A Facebook friend, a lady who is a master quiltmaker, recently posted a T-shirt with the following slogan emblazoned across the front: “I sew, but my favorite hobby is collecting fabric.”
Though I have never met his lady in person, we seem to have a lot in common. More than 50 years ago, I read somewhere (probably in one of the grocery store homemaker magazines I read), that fabric was always a good buy. The main take-away message emphasised that the cost of fabric was on the rise, would never go down, and stocking up on fabric would always be a cost saving ploy for anyone who liked to sew.
I took this message to heart and my husband, who loved to save money, supported my endeavors. An “almost hippie” of the 60s and a world-traveler, I have always been attracted to ethnic fabrics or any cloth typical of an exotic culture. As a result, fabric and fabric items, have been regulars on my travel souvenir list. I have filled my suitcases with tablecloths, napkins, and even items of clothing, but mainly yardage. Later, when I sewed for my growing daughter and occasionally put together a quilt as a gift for a friend’s baby, I often purchased extra fabric for future use. These days, my fabric stash consists mainly of a collection for never started projects, matched only by the baskets of sewing patterns I keep nearby.
Luckily, I inherited my mother’s cedar chest. She prized it because her older brother made it for her as a “hope chest,” that traditional repository of linens and other items a young girl collected to take to her new home after marriage. For years, the chest stood at the foot of my parent’s bed and my mother used it to store all her sewing supplies. Filled with fabric, bags of notions like elastic and snaps, a carved wooden box that held the extra sewing machine parts, a round metal box filled with spools of thread and another filled with buttons, is seemed to me a kind of treasure chest. From it came the party dresses my mother made for my sister and me. If I wanted to sew a doll dress, or (later) a ditty bag to take to camp, I was allowed to find the supplies I needed in the cedar chest.
Some years ago, the chest moved from my mother’s bedroom to mine. Now it is filled to the brim with fabric, a collection that overflows into an assortment of plastic tubs stacked on the top shelves of my closet.
My mother’s cedar chest is still a treasure box. It is where I keep the most valuable fabrics—cloth that brings back memories of the places where it was purchased. There are embroidered lengths from Central America, a few remaining scraps of tartan wool from Scotland, batik sarongs from Malaysia, silk saris from India, and a score of carefully folded bundles of various silk brocades from China. I will probably never sew anything from these rich fabrics. I have reached a point in my life where I no longer have the patience for serious sewing. But the colorful weaves and designs of the fabric I collected around the world is always there—ready for me to touch while I dream about our connected past and their future possibilities.
This blog is dedicated to Hattie Kate Agenbroad Howell of Toledo, Ohio.
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