As a quilter, I have many scissors of course but one pair stands out as my most cherished. Unlike the ratty “Red Handled Scissors” I detailed in my last post, these scissors are exquisite. They are a pair of impeccably sharp Gingher Dressmaker’s shears with fancy teal and yellow floral painted handles. When I have those scissors in my hand, I can do anything but when they are lost, I’m a mess. All productivity screeches to a halt. Logically, I realize the most sensible thing to do in the case of their inexplicable absence is to make a modest effort to find them, and if I can’t, just grab the next available scissors knowing that the good ones will turn up. If only it were that easy. When my good scissors are missing, I just can’t do anything until they are found. It’s like they are some kind of magic charm that ensures my project will turn out beautiful. The last time I lost them, I tore the house apart looking for them. I even checked the most unlikely places, like the refrigerator, logically because I’d once left the TV remote in the fridge while going for a snack.
My husband has a long-standing explanation for a situation like this. He quips the lost item is temporarily in another dimension, and I simply have to wait for Other Jen to stop using it. Have you ever opened a drawer, looked for something, not found it, closed the drawer only to open it again 30 seconds later and find it? Well, that is the Other You using the object in another dimension. You simply must wait for Other You to finished using it. Other Jen did eventually finish using the good scissors and was kind enough to put them back in a not totally obvious place but one that would delight me when I did find them: under a stack of fabric, right on the cutting table. Being happily reunited with my scissors (again) always reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon from years ago where Snoopy muses something along the lines of “Tidy people will never know the joy of finding something thought irretrievably lost”.
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Mom’s Scissors
When I was a kid, we only had two pairs of scissors in the entire house. One was a beat-up pair in the junk drawer. At some point, they must have been finished in red paint. Even though only a few tiny specks of red paint remained by the time I ever used them, they were universally referred to as “the red handled scissors”. The other pair was a glistening silver pair of Wiss dress maker shears. These lived in my mom’s sewing stuff. I’m not really sure where, because she guarded them like a dragon protecting its castle.
The Red Handled scissors cut everything: paper, string, tape, wire, brake line, chicken bones…. you name it and the Red Handles scissors were on the job. However, when it came to fabric, they were thoroughly inadequate for the job. For those special occasions, you had to ask Mom for the Silver Scissors. I don’t know where she kept them, but they’d miraculously appear under the strict provision that they be returned immediately after their use.
The Silver Scissors were always impeccably sharp, shiny, and flawless. I know she had them professionally sharpened from time to time because I remember as a child going someplace to pick them up. In what seemed like some kind of clandestine transaction, we would go someplace that had fabric. The clerk would slide them across the counter, wrapped in some brown paper and my mother would in turn slip him some money with a little nod. Maybe the clerk was sharpening scissors on the side, I don’t know, but I remember the Silver Scissors being even more sharp and perfect after they got back from their little spa vacation.
When I became an adult, I really had to be in awe of my mother’s scissors-management. At any given time, I must own 4 or 5 pair of “good scissors”, none of which I can ever find, and the Junk Drawer scissors apparently only live in the ether. It is now a solid fifty years since I first met the Silver Scissors. I would be willing to bet my life that my mother still has them lovingly stashed somewhere. You would think I should have learned from her after all these years, but I still can’t find my good scissors.
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I Didn’t Mean to Buy More Fabric
Today I went to the local big box fabric and crafts shop with a seemingly harmless objective. I wanted to buy a little tube of gear grease for my vintage sewing machine. She is very much in need of some long-overdue scheduled maintenance. This turned out to be a much more elusive goal than anticipated. They didn’t have any gear grease. I guess people don’t service their own machines anymore or maybe modern sewing machines don’t need grease? For whatever reason, I could not find it. I was then faced with the formidable challenge of getting out of the store without buying any more fabric. This made me think about why I buy so much fabric in the first place. Here are my primary challenges:
- A great idea – Many times, a certain print of fabric will jump out at me. “This would make a great (fill in the blank)”. Whether I actually need or want that thing is another question entirely.
- I was once looking for this – Often times, a fabric will jump out at me, “Remember when you were looking for me before?” Something I had wanted for a previous project and never found is now right there in my hands. The fact that I’m now done with that project, usually by finding some substitute for what I had wanted at the time, is largely irrelevant when you are face to face with something you had desperately wanted at some previous time.
- It’s on sale – I have to admit, this one rarely motivates me. My capacity for spending money on fabric is pretty high now that I’m a fully grown adult with a day job. I no longer need to scrimp and save like I did when I was in college trying to make a full-length wool coat for job interviews for less than $5 per yard.
- Stinkin’ cute – This one gets me much more than I’m willing to admit. I have no idea at the time what this fabric could be used for but it’s just so darned cute I have to have at least a yard of it. Years ago, my BFF fell prey to this scheme when there was a line of Coca-Cola fabric seemingly everywhere. She bought a bunch of it, took it home and thought “What am I ever going to do with a bunch of Coke fabric?!”. Fortunately, I had been an avid fan of Coke for decades, so she made me a Coke apron which I still use to this day.
I did successfully make it out of the big box store without buying anymore fabric, although I can’t say the same for the yarn section!
What To Do with Your Scraps
I never throw away any fabric scraps, no matter how small. I just can’t bring myself to do it. To me, every little bit still has potential. They could be a coaster, or a dollhouse blanket, or a Christmas ornament, or a bunch of them could be sewn together and make a potholder or a table runner. If I was really ambitious, I could cut them all into 1” squares and make a Postage Stamp quilt. That could use up over 9,000 one-inch squares and would make a real dent in my scrap pile. I’ve even known some people to take the tiniest bits (one quarter inch in size or less!) then iron them to a fusible backing to make autumn leaves or snow.
Another fun quilt that can use up scraps is an “I Spy” quilt which can be entertaining for the kiddos and makes a very charming gift for a child. Simply fussy cut visual elements of interest like animals or other objects like cars or dinosaurs or spaceships. Stitch them together any way you like. You can have a good time with the little ones finding all the cool things hidden in the quilt.
If you can’t think of a use for your scraps or you simply have an overwhelming number of them and are looking to clean house, you could:
- Bag them up and sell them on ETSY or eBay. I know this sounds ridiculous… why would any buy something you are trying to get rid of? Surely, they must have plenty of their own scraps at home! Strange as it sounds, I urge you to give it a go. People will buy bags of scraps online.
- Trade with other quilters such as at a guild or sewing group or even online. That doesn’t really reduce the total number of scraps you have but at least you will have different scraps to inspire you.
- Rehome them on Facebook Marketplace. Simply bag them up, put up a listing, and leave them at the end of your driveway. Trust me, quilters will come.
- Use them as stuffing for stuffed animals or other objects d’ art. Frankly I’d have a very hard time using perfectly good scraps for stuffing because you would not be able to see them anymore, but if the pieces were very small and a lot of them had been collected over time, I might be able to do this.
Whatever you choose to do with your scraps, keep on quilting and making new scraps!
Why So Many Quilts?
Too many is never enoughI recently saw an Instagram reel where a happy quilter pulled Christmas quilt after Christmas quilt out of a chest. There were at least nine of them. All of them unfinished, of course. I’m sure the casual observer would say, “That is a ridiculous number of quilts, let alone Christmas quilts”. If the same video were shown to the average quilter, I am sure they would conclude, “That’s not so many quilts”. Why so many quilts? The answer is simple.
To a quilter, a quilt is not just a practical thing which keeps you warm and toasty in bed at night. For that purpose, you’d literally need one quilt, maybe two if you had a summer one and a winter one in a diverse climate. But to us quilters, a quilt is not a mere utilitarian object, it’s a work of art! Hours are spent choosing the design, the layout, the color scheme, the type of stitching, the type of binding and more. Maybe we are choosing the perfect arrangement as a gift for an important life chapter such as a birth or a wedding. Maybe we are making a gift following a theme we know the recipient will love. Maybe we are creating a wall decoration to emit a certain vibe. Maybe we are honoring a loved one with blocks made from cherished bits of clothing.
No matter the motivation, every quilt is different. Each has its own personality and its own purpose. For that, we are going to need a lot more quilts!
Halloween vs. Christmas Grudge Match
When I was a kid, way back in the early 80’s, Halloween was not much a of a big deal. You thought about your costume literally days before the big night and you usually ended up with grocery store fodder: one of those cheap plastic masks with the vinyl poncho printed up to look like your favorite cartoon character. In later years, I’d actually start planning my costume a week or two in advance, so I’d have time to make something myself. Usually, I’d scrounge some old clothes and pull it all together with some face paint if I was feeling very ambitious.
These days (look at me sounding like a real old timer), it seems that the Halloween season starts even before Back-to-School season. This year, I definitely saw back packs right along costumes in the local Big Box store and Halloween now has as many decorations, kick knacks and outfits as Christmas. I have even seen Halloween “trees” – black artificial tress with purple, green and orange sparkly ball decorations. As a quilter, this really offends me. Every good quilter knows that fall is for making Christmas quilts, pillows, placemats and adorable fabric gift bags. Now that Halloween is crowding my style, I feel the pressure to make Halloween stuff too, which leaves me so much less time for Christmas. What is the dedicated quilter to do?
I feel like there is just not enough time to do both, so I’m going to have to go about it like a divorced parent: alternate years. This year, I am picking Christmas. I have that Log Cabin couch throw that I started back in 1996 that still needs backing and binding, and I had some ideas for some fun new stockings. Next year, I might skew Halloween, or I might just skip it altogether. Either way, poor Thanksgiving is drawing the short straw. I’ll be lucky to put out a store bought tablecloth!