Sewing Woes and Organized Chaos

I haven't had much time to sit down lately and stitch away. I'm still debating the merits of a Confessor's Dress for Halloween (Yes. I know I'm just about out of time). But last night, I decided to work on some of those flying geese for a few minutes.

This is how my sewing machine looked when I gave up and went to bed.

Sometimes it seems like sewing requires a mechanic's education. The problem was that when I stopped pressing on the presser foot, the sewing machine kept going. Um yep. Not good. I cut the power to make it stop. This seemed to coincide with a reduction in stitch length.

 After this happened four times, I took the thing apart and cleaned it really well, oiling the machine and removing all the lint I could get at. Then I went to bed and let it think about what it had done, hoping that it would see the error of its ways and behave itself.

Today I put it back together and stitched a couple of Stormy Path pieces together. It seemed to work ok, so now I'll have to test reducing the stitch length and see what happens. I want to get a lot more done on my active quilts before I post more pictures but in the meantime I observed my workspace and thought it was an interesting set up.

This is my workspace. I think it works for me. I actually have pieces for three quilts sitting right next to my sewing machine. Now I can work on whichever one suits my fancy without having to dig it out of a box. Sometimes I have trouble deciding what to work on and this gives me three easy options with little or no set up time.

The blue stack at the bottom left is my one block wonder, the scraps are for the flying geese, and the rest is Stormy Path. It is what I would term "organized chaos" and it makes me happy. And yep, that is my "Go To Bed" clock in the back, so I can't forget what time it is and stay up too late. It also functions as my Sunday morning "Go to Church" clock.