April WIPocalypse Stash Organisation

WIPocalypse is hosted by Measi of Measi's Musings.

The main focus of my WIPocalypse this year is my "14 in '14" a list of 14 projects I wanted to complete in 2014.  In the last month I have worked on seven of the list.  Here is the current stitching status of each one:

Prairie Moon - Thine is the Trick and the Treat

Friends' Wedding Sampler

Primitive Hare - Spooky Countdown

Little Stitcher - 12 Days of Christmas

Just Nan - Winter Typography

A Mon Ami Pierre - Noel Blanc

Jannlynn - Gathering Honey

Measi is also setting us a topic to discuss each month:

April 15     How do you keep your stash organized?

I don't have a dedicated craft room unfortunately, it's only a three bedroom house so there isn't a spare one for me to use.  I do have a large cupboard in the utility room which I have recently commandeered for storage.  I keep all my completed samplers in there while they are waiting for their turn on the walls, I like to rotate my displays.

My fabric is kept in bags, one for 28, one for 32 and one for "everything else".  I have a large bag full of all the charts people have sent me along with the extra little bits and the letters.  I always keep letters and cards as I love to re-read them and think of the person who gifted me the chart.

My DMC threads are kept in Floss-away bags on rings in numerical order.  I love these bags, you can fit several skeins of the same colour in each one, you can add the leftover lengths easily and you can see when you are running low of a colour.  When I stitch a large project I remove the bags and put them on a separate project ring.  For smaller projects I tend to leave them on the larger ring and just keep the whole bag near me.

My beads are partly in those stacking containers and partly in a little drawer unit I inherited last year.  I prefer the drawer unit so I will put all my new ones in there and not buy anymore containers.

My Kreinik are all in a box, as are my ribbons and cords, my backing fabrics are in another as are my buttons and charms.  These boxes are just random boxes I have collected, not co-ordinating at all!

My charts are in a wooden box except for my Just Nans which are all in one big envelope together.  My freebie printouts are in plastic wallets in one large folder.

That's about it!  I favour a "keep it close" method, if I use something alot I want it near me.  I don't want to go rummaging around for things in another room.  For this reason I keep most of my notes on paper and pen rather than the computer.  It's a shared computer in another part of the house so it's easier just to look in the notebook or diary next to my chair.  World of Cross Stitching magazine gives a diary as the cover gift each year so I use that as my stitching diary, all the SAL posting dates go in the back and I jot down which projects I stitch on each day and if I finish one what number it is.  Then I can keep my blog up to date.

I had a great response to my Blogaversary Giveaway.  I wrote all the ideas down on a piece of paper (without the commenter's name) and then showed it to the Large Boy.  We discussed the practicalities of each idea and which ones appealed to him the most.  In the end he wrote down three and I wrote down three, two were the same ones so we picked one of those as being the one most open to something weird and wonderful!  The winner is Miss Lilly from Back on the Wall who will be getting a Cheshire Cat themed finish at some point in the future.  It will be a little while because I have to do some shopping for it!  I have been browsing my favourite online shops already.

Thank you to everyone who entered and everyone who wished me a Happy Blogaversary.  It's been a fun three years and I fully intend to keep going for at least three more, or until the cute photos of me run out LOL.

Finally , I sent out the emails today for the Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop which will be this Friday.  If you can't wait until then, there is another Treasure Hunt going on at the Scarlet Letter Gallery.  The Gallery is a project I worked on for a full six month, adding each of the Scarlet Letter samplers to the blog in alphabetical and categorised according to age and country etc.  I am currently adding difficulty ratings to each one.  This is a beautiful blog to visit and browse through.  We have versions of many of the SL stitched by the challenge group over the last year and some of Marsha's model samplers too.  Well worth a look if you love antique and reproduction samplers.

This Easter Bunny is hiding on 22 different Scarlet Letter samplers on our Gallery.  If you find him you can claim a 25% discount from that sampler.  Click on the bunny to find the full details.