Skip to main content

Tableau

We used to visit our college kid and take her out to dinner once a week, which is a ritual I'm not willing to abandon just because we're in lockdown. So now she either comes home once a week for dinner, or I pack up food and supplies and cook at her apartment. Here's the pile of totes I took last week to make salmon, rice pilaf and green beans for Kat:

I was looking at my haul and noticed the contrast of the totes. The crazy tote is mine, which is pretty typical of me when I get obsessed with a project (aka I overdo the stitching and embellishing.) The sashiko white and blue tote is Lisa Hobbs' work, which is always clean and elegant. The floral purse was made by Candi, an Etsy seller who closed her shop earlier this year, and whose messenger bags I love.

The three bags all serve a useful purpose, and yet reflect the style and craftsmanship of their creators, too. Candi is the most precise maker I know; her work could easily sell in stores. Lisa, who works in recycled materials, always finds a way to make old textiles look gorgeous. I'm the least talented maker in this group for sure, but when you see one of my totes you definitely know it's mine.

My thought for today is that everything you create is a dream of yours made real. So let yourself dream. :)

Comments

nightsmusic said…
Your Dream tote is wonderful. You shouldn't say you're the least talented. I think you're extremely talented! I'm sorry to hear about the Esty closure though. So many talented people on Etsy get overshadowed by all the "sellers" who aren't really handcrafting anything at all. I hope she finds another outlet.

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.