To Use or Display, That is the Question

I gave the red bear paw quilt blocks a bath, and they didn't disintegrate:

The wash did reveal many little frayed areas, and even with a good soaking for twenty minutes (which was all I dared) I couldn't get out the yellow-brown foxing stains. You can spot-treat these with hydrogen peroxide, which does lighten or remove foxing, but this can also further weaken the textiles, something I want to avoid.

The red patches are also fraying in a few spots.

The backing muslin is in the best shape, although it also shows foxing:

Both blocks are about 1/4" too wide to use as fronts for the canvas totes I have on hand. I can use them anyway, but I'll lose all the points on the bear paws if I do.

Repeated washings will eventually ruin these blocks, so they can't be incorporated in any project that needs regular washing. I'm not in any mood to make decisions right now, but I may end up binding the edges and displaying them as wall or tabletop decorations.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I think I'd bind them or frame them. Sometimes, preserving history means not quite doing it the way you'd like, but the results would still be wonderful.

September 30, 2020 at 12:36 PM

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.

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...

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.

Valerean

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