And the Ugly Award Goes to . . .

I subscribe to a quilting website newsletter that is always sending me pics of award-winning quilts. First place this, Judge's Choice that. I'm not terribly impressed with these award winners; most look like they were factory made. Yes, they're intricate and flawless, but they're all starting to blend together now. They all look alike. I preferr to see something that is flawed, weird or just bizarre enough to stand out.

Why? I don't know. Maybe for me, perfection is overrated. :)

I have come across a lot of strange quilts since I started collecting them. This double wedding ring here, which I've yet to finish quilting, is probably the weirdest -- who would choose these colors for this pattern? But I like it because it is so strange. If I was giving out awards, this one would definitely win first place in Bizarrely Beautiful.

Thrifting a bundle of small quilts that I intended to cut up brought me a strange little art quilt. It's beautifully made, and I love the oddities the maker chose to incorporate, so this one went right into the collection. I'd give it first place in Strangely Adorable.

As for my own work, this art quilt I made back in 2021 has created a lot of debate between me and a quilter friend. She says it's hideously gorgeous, mainly because of my color choices and abstract compositions. No one, she assured me, would ever use peach moire satin like this. I agree, so I want first place in the So Ugly It's Pretty category.

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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.

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...

Valerean

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