finishing projects & deciding what’s not worth finishing

30 May

piles of fabrics scrunched up not folded in a wooden cupboard japanese kimono fabric with some slow stitched pieces as well.

While the mess overflows into all spaces of our home, the best way I can find to breathe is to simplify, to minimise and to delete / remove stuff. It’s hard - five maximalists living in a small home. There isn’t a lot of space, but none of us want to remove or get rid of our stuff.

I find this to be challenging to work, to create new work. When I have piles of things that, of half done projects, of ideas, of scraps of fabric for ‘maybe’. So.. I’ve decided to clean it all up and see what I want to finish vs what I don’t want to finish.

And to give myself permission to take things away - donate, compost, cut up, giveaway.

I always save every little scrap just in case. It feels like I’m betraying the fabric and the maker (grower, weaver, spinner, dyer) of the fabric, as well as the environmental aspect of just throwing stuff away.

Having to be accountable for what I use and keep vs what I throw away can sometimes be quite emotionally big and draining. So, sometimes I simply have to let go.

I have to decide that some projects I am never ever EVER going to finish. And that it’s ok to not hold onto them. I don’t need to keep boxes and suitcases and storage tubs with these ideas, made things that were a process and would never come to fruition at all.

During June I’ve decided to do a WIP challenge. WIP means work-in-progress and is a way that sewists talk about things they’re doing, making. Generally it means things that have been sitting and waiting, rather than the actually project in their hands right then. But of course it can be both.

UFO - unfinished objects - are similar. But these are generally something that has been sitting for a long time. Sometimes packed away so that the guilt of not finishing or working on them doesn’t keep gnawing away at us.

Some UFOs I do want to finish. Or I have a hope that I will one day finish it. Some I will never finish and I should come to terms with it.

It’s hard deciding that we’ll never pick up a half-made project again. Like going through our wardrobes and deciding what clothes to get rid of. Just because I haven’t worn it in two or three years doesn’t mean I don’t still love it, or that one day I might *just* be skinny enough to wear it again, or there might be that one extra special time that I truly need it.

When my two bigger kids grew out of their baby clothes I kept them for quite a while. Ages actually. And then I finally went through them all and got rid of most of them. I did keep the special ones, of course. But all the useful but just baby clothes-things I donated. And then about six or eight months later I got pregnant. YEP.

So, I always feel like that’s going to happen when I get rid of my own clothes. And also my own creative projects. Just because I haven’t done any screen printing for about four years, doesn’t mean that I won’t one day have a printing table and then I can pick it up again. Or I won’t one day start using all that special fabric I’ve been saving for 10 years…

How do we decide what to keep and what to get rid of?

Of course, we’ve all watched or read Marie Kondo’s methods, but I must admit those are quite extreme. She’s absolutely a minimalist and that’s not me at all.

But I have to find a middle ground. And a bit part of that has to be with me being ok with actually throwing things out - mostly to compost, but sometimes to landfill. So many charities have no space for donations of any kind at the moment, and some of my ‘stuff’ and especially my UFOs or WIPs aren’t exactly things to send off for donating. While it’s a wonderful joy to find a half-finished quilt at the local op-shop, it has to be something special and worthwhile to bring home someone else’s abandoned projects. I rarely do it as I have to know that I’m actually going to pick it up and finish it. And I know that I’m probably not going to.

So, before I donate things I try to have that thought about the person who will find it and if they’ll value taking it home.

This weekend I went through one of my cupboards of stuff. I don’t currently have a proper studio (we have a space that needs renovating before I can use it properly), so I have a few cupboards in our house. With minimal space I need to make sure that I’m making use of it and not storing ‘just because’ stuff. I want to be able to open the cupboard and see exactly what I want without being overwhelmed by everything else.

I packed things into better categories. I packed away some things that I’m not working on at all - like my swift and my yarn, which I’m simply not using right now. I took a whole bag of scrunched up fabric scraps and washed them. They’re currently by the fire drying and I’m ironing them. Some of the scraps I sent straight to the compost. It felt quite liberating to declare a piece of fabric too small, even though in theory I *could* have used it for something; mending, slow stitching, patching.

Reminder to self - I don’t have to keep and use every single scrap. A big reason that I do use natural fibres is that I can compost them in my home compost pile. Also - I don’t wear or use synthetic fibres generally in my clothing.

I found a project that I started last November. And I thought I would spend this June finishing it. When I started I didn’t actually love it, but I knew (thought) the person I was giving it to would love it. But, to be honest, it was an 11th-hour project. Instead of spending time finishing something that doesn’t feel exciting to me I’ll be unpicking it and using the fabric for something else.

Some of the fabrics I don’t love and I’ll be moving them onto someone else who will love and use them. THey’re good fabrics, so I don’t want to compost them; but neither do I want to burden someone with something they don’t love.

I hope at the end of June I can show you how my month has been; of finishing WIPs, cleaning our UFOs and deciding what to keep vs what to give away. I don’t have a set solid plan, but if you’d like to join me I’ll be sharing some thoughts on ways you can approach your own WIPs challenge. I’ll be sharing here on my blog, and sending a weekly email if you add your name here.

We are also sharing our WIP challenge in the Stitch Circle Community, so you should join us there to be inspired and share inspire us too. I really can’t wait to see what we start with and where we all go throughout the month. It might be simply a wonderful way to get some projects out of our cupboards and being used or gifted. But there might also be a deeper sense of being given space for new thinking, a lightness in our brains by not having to hold onto all that stuff.

I know that it will make a big change to me to have the two cupboards I use in my living space be easier to access and to pack up - less leaving things on the kitchen table (so we can’t eat there .. which we generally don’t do in Winter, as we snuggle by the fire). But there’ll be the added benefit of that clean desk feeling when I am ready to dive into a project - be it new or finishing something. No more of that tidy before I start thing, which always puts me off from actually starting, or uses up all my time.