I come from a long, long line of thrifty, resourceful, and crafty people. My grandma was a pattern maker for Allen-Edmunds. She saved leftover leather scraps from work, samples of shoelaces, even bobbins of the heavy waxed thread used for stitching the famously classic men’s shoes that Allen-Edmonds makes. Heck, I inherited enough Allen Edmonds-branded promotional matchbooks to last a decade.
Her mother, my great-grandma, who I was privileged to know in my childhood, was a rabid quilter, turning out piles of tied scrap quilts from a sewing room the size of a walk-in closet. We got one of her quilts as a wedding present. She loved doing curved piecing. My great-grandpa (her husband) had a basement full of found, salvaged, and repurposed stuff. I have some of the furniture he made from pieces salvaged from his job at a local furniture factory. My changing table as a baby was one of these. A few years ago, the Formica surfaces peeled off as the glue aged (I turned 51 recently; that glue is old), and I discovered that Grandpa S. had made my changing table with discarded solid mahogany drawers from R-way Furniture, where he’d worked for many years. The three drawers are slightly different sizes; were they samples or factory seconds? I’m not sure. Solid mahogany!
“That’s a nice box! I could make something from that,” rings in my head with nearly every sturdy packaging product that passes through our household. I find it hard to pass up free fabric. “I should make something with that.” It’s practically etched into my DNA spirals — with the stub of a free pencil, of course.
So, I should take naturally to quilting, what with having a few decades of sewing experience and this reusuary1 heritage in my family. I have indeed made a few quilts as gifts. Quilts are great gifts: handmade, impressive to people who do not sew, but really very simple to make, requiring only straight stitches and an iron, easily within my skillset, and sometimes not even expensive to make since heretofore I have frequently had a nice stash of sundry quilting fabrics on hand to begin a project with, and who doesn’t love an excuse to go to a fabric store to round out a project with a few new purchases? Ahem.
But here’s the thing. I kind of hate quilting. Don’t get me wrong; I love giving a quilt I’ve made as a gift. I don’t begrudge a single quilt I’ve made for a niece’s baby shower or a sibling’s wedding shower, either. But gosh, they are boring to make. So. incredibly. boring.
I think I’ll make one more quilt someday, the one I have fabric saved for from the little girl dresses and outfits I made for my daughter when she was very small. I’ll make that quilt someday, maybe for a grandchild. But other than that, I’m done.
That means that this particular fabric, which I have stashed in a bin because “I should make something with that!” is going away. I’m sending it on to a church quilting society where it can be put to use in quilts for folks abroad, or for a “fancy” quilt that can be auctioned off for a fundraiser.
I like making clothes for myself. I want to do more of that kind of sewing going forward. And mostly only that, with a little home decor sewing here and there, because good grief, the prices stores charge for throw pillow covers and simple curtains are nothing short of confiscatory.


Reusary, re-use-ery, that is, the state of defaulting to saving and reusing almost anything that could potentially have an additional use after its initial use has been exhausted.
I, too, come from a family of savers and re-users, and although I am not much good at it—and stubbornly refuse to save bags or old jars to clutter up my kitchen—my sister and I spent weeks going through the backlog of my parents’ things-that-might-come-in handy. I did keep a few of my great grandfather’s old cigar boxes, carefully labeled in his Germanic script to identify the various nuts, bolts, and screws that are still inside. I also have my mother’s old sewing box and my grandmother’s spools of thread. Not that I will ever use them. But because they still exist.
Isn't it funny how long it takes for us to come to just one of these conclusions... For me, it was feeling free to not like spicy food in a family full of spicy food lovers. 😆