One of my brother Steve’s favorite sayings was, “A Place for Everything, and Everything in its Place.” Of course, he was referring to the farm tool shop. He’d sometimes get exasperated when he found that a tool had wandered, either left “out of place” or removed entirely … to the house.

Of course, the same is true of any home studio. Quilters often collect fabric and gadgets and old quilts and old fabrics and sewing machines and magazines and handkerchiefs and old ties and threads and heaven knows what else … faster than they realize. Suddenly, a one room studio has “expanded” to include every spare closet in the house, every under bed space, every guest room bed, and any other nook and cranny.

I say, “Hoarders, unite!” We have to develop a plan, and so saying, I am mainly speaking of myself. I heard one quilter describe herself as a SABLE quilter. She explains that SABLE, to her, means “Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy.” Scary thought, but I could include myself in that category.

Where to start? Well, I think it will be with organizing fabrics. Trouble is, do I organize them by color or type? For example, I could stack up plain colors, print colors, batiks, and florals, etc., trying to keep like-colors together. A dear friend suggested that the individual pieces of fabric be rolled, using a 6″ wide Omnigrid ruler, and that is what I’m trying. Of course, we all have scraps, too. At the moment, those are stored in a large canvas bag, yet I know I need to do something different with them. I’m thinking of net bags that would allow the air in.

Once I get a handle on the fabric situation, I think I’ll look at all the unfinished embroidery and quilt projects and make some decisions. The magazines will be next. I can cull out the articles I really want to keep, and store them logically, marked with a tab, in a notebook. Make that more than one notebook.

I want to write down what I remember about each of the quilts in my collection. In some cases, I know precious little, other than I liked it when I bought it. Of course, ones that I made but have not yet marked, I can add labels with quite a lot of details, and I should do that because no one knows more about my collection than I do, and I really don’t want orphans floating around about whom no one knows a thing, when I’m not here to tell them.

In the meantime, it sure would be nice to feel more organized. Then, I can more easily make decisions about what to downsize so that my life will feel more sane, and less cramped. If you’re like me, it must seem that fabrics, pens and pencils, papers, magazines, etc. reproduce while you’re sleeping. Suddenly, you have an overwhelming mess of “all good stuff” – too good to throw away, and too much to keep.

Our days are limited, a thought only truly realized the older we become. Therefore, we have to pick our projects and the way we spend our time, carefully. I just know that I will feel like being more creative, once I get feel like I’m managing the material goods I own. When it gets to the point when finding even a simple tool is difficult, you know you’re in trouble. Some words are timeless – “A place for everything and everything in its place.” They still ring true, whether you are cooking in the kitchen, or woodworking in the basement. All I can do is to start this organizing project.

Wish me luck!

Patricia Cummings in snowy NH

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.