I've been missing out on my sewing time because I decided to rearrange my whole set-up. The sewing room I have now is much smaller than my old one, and I've never felt that things had settled down after my move. I've been doing lots of thinking over the months and tried various ideas, but I still wasn't happy. But now I've taken my computer out of the room completely and set it up in the lounge room, switched the machine from one side of the room to the other, made a huge new pressing area and designated an area for designing and doing applique, with good light. Of course the whole room was turned upside down in the process, and I still haven't managed to put everything away, but I just have a happy feeling that this is going to work for me.

Sometimes I have to let go of one fixed idea :"The computer has to be in my sewing room" and then that frees up my thinking and I can come up with solutions. I realised that I didn't look at my quilt photos for reference when I was sewing and I could update my spreadsheets and other quilt related stuff anywhere, so there was no reason for it to be taking up valuable real estate in my smaller sewing area.

I haven't cut anything out for so long I was immediately energised by my new set-up and started slicing up fabric for old projects, and new ones.
I do love organising my cut out pieces next to my sewing machine, and generally having everything tidied up and put away, (only in my sewing room, I hasten to add, a good housekeeper I aint), which is why these piles of fabric everywhere are giving me the irrits.
I don't usually work like this, with things jumbled on my cutting mat, so the next job is to get all this tidied and put away. I'll actually enjoy it I think, now that all the big decisions about what to put where have been resolved.

Bonnie was talking about spaghetti squash and I thought I'd show my pumpkin patch. The summer has been too cool and damp for a really good harvest, but I've had fun growing these anyway.
I've got about three squash plants and the rest are pumpkins and zucchini, so I didn't have a lot of plants. There are twelve large fruit at the moment, and they may produce more. Keryn and I have picked two so far, and we liked it enough to vow that next year we'll plant a lot more. It's certainly easy to grow, and the fruits are large and quite heavy so they justify the time and water I've put into them.
They go bright yellow when they're mature, so the ones at the front are still growing. Keryn and I are trying different ways to cook them, baking, microwave and some books say to boil them whole- bit cumbersome I think, but we'll let you know the results later on.