With our unseasonably warm weather at the end of the month,
I find myself scrubbing the kitchen floor, cleaning the shower curtain, doing
windows, picking up clutter and cleaning spots on the carpet. (We have a cat.) Most importantly, I dusted off my dresser and
took the time to tidy it and put my jewelry and hair supplies in their proper
places. Seeing as how my dresser top is
never a priority because it affects no one but me, I’m most proud of this
little accomplishment. Now I just have a
jewelry box, an assortment of little handmade boxes, a plant, a few rocks, and
a little statue I made years ago.
I also need to sort my fabric stash, and this is a bigger
challenge. Last year, I adopted the
“only handle it once” rule around the house.
This works immensely well for things like dirty dishes, the mail, and
all the small wayward items that otherwise accumulate. My problem; I have not figured out how to
apply it to my fabric stash. The fabric
lives (theoretically) on shelves in the basement. It’s sorted into bins by color or theme: red/pink, yellow/orange, floral, animals,
etc. When I start a project, I dig through
it and dump everything I might want into a box or bag and cart it
upstairs. When I’m done with the project,
the leftovers invariably sit in a corner of the living room. Eventually I get around to taking the bag
back to the basement, but I never get around to putting everything back into
the bins. Why would I want to spend time
cleaning my stash when there are new quilts begging to be started? Since I use a tremendous variety of fabric in
every quilt, this becomes a problem. The
next time I start a project, I have to go looking through all the bags of lost
leftovers, as well as the usual bins, to find what I’m looking for. Often, I find fabric I’d forgotten I had,
which is wonderful, as it’s rather like finding treasure and there is always
something I can use that will enrich the next project. But the treasure hunt itself is time
consuming.
Last year I even began to recycle as many of my tiny bits of
fabric as I could. Of course, most
quilters would just throw away snippets of fabric that are less than one inch
on a side, thread tails, small lengths of yarn or lace, etc. I don’t believe in stashing everything
just because I might use it someday, so I am not a hoarder. (True hoarders drive me nutz.) But, I do save things that I know I’ll
use. So, I’ve begun to use all my
snippets as a collaged background layer in my quilts, on top of which I add
birds or wildflowers. I’m delighted with
the effect! The collage process is very
freeing and relaxing after working on more structured projects, and the subtle
complexity of the resulting background greatly enriches the finished work. And, I’m slowly reducing my number of bags of
tiny leftovers. However, the bags and
boxes of larger fabric pieces continue to be a problem. It’s one I’m determined to master this year,
and I’ll keep everyone posted when I finally succeed. 
