The Story

 I've got to stop using scraps.  I have to start using my stash.  I will never live long enough to use it and have to find a project that makes a start.  I'm tempted to not go so much for innovative and artsy and just cut it up and sew it back together in old fashioned squares.  

All of this has been coming home to roost lately since Friend Marilyn has moved into an assisted living home and her house is being dismantled.  Now, we've been friends for as long as her son and my daughter became an item back when they were 14 and 16 years old.  They are now 48 and 50.  Marilyn and I had adventures, went to MANY retreats, took some small trips so basically I know the story behind most of her 'stuff' because I was with her when she bought it, which makes me part of her stories and lately the keeper of them.

But I'm not the one clearing out her house.  I will only tell the stories so the kids know.  They dismantled her sewing room last weekend.  Marilyn had already called the local quilt guild months ago and donated all of her fabric and books to them but there were still boxes of unfinished projects, quilts, threads, bits and pieces.  A few weeks ago she asked for her embroidery threads and her wool for felting.  I brought them to her.  

This week my daughter brought to me the bits, pieces, a few pieces of fabric, some fats, lots of patterns, unfinished projects.  I canNOT absorb anymore into my stash, I'm in the process of being ruthless with my own stuff but there is a story behind everything I sifted through.  I found the pattern for a quilt she made that I LOVE so I kept that.  There was a pattern for a pieced turkey wall hanging that she bought when I bought the gingerbread man pattern.  There is the red and green unfinished Christmas quilt that is only as big as a nice sized table top, but it's NOT bright Christmas but her colors, deep, deep hunter green and very deep reds done in traditional blocks.  It looks just like her.  I kept that. I kept the thread.  She bought good thread and I will never have to buy thread again in my life. I kept very little and will take the rest - just a consolidated totebag of patterns and a couple of boxes of unfinished projects to quilt retreat at the end of March and if no one wants them then they will be donated.

I went to visit her yesterday to tell her what I'm doing with her things.  She gave back to me the box of embroidery floss and the wool for felting.  She said she doesn't have the attention span anymore and while the spirit is willing the brain isn't engaged.

I told my daughter when she found this I wanted it.  This was a flimsy Marilyn found at an estate sale one day and she hated it.  I loved it.  It is NOT her color palette but I loved the springy feel and the 30's fabrics.  She layered and pin basted the thing and dragged it along whenever we were doing a demonstration or to the clothesline quilt show we put on.  She had it on a floor frame and quilted it while people stopped to talk and she let the kids try their hand at it.   One day she cut it in half and gave half to me because I loved it and she hated it.  So when the kids were clearing out her room I asked for this half, the other half.  

Everything has a story.  Our blogs help us tell our stories or at least keep track of things for us.  In our house most everything we have is inherited from a grandma or purchased at an estate sale or made by me. I tell the kids everything in this house has a story and I can tell that story to you.  Taking apart Friend Marilyn's story has been hard for me and I'm not even doing it, but the pieces and parts make up the stash of our lives and when I go visit we talk about them.