trash and treasures

When I talked to my son Jeremy tonight and told him I had been in my sewing room for 4 days, cleaning up, he responded, "you mean the disaster in the front room?" Yep. That one. Leave it to Jeremy to cut to the chase. TREASURES The room looked neater yesterday but it really is getting there. I took the six-year-old notices off the bulletin board and tacked everything in rows. Among the detrius was an envelope full of fortunes. Here are a few of the better ones.

• Try to channel excess energies into rejuvenation. (huh?)

• You have an unusual equipment for success, use it properly. (this was not meant for me)

• Good clothes open many doors. Go shopping

• You will make a sudden rise in life. (this presumes that I have gone shopping)

• You are almost there. (this is almost as good as "The answer you seek is in an envelope," which I once got; "Soon and in pleasant company," which was Jessica's, and "You will go far but you will come back." Jeremy's)

• Your experience will bring you to an inevitable conclusion.(it already has)

and finally -

• You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

Now I just have to play the lucky numbers on all these fortunes in next week's lottery. MORE TREASURES As I've been going through the commercial fabrics, I have been making a pile of yardage for backs...and a pile of batiks and brights I can't part with, just in case I ever have to make another baby quilt (which I swore I would never do). Many fabrics were a trip down memory lane. Here's a beauty by John Caldor, who broke my heart when he went out of business. Who remembers these? Nancy Crow for John Caldor. Good grief - what year was that?TRASH? Yes and no. Hidden in this messy bin of strips and scraps were sewn-together strips from therapy quilts I had made (or never made) and I'll play with those again. Many incorporate Usha's wonderful Indian batiks. Treasures. There were leftover fragments from fabrics I had printed long ago and used. Even better, there was a big piece of long-lost gelatin-printed fabric I have been looking for. Oh, joy. Then, I discovered fabrics I had printed but had no memory of having made. This one made me smile and I can't tell you why. But it's on the wall and I am motivated to use it. Treasure. Blocks and blocks and blocks. Three leftover blocks from the quilt I made for Josh when he got his bed. He is now 10. Piles of one-of-a-kind traditional block experiments like the one below. What will I do with them? Maybe incorporate them into those potential baby quilts. I can't throw them, but they should be trash. All the strips of fabric left in the bin might be somebody else's treasure, but I don't have the energy, patience or room to deal with them. And behind the bin is another container full of folded fabrics I don't want. I will offer them to a quilter I know and if she doesn't want them I'll have to figure out something else. Oh, dread. I think there is more fabric in the basement. Trash. And buried among the trash, this journal quilt I made in September, 2002. I actually had all of this fabric in my stash from pieces I had printed a long time before the event it commemorated ever took place. I was too close to this event to be able to blithely sit down and make a quilt at the time. I find it painful to look at, even now. On another note, the fabrics I overdyed today are in the dryer. Mostly, mud. But what do you expect when you use old dye stock? I had no idea what anything was; I just poured it to get rid of it. I do most of my dyeing in the studio these days, so this stuff has been sitting around since the year of the flood. Tomorrow, I'll iron it and put it in the pile of fabrics that need help. Or not.