Serious Destashing.

A friend of mine had mentioned recently in a message that she needed to find some ways to raise funds to buy fabric for her group which gets together regularly and makes what commonly are called ‘heart pillows’ here in Germany: heart shaped pillows that are distributed to breast cancer patients on the respective wards. I admire and respect those kinds of activities, even though I don’t participate in anything like that. So I offered her that I would go through my boxes and pick out some fabrics that they could use. After all, there is an abundance of fabric stashed away here that will never get used, at least not by me in my lifetime. And as my husband has been talking more frequently about ‘downsizing in preparation for a next move’, even challenging me by boasting how much he has done... (yes, he did reduce his huge collection of CDs the other day, and I admit I have much more stuff than he does) I figured it wouldn’t matter at all to give away some of it. This activity developed into a serious crisis for the accessibility of my studio, but it turned into a flow eventually. 

Chaos that will hopefully lead to some sort of order...

 

In the end I posted a package with more than 17 Kilograms of fabric to this group (the carton in the upper picture, more on the right). I could have posted at least another package of the same size, but I withheld from sending ‘all my brown fabrics’ as I thought that color is not really appropriate for that purpose. Did get rid of almost all my pinks and purples, though. Not my colors, no need to hang on to them. And – do I really need three boxes of green? I hardly ever work in green, I wonder where all that came from. Lots of green scraps, too. Anybody want any? Just let me know!

A couple of days later,  this destashing extended itself into a thorough clearing of book shelves. My son wants to use the room where my longarm is not longer blocking everything, but there are book shelves in there. Our library. He wants those shelves to take up less space, i.e. dismantle at least one or two sections.

I have always been a book lover, and I love buying and having books. For a while I was regularly going to a Women’s Bookstore whose owner was a friend, to support the business, or I was collecting literature from female authors from the early 20^th century. But my husband – correctly - keeps saying we need to size down as he thinks our next living quarters will be much smaller. So I went through the shelves, pretty rigorously, taking out books in three different categories: the stack to read now and then decide whether they will stay, the stack that can go to second hand books or the newly introduced book box in town, the stack which is not likely to find any appreciants around here (mostly English language books, alas, I don’t know anybody here who reads English). 

After I went through, the gaps are getting bigger.
Now it's my husband's turn, and then things will get pushed
closer together.

 

The rearranging of the room as such will happen according to the Junior’s plans.

As it turns out, I started on one of the books from the stack 'read, and then decide', and it happened to be a book I bought in 1994, then still an English academic person, so it has moved at least 5 times, if not 6 or 7, it might actually have come from the States with me. As it turns out, although the author is famous, and I do admire her for her position in literary history and some other aspects, this particular book proved to be rather dated with respect to certain opinions, and racism. I could perhaps tolerated it had I still been an academic, but since I am now only a reader for pleasure, I do take the liberty to not finish books that are too backward, or that don't catch my attention. I read only one of the three stories, started each of the other two, decided against them, and then it went into the bin. So Junior's desire has been helpful indeed.

#foqwarmupchallenge

At the beginning of the week I spied on Instagram the hastag for the FoQ-Warmup-Challenge. Immediately I wanted to participate, but it took me a few days to get going. Only on the fifth day did I join in, and posted all of the prompts at once. That is probably not the proper way to do it, but #betterlatethannever, I thought.
In any case I wanted to present my selection here as well.

#myfirstquilt

Log Cabin, one of my alltime favorite patterns, although it has
been a while since I made one... This one is still in use and I
still like it, but it is worn a bit, some fading has occurred
and it may not be a masterpiece. However, I like it just as
you can only like your first quilt.

#wip

There are always many works in progress, so this one was hard to choose. I decided on the A Scrap a Day Project, ongoing, with progress in leaps and bounds...

#myfabricstash

A part thereof ... no further comment necessary, I think.

#quiltcrush

This one wasn't hard at all in terms of deciding. But hard in that I don't have a picture of this quilt except for a photo from the flyer of the museum where I saw this quilt in 2006. I don't think any other quilt has moved me as deeply as this one (although one by Roberty LePoidevin came pretty close!). This is a quilt that was made by former slaves just after the American Civil War, and I was lucky to see it in an exhibition in the Raleigh Museum.

#myproudestproject

Is another work in progress, that I have posted about before and that is nearing completion, although there is still some work that needs to be done: my UDHR-quilt that I was working on during the textile art symposium in May.

Although I did not play by the rules and only posted my pictures on the last day, I do like challenges like this. It's fun to pick out pieces like and present them for others to see.