Unselfish Sewing (mostly)

Hi everyone, hope all is well! I know I'm certainly feeling a lot better now that warmer weather and some sunshine has arrived, how about you?

To be quite honest, I've been lacking sewjo lately. I think part of it had to do with my latest business trip, part of it has to do with being desperate to finish my knit sweater (though it will probably be way too warm by the time I'm done), and part of it had to do with my disaster of a sewing room. (However, the girls in the Stashbusting 2015 group are definitely keeping me motivated!)

Seriously, my sewing room was out of control. But I took some time last week to get my guest room/cat room (what? I'm not the only one who has one, right?) in order, and it felt so good that my sewing room soon followed. It's not quite good enough yet for a tour, but it's SO much nicer. Seriously, every time I walk in there I comment about it (sometimes it's out loud, and yes, I do live alone). 

Since I was finally feeling it last Sunday, I decided to whip up an apron and oven mitt for my cousin's upcoming nuptuals. She had one on her registry, but of course I saw it and thought "I could make that! And with a matching oven mitt to boot!" I used M5825, one of the first patterns I ever bought, with which I made some of the first things I ever sewed!

With the aprons I made for myself, I didn't take much care to check the directionality of the print, and as a result they're a little...unique, ha. I made sure to pay more attention this time, and tried to include some nice finishing touches on both the apron and the mitt - I hope she likes them! 

The mitts were actually ugly freebies from Menards that I just recovered, which made for much faster sewing! And because these came together so easily, I decided to make her another set. The fabric for these was repurposed from some curtains I made for my apartment a couple of years ago. I've moved several times since then and know they wouldn't fit any of my windows anymore, but I still love the print (though maybe not for curtains). I hope she feels the same way, and hey, you can never have too many aprons or oven mitts, right?
 

Then, since I still wasn't quite sewed out, I threw together (literally, the finishing is crap) a case for my knitting needles from the same repurposed curtains. 

 

This has been on my to-do list for 3 or 4 years, and I'm so glad to have finally gotten it done! I don't have to use this sad bag of messiness anymore.

I feel so much more productive when things are neat and organized, so I'm hoping they'll stay that way. Do you have any tips for keeping yourself on track?

Finally, pretty curtains!

Remember that Black Friday shopping I told you about last time? Well, during that ridiculous spree, I also bought some sort of icky-feeling (but pretty!) polyester bedsheets to convert into curtains!

(Seriously, they're like 100% polyester and I would not recommend using them as bedsheets, unless you like imagining all of the terrible things that could happen to you in the event of a fire in the middle of the night.) They're not draping very nicely in these pictures, and the ones in the middle are just a bit too short (I want to say I'll go back and fix them, but...we all know that's not happening anytime soon, right?), but I still really like them! They're definitely an improvement over my last curtains:

The old ones weren't hideous or anything, they just kind of clashed with my decor and weren't very "me." Oh, and when winter rolled around, I did a really *ace* job of pinning up the ones in the middle, as you can tell.

These feel much lighter and airier, and even though they're a little crooked, ha, I love them! I have a ridiculous amount of windows and just wasn't finding anything I liked (that also liked my budget), until I saw these advertised and had my light bulb moment. Each set of twin sheets was $5.99, and I used two sets for these 4 panels (one set of the damask and one set of cream lining). They're not exactly blackout curtains (that would be nice!) but they go well with my decor. 

I've only done 4 panels and have at least 2 or 3 more to go, unfortunately. They are a pain in the ASS (seriously, I do not recommend ironing bedsheets, have you tried it?), but I think they're worth it in the end? What's your opinion on big projects like this - would you rather pay for the convenience of having it done for you? 

P.S. The Stashbusting Sewalong group was the perfect motivator to finally get going on these. Thanks for the encouragement, ladies! If you're feeling overwhelmed by your stash, I highly recommend checking them out. These curtains used up about 10 yards total (the 2 packages I mentioned above). I still have 4 more packages, but might get to take a couple of them back since I think I over-bought.