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Sorting Out

Let's sort through the embroidery thread that I thrifted as part of a very cheap bundle of yarn, tools and notions, and see exactly what I got.

There is a small group of 6-strand floss and a larger bunch of perle thread (looks like #5 to me); both are cotton and marked made in Mexico (I think the DN brand stands for for Designs for Needles.) All of them probably came from those jumbo economy rainbow packs they sell at the craft stores, but that's fine with me.

There are 31 skeins of floss, and nearly all of them are unused. The colors are basic, but I can make them work.

I counted 91 skeins of perle thread, which is what I most often use with my embroidery. There's a little more color variety with this group, and they're also mostly brand new. So 122 skeins total.

Mixed in with the thread I found a plastic holly leaf, which makes me think someone bought this thread for a holiday project and then donated what they didn't use to our local Goodwill. Thank you, original owner. :)

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Other Stashes

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Downsizing

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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...