It's not really Spring yet but several of my friends seem to be agonising about all the stuff they have accumulated and trying to sort it out. Even Linda Seward, who writes a column in "The Quilter" which I love reading, is following this theme in her current column.
Some of us may even aspire to those ridiculously spare and tidy rooms we see in magazines. We must fight these thoughts! We are working with textiles and we need a stock to draw on and I don't think we should feel guilty that we have stuff. If we were artists we wouldn't say that we had too much paint would we?
The above picture shows part of my workroom last summer when I was working on some 4 inch blocks. These are only some of the fabrics, I had another two large bags from which to select suitable fabric!
When I was teaching embroidery and had a new intake of students, my heart used to sink a little when I saw immaculately tidy, colour co-ordinated and sequence numbers thread boxes. I knew at that point that it was going to be an uphill struggle to get creative and imaginative work out of that student.
I am not advocating being in a complete muddle with either thread or fabric, though very often wonderful combinations of pattern and colours are discovered among chaos. One has to have a certain order or you get to the point of knowing that you have something, but buying another because it is simpler than trying to find it amongst all your stuff. When you reach this point I do think that is the time for a sort out!
Some of us may even aspire to those ridiculously spare and tidy rooms we see in magazines. We must fight these thoughts! We are working with textiles and we need a stock to draw on and I don't think we should feel guilty that we have stuff. If we were artists we wouldn't say that we had too much paint would we?
The above picture shows part of my workroom last summer when I was working on some 4 inch blocks. These are only some of the fabrics, I had another two large bags from which to select suitable fabric!
When I was teaching embroidery and had a new intake of students, my heart used to sink a little when I saw immaculately tidy, colour co-ordinated and sequence numbers thread boxes. I knew at that point that it was going to be an uphill struggle to get creative and imaginative work out of that student.
I am not advocating being in a complete muddle with either thread or fabric, though very often wonderful combinations of pattern and colours are discovered among chaos. One has to have a certain order or you get to the point of knowing that you have something, but buying another because it is simpler than trying to find it amongst all your stuff. When you reach this point I do think that is the time for a sort out!
