Fixing Up Vera Part One

What led me to bid on a lot of Vera Bradley bags up for auction in August is a sad reality: all of my purses have now worn out and are coming apart. They were handmade by a very talented maker who no longer sells her work, too, so I can't replace them. I got fifteen years use out of all of them, so while I'm sad I think I'm pretty lucky.

The lot was noted to have "some stains and rips" so I was the only bidder, and got all seven bags for $9.99. When I looked at them I found the damage had been exaggerated, with five being undamaged and three of those just a bit soiled from use. Two were in unused condition.

The large tote had some brown stains on the inside. It looked like some kind of coffee or brown beverage had leaked in the tote.

These stains barely showed on the outside, so I treated them with Shout stain remover and put the bag in the wash with the others.

The large duffel bag had a tear in one of the outer pockets that I saw I could patch, and did the repairs in about an hour.

To see the results, stop by the blog tomorrow.

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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.

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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