Come Stitch With Me

About five weeks ago, I helped clean out the sewing studio house of someone who needed to move into assisted living. (Her entire 2 bedroom cottage was her sewing space. I kid you not.) Two SUVs crammed full of stuff came to my house for sorting. You can read about that escapade here.

Over the past month, I have shared the largesse with my Friday sewing group, library teen sewing programs, a quilts for veterans group, my bee group, and the community service arm of my own guild. Anything left went on the guild free tables this morning. It didn’t last long. I have finally reclaimed the basement. My husband will be so happy.

This quilter’s generosity has touched so many different folks – from the teens learning to sew at the library, to patients at the local children’s hospitals sleeping on a special pillowcases, to quilts for foster children, adults in recovery and women healing from domestic violence.

Community is what made this happen. The donor’s son put out a request for help in his neighborhood FB group. A member of my book club happens to live in his neighborhood and saw the post. She shared his contact info with me. It went from there. We helped keep useful items out of the landfill and the projects sewn from the re-homed fabric will go back into the local community. There was no need to hire a junk removal company, either.

Over the weekend, I’ll be quilting a 60″ x 80″ top made by my bee group. Backing fabric and batting came from the donated supplies, too. FYI, five yards of quilt-shop fabric and a twin size package of Warm & Natural batting normally run about $100.

Community and connections are an often overlooked type of wealth discussed in this post. In fact, safety and security wealth (e.g. money and health) only account for 20% of all wealth categories described in the graphic. A sense of purpose, autonomy, personal relationships/connections and moments of joy account for the other 80%. Hmmmm. I honestly say that I experienced all 5 types of wealth during this project. I’ll save money by not having to buy backing fabric and batting for a few quilts. I had a purpose in sorting, organizing and delivering the items. I also got a workout lifting, sorting and carrying the bins! I had time to devote to the project and set my own schedule for completion. I interacted with community groups and other sewists & quilters to distribute the donated items. Moments of joy came with seeing the excitement on guild members’ faces at the donated fabrics on the free table and returning home after said guild meeting to a cleared out basement.

I realize we’re in challenging times. You’re grinding it at the day job with minimal raises and healthcare costs that keep going up. The cost of everyday essentials is ever increasing. Our country is politically polarized. Carefully curated social media makes you think you’re behind.

STOP. Put down your phone. Turn off the TV. BREATHE.

Go outside. Take a walk. Listen to the birds. Look up at the night sky.

Find your library card. Go check out a book or DVD to read/watch later.

Talk with a neighbor. Strike up a conversation with a complete stranger you meet on your walk.

Spend 10 minutes doing something with your hands – crossword puzzle, word search, solitaire (with real playing cards), knit, crochet, EPP or other needlework, etc.

Do you feel better? You’ve just experienced the five types of wealth (walking – health, free activities – money, conversations/library visit – community/connections, choice of activity and time for activity – significance & freedom, plus small pleasures like listening to the birds sing or getting lost in a good book – joy).

Remember, you always have options. Life is a series of choices. Work is not inherently bad. It provides income, benefits (hopefully) and at least one partner-in-crime for a social connection. Bonus if your job provides a sense of purpose and a bit of autonomy. Taking time to develop interests and activities outside of work can shore up the types of wealth missing from the day job, too.

Today was a much needed quiet day all to myself.

My morning started off with cutting out a new upcycling project inspired by a FB Post and class announcement from a distant quilt shop that I follow. It took a little while, but I actually drafted my own pattern template a couple of weeks ago. The jeans are an old worn-out pair of mine. Contrasting fabric will be a Liberty print thrifted from an estate sale. Embroidery hoop, floss and other embellishments are already pulled. We’ll see if my CRAFTLab kiddos are interested in a smaller version.

Some time was spent checking my credit reports with the Big 3 to make sure my credit freeze was still intact. I received a letter from Conduent about a massive healthcare data breach. Good grief. This would certainly explain the recent rise in spam emails and robocalls. I also made a note to carefully monitor credit card and banking activity over the next few months. What else can you do when everything is now digital? Yes, it’s more convenient, but sometimes I do miss the analog days.

Big Girl and I took a late morning nap and followed up with a leisurely walk at one of our favorite parks. Sadie’s library needs periodic refreshing of the books we offer for our youngest READers to read to Sadie. We visited a Goodwill store off the Marietta Square near the park to see what books were available. Seven nearly new books for the price of one brand new one. Score!

Classes for the June 2026 Road 2 Virginia and A Mountain Quiltfest dropped this week. New classes were also added to the April Quilt! Knit! Stitch! event in St. Louis. I took a few minutes to peruse the listings. Plenty of offerings, but nothing really caught my eye. That’s how it works sometimes. It’s probably for the best, however. Any travel later this year depends on some other things going on at the moment. The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show in early September is the other quilty travel destination on my 2026 list. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to make it and some tentative travel itineraries with hubby in the fall.

Today’s mental challenge came in the form of figuring out how to make the 2 extra blocks that are part of every shop’s Middle Georgia Shop Hop sample quilt, but not available separately for purchase. You are required to buy a finishing kit from one of the participating shops to get the instructions. Said finishing kits range in price from $65 to $110. No thanks. I worked out the cutting measurements and found fabric similar enough in my stash to make the extra two blocks. I may also have found enough fabric to make the specialty sashing and outer border as the one sample quilt I really liked. We’ll see!

Finally, a random FB retirement post from a former co-worker brought closure to something I’d wondered about since my own retirement. One of the pictures in the post provided the missing puzzle piece that allowed everything to finally click into place for me. Turns out I wasn’t crazy after all!