15 Minute Studio Spiff Up #17

I'm running out of ideas folks!  If you have areas we haven't worked on send me an email or comment  on this blog.  I've been ignoring this particular area because I really don't want to work on it.  Sorry, truth hurts but I think it is a big task.  

Organize all those stray patterns and quilts and paper you've either cut from quilt magazines or printed from the Internet or gotten from a class. 

While the long arm was stitching away today I pulled out a pile of papers I had with mystery quilt instructions, individual block patterns, mini quilts -- you get the idea -- all sorts of stuff I want to save but also be able to find more easily. 

What a surprise for me to find it isn't as disorganized as I thought it was.  I have several fat 3 ring binders full of quilty papers.  And, I have this one pile of papers that actually have been organized some what. This doesn't look so bad. 

When I moved my studio into my new space a year and a half ago (or maybe longer) I took stacks and stacks of paper to the dining room table and put like things together.  Some actually got stuck in the binders.  This pile is all that's left from that effort.  Unfortunately, somewhere is a stack of pages I've accumulated since then. Luckily those are mostly one page patterns because I tend to leave things on my computer now.  I only print items I want to refer to frequently, i.e. I'm actually making the item.   Hum, I wonder where those papers are?  

Although these are somewhat organized it's still over an inch of paper here that needs to find a home. Somewhere I have several empty 3 ring binders too.  Pat was all for getting rid of them but I knew, eventually, I'd want to use them. Big issue is I have NO CLUE where they are.  

I had been thinking of how I wanted to organize all these papers and had left myself a note.  Here are my categories.  You may have others.  I'm not much of an appliquér so I don't have a notebook for it.  

Paper piecing -- yikes, I already have 2 notebooks for that category. 

Mystery Quilts -- Mysteries for Relay does a mystery every other month or so and I've done LOTS of them.  But, I also have several Bonnie Hunter mysteries and Inspector Cluesew mysteries. (Not sure if I spelled that correctly...) 

Small Quilt Patterns -- Fun to do and generally pretty fast. 
Bonnie Hunter Patterns -- I've used many of the free pattern's on Quiltville.com so they have their own notebook.  But do her annual mysteries go in the mystery notebook or this one? Definitely this one! 
Single Blocks -- I'm in one block group, plus I get blocks from various places.  The print outs can go into this notebook. 
Quilt Patterns -- I'll put free standing patterns from the Internet or classes here. 

That's as far as I've planned on the topics.  I had hoped to index each notebook by typing up the content on my computer and printing out the pages to put at the front of the book.  One, I have a hand written list for but that is as far as I've gotten.  Oh well. You'll notice I've used a mixture of future tense and past tense.  Sorry, it does sound disjointed but truth is some of these things I've already done and some need to be done -- past tense and future tense.  

Enjoy your paper challenge this week.  You might surprise yourself with what you'll find.  Getting organized takes plenty of time and I've fallen off quite a bit recently.  But, if nothing more, I have a great guide to what I should be doing or finishing.  Today, I actually removed a scrap batting from my computer list because I had used the batting piece. I got out the computer and looked up what sizes I had.  It was a lot easier to find on the computer than going through my big bin of left overs.  Now to measure some new ones to put away and to add to the list. 

Happy Quilting All!