Ladybug arrives and comes through the door. As I help remove her coat I notice a small bruise mark on her face. I look at the bruise carefully and ask.... did someone hit you? She says.... no. I say..... well what happened? She says.... I hugged the door Na Na.
I used to get fabric delivered to me by the truck load. I'm serious! People would bring pickup truck loads of fabric and leave it for me. I called those people the fabric fairies because sometimes it was left on the porch when I was away from home. I did tell people it was ok to do that.
I long ago printed out and deleted many of my early posts and photos but here are a couple pictures from my memory book. This is from just one load of fabric. These photos are from 2007. You can click on the photo to get a closer look.
Here is another load from another day. It too was all one load.
Another picture of just one load brought to me. Those are boxes like computer paper comes in.
Whenever someone cleaned out a fabric/craft stash it was brought to me. Can you imagine what my house would look like if I kept all of that fabric and had it here today? I also bought fabric. Lots of fabric! One time, when a fabric store went out of business in Indianapolis, I asked my friend Martha to go buy $200 worth of it for me and she did. I didn't know the store would be selling the fabric for $1 a yard on the day she went. Martha shipped it to me. Cost me a small fortune in shipping fees. I ended up giving it all away during one of my organizing frenzies.
Hmm... looking through my memory books made me sad. I found some really good posts that should never have been deleted. There were some posts of backward pieced quilts I designed and wrote the instructions to do them. A couple of the backward pieced quilt designs may still be on one of my blogs someplace. I'll post the links when I find them again. At least one of the backward pieced designs can still be found in my webshots albums. Look for the album called technique testing. I called this technique "10 to what?" quilting. I believe after I get myself together I'll re write those posts as new ones. I'll have to make the quilts over though because the photos have been deleted too. I wish I knew how to put webshot photos on my blog.
Some of the deleted posts were instructions on how to make a perfect pieced star quilt with not one fabric wart anywhere. A fabric wart is what machine quilters call a hard knot from too many seams at one intersection. Fabric warts can break a needle very easily. I deleted posts about machine maintenance not found in any instruction books. I deleted posts and photos of quilt issues machine quilters often get and how a machine quilter could work around those to give the customer a great finished quilt.
I deleted posts about scheduling and other helpful things for running a successful quilting business. Some of my posts were published in Unlimited Possibilities Magazine in earlier times. The magazine is now called Machine Quilting Unlimited. A few of the deleted posts were about quilting designs of mine used on quilts published in books or magazines. I deleted posts of new and novel ways of machine quilting long before those ways became popular.
How sad for me I had to delete so much useful information. It was necessary at the time.
Looking through my memory books also reminded me of just how long I've struggled with fabric/craft hoarding. I think I seriously need an intervention to keep me from accumulating so much stuff time after time. Accumulating fabric or craft supplies is just another form of addiction. Very similar to a street drug addiction. Hmm... you don't see the connection? Let me explain my thinking.
A street drug addict goes to a street drug dealer to get their fix. A craft addict goes to a dealer of craft stuff to get a fix. A street drug addict will go to several different dealers depending on where they want to go. A craft addict will go to several craft dealers too. Craft addict dealers are places like a fabric store, an online store, a thrift store, a yard sale, and any number of places to find a fix.
A street drug addict won't admit to having a problem or else will admit to having a problem but refuse to change. The urge to keep using the street drugs is too strong. A street drug addict would never dream of throwing away their drugs either. A street drug addict will however share the street drug with another street drug addict. A craft addict doesn't like throwing away craft supplies. It's their drug. A craft addict will however share their crafting drugs with other crafters in the form of boxing it up and leaving it on the porch or donating it to one charity or another.
A street drug addict spends every dime they can find, earn, borrow, or steal to get the street drugs. A crafter often spends tons of money on craft supplies. Money is spent on craft supplies that really should be used to pay a bill or to help a relative or _________ You fill in the blank because I believe you know what I mean. A crafter cannot resist the urge to get a fix whenever they are near their dealer either. Try walking through a fabric store and coming out with nothing bought.
Often street drugs involve a needle to use the drug. Many crafts involve needles of one type or another.
Now do you see the connection between a street drug addict and a craft addict? I'm planning to break my addiction to hoarding fabric and craft stuff. I wrote a magazine article about why we buy fabric a few years ago. One version of it can be found here. I also wrote a post with the perfect excuse for having a large fabric stash, here.
There is a saying among crafters..... She/he who dies with the biggest fabric/craft stash wins. Well, that's one contest I do not want to win. I don't want my kids to be boxing up thousands of yards of fabric and other craft stuff and dropping it off on someones porch or behind a thrift store.
There is absolutely no reason for a crafter to have a house full of stuff when it's so easily available. There's not any fabric or craft supply shortage that I know about. Yes, the cost of fabric is higher than ever before. Who says we have to pay retail for it? Why can't we be like our ancestors when it comes to making quilts or other crafts? Our ancestors didn't have fabric/craft stores everywhere and they didn't have whole rooms dedicated to a fabric/craft stash yet some really beautiful quilts were made. Some really beautiful other crafts got made too.
There's no shortage of trash that can't be turned into one craft or another.... is there? Do you know something I don't?
To be continued.....
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