I didn't plan on deep cleaning

I had no intention of doing a clean up in the sewing room. All I wanted to do was to get my Summer Sunset project set up again and start a new project (more on that later). But after all the Christmas sewing I finally actually looked at my space and it was a disaster. There wasn't a free flat surface anywhere. I could not tolerate it anymore.

Before

After

I didn't do an actual full deep clean but I grabbed a trash bag and cleared out the three areas that bugged me the most. My fabric cabinets still need some attention but now I can work here. 
These are the project shelves. I realized that I didn't know what was in a couple of the bins. See the green bin on the right side of the middle shelf? It had a project idea from 2007! I think it's clear that I'm not going to make that particular miniature quilt. Now that bin will hold my travel crochet project between trips. About 5 more bins were emptied. The bins with blue tags are the ones that I've designated to work on this year, hopefully the first half of the year. I got everything off the top of the cabinets and even have a few empty bins/baskets on the left side of the top shelf. Ahhhh, breathing room. It's not "pretty" but when it  comes to my work spaces I'm totally function over form.

Before and after are really obvious here. I hate when my cutting table gets full. Now I just have the binder to replace my worn out dye binder and the materials for the upcoming online quilting class. Perfect.

Now Summer Sunset is set up again at the Juki and the Brother is all cleared off and ready for my new project. What is it? I've decided to do the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year. I've been wanting to do it for a while but didn't have a good plan. I'll share what I'm going to do tomorrow. Of course, it's kind of involved.

Another project on the future/wish list is to make a 3-D quilt. I just got this in the mail last week and I think it will be a fun project. I'm not pulling fabrics or anything yet. I just added it to the wish list.

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Aside from cleaning, I got Mom's giant quilt loaded and started quilting. It's 102" square. The backing fabric is exactly 102" wide including the selvedges so it needed a little more width. I found a fabric in my stash that I could add on. She will have about a 4" strip of blue on one side. If she decides to use the quilt back side up (it's a really pretty fabric) she can put the strip edge under the pillows and no one will be the wiser. One row quilted and about 45 more rows to go! 
Well, it seems like 45 but probably a good dozen. The pantograph is wide and uses almost a whole bobbin in one row.

Cleaning up the sewing room really helps the creative juices. I'm excited to get back to Summer Sunset this week. I'll also get back to the floor cloths and get those finished up. But Friday and Saturday will be sewing days so I'll be back working on the king size green quilt.