The Mystery Lot Part 2

I should have mentioned yesterday that I was hoping to find some embroidery thread in this lot, but alas, didn't happen. This is another pre-quilted panel that is about crib size. Of course Patches is a yellow dragon, two of my least favorite things, but I think I'll bind the panel, wash it and donate it to my Goodwill. That will be good for my soul. :)

Ditto on this pre-quilted cut -n-sew panel of Sesame Street baby bibs. Okay, I might have to keep Oscar; he was always my favorite character.

The embroidery portion of this lot was obviously describing the stamped pillowcases.

The original owner was very fond of embroidering pillowcases. Each of these piles are a matching set of two.

As are these.

And these.

And these! Ha. Tell you what, even if I don't embroider them, I'll never have to buy another pillowcase in this lifetime and the next. :)

I found enough cheater quilt panels to make a set of four matching pillows.

And now for weirdness: In the lot I found a huge pile of these 29" X 28" white cotton utility cloths -- twenty-one of them, to be exact. They had been saved for so long the adhesive from the labels dyed a gold patch on the fabric. I don't think they're shop rags, as they're too nice. Maybe reusable dusting cloths?

The oddball bits are the finale, and they're definitely a bizarre assortment: a small yarn loom, 5 mini and 1 standard size bars of soap, cream lace binding, an embossing wheel with flowers, a package of darning needles, two small plastic embroidery hoops, a pocket sewing kit advertising a funeral home (yes -- creeped me out, too), and a roll of wide black twill tape.

It's not what I hoped for, but in a way it's so much more than I hoped for, too. I love the randomness and weirdness, the vintage kits, the kitchen towel from 1980, and especially the mystery surrounding all of it. I'll never know why the original maker saved all this stuff, but I will do my best to recycle and reuse what I can.

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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.

Valerean

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