sewing desk now, but it still feels like an inspiring place. I've chucked out some things that I decided were not "sparking joy" anymore (channeling my inner Marie Kondo!) and my favourite thing is that I've finally resolved my handmade felt "sketchbook" issue.

For ages I've been trying to figure out how best to organise my samples & experiments so they are useful and not just left in random boxes piled up. I've considered various things like making a giant fabric sketchbook or just pinning them in regular scrapbooks but that felt too inaccessible for how I want to work. I used to have things pinned on a few pinboards on the wall but they were not easily accessible as they hung above a desk and were also all wobbly as they were hanging on the picture rail, so I took them down and packed everything away again. However, I had a lightbulb moment recently and I bought some more pinboards, this time to use as sketchbook "pages", not up on the wall but free to sit on the floor, against the wall, or on the desk.

I unpacked all of my boxes of samples and experiments and a few random small pics and pinned them to the boards.

Now I can pin, unpin, rearrange and move the samples about and also I have a blank board where I can pick a few relevant bits and pin them like a working mood board.

The boards can travel round the room with me or stack up neatly like a giant book :)

This solution is relatively compact (compared to the plastic boxes) and is accessible and easy to use.

This is not completely everything - I still have some of the bigger pieces in a pile but it is a small manageable pile not a mountain of random disorganised odds n ends. It suits me because it is both messy (lots going on) and neat (easy to stack away).

Two of the boards that I have used mainly for free motion samples are sat on my newly tidied sewing desk. Feeling pretty smug about the tidy!

Now I've got space I might even finish the llama print pyjama trousers that I started making about 6 months ago!  Also, while sorting through my fibres and fabrics I've rediscovered quite a lot of nice fabrics that I had forgotten about.  Feeling newly inspired, I'm aiming to make a few small landscapes with some of them.

Btw, in case you were wondering, the cork in the background of some of the photos is my wonderful cork wall that I use to organise all of the house stuff and any bigger projects that I have on the go but it wasn't suitable to house my samples as they would just take over! :)