Why do I work so hard to clean the sewing room and then within days, if not hours, it’s a mess again?  Why can’t I keep it straight?  Why don’t I finish one project and put away all the leftovers before hauling fabric out for another project?  Why do I print a zillion pages and then have to spend hours going through them and tossing half of what I’ve printed?  Why?  Why?

The projects I have going right now are:

• Patriotic Sampler
• The yellow/navy QOV
• Nicole’s sofa quilt
• The new quilt for Nicole
• Christmas Town Sampler
• A quilt for a magazine

There are probably more but those are the ones that I had spread out all over everywhere.   I can work on a couple of projects at a time but I cannot function with at least six projects all in the piecing stage.

Adding to the frustration, the new furniture will be delivered tomorrow and the old sofa goes in the sewing room.  A reader asked why I’m keeping it.  I suppose the real reason is it still looks brand new and the next reason is that it’s the most comfortable sofa I’ve ever sat on.  I really do like it but it is too big for the family room in the house and a love seat will go better in the house.  It will be nice to have a sofa in the sewing room.  Now there’s only computer/desk type chairs that I use for the computer and sewing.  It will be nice to have the sofa so if friends are over, we can sit and chat or if I’m tired, I can take a quick nap on the sofa.  Here’s the spot I cleared for the sofa.

The distance between the end of the cutting table and the longarm is about 9 feet so there’s plenty of room for the sofa there.  I will not put the sofa right up against the cutting table because Speck has a tendency to get on the back of the sofa and climb onto anything he can reach.

The table that holds the two 301 machines got moved over by the other design wall so now, all three of my set up sewing machines are together.  I only  use the Bernina for binding and do all the piecing on the 301 machines.

This is my little work area — cutting table, sewing machines and an ironing table set up for small jobs.  I can get to the design wall easily from any of the sewing machines.  On the floor is a pillow and sheet where Speck can curl up next to me.

The quilts stacked under the cutting table are all needing binding.

Here’s my other cutting table.  This one is where I trim borders or work on bigger things.  You will notice the newer Bernina is probably feeling pretty unloved.  It sits under the table . . hasn’t even been unpacked since the move.

The bigger ironing table gets used once I’m ironing things larger than blocks.  I love having it for backings, borders, and the big things but for pressing half square triangles and small seams, it’s nice to have a small table set up by the machine.

When I walk into the sewing room from the house, this is pretty much what I see:

Why can’t I keep this room looking like this?