Functional...

That's the best I can say about it.  So I sorted and compiled and collated. Threw a lot away. The floor needs swept. The windows washed. It still needs a lot of help, but at least I can sew in here if I want to.  Which I do.  You should have heard me talking to myself:  " You only need so many scraps of fabric."  "Honestly, you won't miss it." "It's for the better good."  I'm not sure that I was very convincing.  I'm still glancing at that trashcan like it's some sort of cinnamon bun. 

(The bag of batting and the trash bag beneath are a client's quilt.  I've had it for two weeks and have barely done more than glance into it.  Squares and triangles. There's a king-size batting.  I hope she just got the biggest size they had and that the quilt isn't actually that big.  There seems to be two backings... one flannel and one muslin.  I'm not sure what that means.  I really need to roll up my sleeves and dive into that. But the organizing comes first.) 

There are several stacks of fabric without a home. I bought two medium size bins, today, and I think they will fit under the cutting table.  It has diagonal bars under there that makes it tricky to store things.  We'll see.

Oh, and look at that linen towel on the table.  I bought it at a thrift store and, for some odd reason, I just love it.  I'm guessing it's from the 50's. I have no idea about what to do with it.  I don't dare use it as a towel, do I?  I can ruin a towel faster than anyone I know.  Of course, there are 6 men in the house and a couple of them are grease monkeys.  So, it's not all me. But I'd like to do something to display it.  It's folded in half so the back is the same as the front. I thought about making a tote bag out of it, but half of the picture would be lost in seam allowances. Any suggestions?  Maybe a pillow. For my bed as, again, the residents here are not necessarily appreciative of pretty things wishing to stay pretty. Still thinking.   

See? 

Is there any reason why I'm not getting a lot of sewing done these days?  Actually, I am, amazingly, sewing.  Just on the dining room table. My section of the quilting room also doubles as a guest room.  Kids came home for the weekend. Folding down the bed takes up valuable space and everything gets shuffled around with my sewing table taking the brunt of it. ("brunt" is a weird word- just sayin')  It's a problem.  So I move my sewing machines to the dining room table and proceed to make a mess out there.  Then, we need to eat and the mess moves on.  Reminds me of some episode of Star Trek where there's some sort of dark shadowy entity roaming, menacing, through the passageways of the spaceship. 

I have a hard time thinking clearly once the clutter reaches a certain level.  Don't get me wrong, living in a house with 10 other people necessitates clutter.  And I'm OK with that.  I once read that "Clutter is life lived out in the open."  That suits my personality, really.  Out in the open. But there comes a point when there is just a little too much life living out there in the house.  So, I guess what I am doing right now is talking myself into sorting and getting rid of some of my life clutter. Honestly, if you don't even know you have it, can you really miss it if it goes away?  Oh my goodness, everything becomes a metaphor in my mind these days.  But life can be like that. 

So, I'm going to tackle some clutter, today. I think I'll start at the end and work my way back. 

All of us are patched together.  Pieces from different experiences.  Different interactions with different people.  None of us are whole.  As any quilter will tell you, that's a very good thing.  

I have rarely met anyone who has a color-coordinated soul. By that, I mean, it seems like it would be a rare thing for a person to have variations of experiences in their lives that all harmonize with each other. Life is a scrap quilt type of endeavor. No one is able to, exclusively, choose what colors or patterns go into their quilt.  There is a sense where we can decide what and who we will interact with. But usually, life happens and we take what comes. Some things are inescapable.  Don't like orange?  Tough luck, some orange got in there. 

One of the really neat things about quilting and life is that we do get to choose what things we want to focus on. We get to choose how they are arranged in our lives. Don't like orange?  We can chop it up into smaller, less significant pieces and they'll hardly be noticeable.  They'll actually compliment the other colors in our quilt.  And maybe we have this one beautiful piece of fabric that we want to have as a focus piece. It's our quilt and we can arrange the pieces as we see fit.  Put that beautiful fabric in the center where we can enjoy it. We can obsess about that orange fabric- maybe negative things that have happened- or we can choose to minimize them and appreciate that beautiful fabric. 

My nephew was just handed the most hideous of all fabrics.  And it's a huge piece.  His two week old daughter died suddenly and unexpectedly.  What does one do with that?  Do we really want to chop it up and scatter it among the other pieces?  We might not have a choice about that.  I'm open to suggestions as to what is to be done with this ugly fabric.  It's center stage right now, but all of us quilters know, the seam ripper is a useful and necessary tool. At some later date we can move it away from the middle of the quilt. Her short life is represented by a beautiful piece of fabric, but it's struggling for attention. Her death is represented by a truly ugly fabric, but I hope that it will fade some with use. Become less overpowering to the overall beauty of the quilt.  

Every life and every quilt is unique. Some are fancier than others. Some have a utilitarian beauty to them.  An appreciation can be felt for them in that the maker used what he had to it's best advantage.  I've seen some quilts made from some pretty ugly fabric and I loved them.  By the same token, I've seen quilts made from lovely fabrics that have just lacked that special something to make it truly beautiful. What kind of quilt are you making?  Does it have holes where you tried to rip out the undesirable fabrics?  Experiences and people who enter our lives can't be removed once they have passed through. Maybe we can choose to not add any more of that particular pattern to the mix. But once they've made their way in, they're in.  Are we finding peace with the ugly bits? Are we just turning out the lights and refusing to look at it?  Do we find pleasure in the process?