Today is one of those days when
getting started seems doomed. Between the sinus pressure and the allergy
medication fuzz, my get-up-and-go is impeded by inability to make decisions and
being easily flummoxed by missing packing tape. When you are packing forty-leven
boxes that will be stored, it behooves you to carefully mark them and keep a
list of what's in them.
When the markers, boxes, packing tape and labels are in
the same place, that place is not where I am. Go up into the attic and go
down into the cellar, and while you're at it, clear the garage loft,
Cinderella.
Most of the time I have the
all-important notebook indicating box and contents. Packing tape and markers
wander. Adhesive labels disappear, only to surface when I have no need of them.
I've inherited boxes of photos and fabrics from other family members. As I sort
through them, I mark the year on the box or label in the forlorn hope that I
will not have to reopen the box again this year.
Because I've inherited a lot of
sewing stashes, I devised the 40-Box Trick. At any time, the floor is covered
with as many open boxes as will fit in a room. Things get moved from Aunt
Kawhatsis' sewing box to the box for zippers, snaps, or fabric. There are
two boxes for each: Keep and Give Away. Throw Away is one enormous black sack
that gets taken to the recycling bin when all I can do is drag it.
I have a 14 x 14 inch box full of
zippers because you just never know when you might need a vintage metal toothed
zipper. That's right, I inherited zippers carefully unpicked by folks who lived
a day's carriage ride for the nearest town. They had habits of recycling which
seemed sensible, and the saved zippers might
have been useful had this bonanza arrived when I was young and impoverished and
making clothes to attract attention. Now I make clothes to cover the bare and they don't tend to be dresses.
I have card after card partially filled with
snaps of varying sizes because I sew doll clothing and used to buy the
smallest size by the gross. Now it is more politically correct to use Velcro
for doll clothes for kids than to teach them to operate snaps and buttons, and
that snaps and buttons are not food. It doesn't matter than the doll clothes
are clearly for children older than 4, at which age they no longer put
everything in their mouths. It doesn't matter that after 4 years of use, the
thing might need to be resewn. Nope. Better safe than sorry. Use lumpy Velcro
for doll clothing for kids and toss those partial cards of snaps because heaven
forfend, a child might locate your hobby cupboard, rummage through and bite the snaps off the cards.
I could do a history of
snaps storyboard, and a history of buttons from pottery and pearl to cardboard, pot
metal, plastic and polyform clay. The folks whose stashes I inherited didn't have
time to use all their supplies, and hope springs eternal. I mean, I MIGHT
make a fabric belt to match a shirtwaist, right? Or need to replace the pockets
of pants? And this is AFTER I sent 10 or 15 cartons of stuff off to a church
bazaar.
I have boxes of ditsy prints, scaled for
small dolls, sorted by color. There is a box for table linens
never used but often taken out and stroked while tales are told about what
happened when they were in constant use. I plan to turn some into clothing. You
will hear screaming from my relatives. There are boxes of draperies, and I'm
keeping them, all of them, even if there are too many for the average room or
the color is not what I'm using this year. It is hard enough to find draperies
in colors and prints I can enjoy. Whether I sewed them or bought them, I want
them because I am NOT going through that horror again, and besides, mine are
natural fiber. When one is allergic to the 20th century, natural fibers matter.
At this point, so much of the
clutter is precious that making decisions is impossible. Stop. Just box it. I
know this would be sane. But if I box
it, it means I want to take it, and I don't want to be in hock to moving
companies for the next 30 years.
Sorting the stash
No one needs 30 little old ladies' worth of
vintage seam binding in red and green. Other colors are harder to find and
often are just the ones I need. But wait, you say! Aren't you the person who owns
little metal things that make bias tape. And didn't you find and buy entire rolls of bias
fabric at Goodwill? Well, yes I did, but they are red, navy and gingham
pink. I've been using them for years, haven't made a dent in the amount, and
...Yes, I know I am unreasonable. No one needs as much as I have. And it
is possible to make more. BUT I know these bias bindings and the way they
handle, and that makes them worth keeping. I keep the whole thing because
winding off yardage is a time consuming nuisance.
What about the tiny doll scale
embroidered appliques that I don't need at the moment? When I needed them, I
had little access to fabric stores and no one seemed to stock them in any color
I might use. I toss ribbons that are easy to replace and keep the ones that tug
at my heart.
I am down to the dregs of sorting.
Do I put all seam rippers and measuring tapes together so I can lose them all
at once, or do I follow my grandmother's habit of making up a small sewing kit
for every room? Her habit is part of the reason so much of this stuff had been stashed
helter skelter, why there are so many multiples. I had my portable sewing kit, my portable jewelry-making kit, and thread sorted by which sewing machine found it acceptable. Most of my belongings will be
in storage for months, and if I put them all together, chances are I'll have to
buy more or live without them. Living without sewing is not living.
I've done the easy stuff. What
is left has sentimental value, or spurs my imagination, and that's good, except
that en masse it tends to be, well, MASSIVE. These are all things
that technically one can live without. I don't bead every day, but over the
years I've acquired a collection of findings. Even if new findings are better, I
didn't enjoy shopping for them and I'll keep the leftovers for my next project.
Let's move on to the vintage
patterns. I love the graphics. When you can buy old patterns at 10 cents each,
you acquire a whole lot of patterns for the same $20 patterns cost today.
And the instructions are much better, except for Vogue patterns. Vogue has made
an art form of offering finicky instructions for things that are obvious and
only a line for the impossible. I've got patterns from the 40's on. To sell
them, I'd have to remove them from their envelopes, check to make sure they are
complete, and put them back into the envelopes. I'm packing up those boxes and
using the sealing tape. No time for this, no inclination for this. Besides, I
WANT them all. Perhaps some day I will photograph all the pattern fronts and sell off the extras. Another project, another year.
When I left the NY area for the
Midwest, I discovered that some stores regularly sold patterns at less than the
suggested price, and some at $2 per pattern. This makes it possible to own
patterns for things you would never make in your right mind. It makes it possible
to give away entire boxes of unused patterns. And I did, three cartons of them. Most were purchased 2nd hand and some were just plain dumped on me.
Let's not get into the
patterns for doll clothes. I've got patterns for dolls I owned as a child,
patterns for dolls owned by children of neighbors and friends. I've been given
multiples of vintage Barbie patterns as people left the Barbie hobby. I
accepted because I was certain that I would put them in the hands of people who
needed them. And then Mattel changed the size of the doll. I've got patterns from
the big four, from indies, patterns I refined through 6 or 7 drafts, patterns I
revised to fit nonstandard dolls. I used to throw away my altered patterns, certain that the
doll would never cross my path again, but such is not the case.
I refurbish
small dolls and give them to charities because I think it is important for kids
to have toys, especially after they've been burned out of their homes. I now
recognize that if I've devised clothing for a doll once, that type of doll will
turn up nude in the next 3 years. So really, 3 cartons of patterns just for
dolls is reasonable.
It is easier to rant about the indecision and
futility of my chore than it is to just do it. I've been at this for long
enough that I've had to open some boxes because what I need has been sealed
away for months.
