Feathering my nest

So it seems I am in favour of feathers, after all. 😁

I was too lazy to dig fabrics out of my stash, so I grabbed some cotton and painted it with acrylic paints in the required colours. An hour of drying time, and I was ready to cut some feathers.

It was so quick and easy, it really made me wonder about the point of my stash in principle.

All of we sewists, crafters, makers, take a certain amount of pride in our "stash"; the amount we have acquired admired by others (#goals), and then we hoard it away like so many dragons.

I have even, over the years, seen people refer to themselves as "fabric dragons"; (I have certainly referred to myself as a "book dragon" on many occasions!)

But seeing that young woman a couple of weeks ago, trying to distribute, donate and otherwise get rid of her mother's much beloved "stash"; seeing how it filled her daughter's hallway and living room, and the daughter's slightly harried air as she talked about individuals and non profits and scheduled pick ups...

It did make me wonder, what are we doing it for?

Are we collecting just to have it? Does the ownership of more fabric than we'll ever use in our lifetimes get us more brownie points at the gates of heaven?*

Do we "win" when our children or friends are the ones who have to deal with a towering inferno of fabric, threads, notions or *clears throat* other tricks of our various trades? Giving them responsibility for an avalanche of stuff that they don't want and didn't ask for when we're gone?

I have thought about this eventuality, and have therefore set out in my will that my fabric stash and hundreds of spools of thread are to be donated to the Textile Museum, without ever considering that it is REALLY strange that such a donation from an individual should be necessary.

Similarly, last night, while looking for something else, I found a brand new set of water colour brushes (12 in all, flat, hake, cat's tongue, rounds and riggers in multiple sizes), that I hadn't even taken out of their plastic sleeves yet (!); and when I tried to put them in my paint brush container with their new friends, they didn't fit.

I ended up spending a pleasant half an hour or so going through all of my paintbrushes, sorting them by type and size, tossing ones with damaged bristles, and ones that had been malformed by my carelessly leaving them in pots of water for too long - even that a symptom of my overbuying. If I had only one or two of each type and size, with an intention to make them last for years, rather than unintentionally viewing them as "disposable", would I have dared?

I discovered I had nearly 20 flat brushes (in 4 sizes) alone. I won't share how many round brushes I had - but can you believe that just recently, I was thinking I needed to get a size 10 round brush (because I saw an ad for one), but I learned last night, I have 6 of those - almost none of them having even been used.

How many paintbrushes will bring me happiness? How many mop brushes, in all sizes, do I need, to win The Game of Life?

I have just been buying to buy, happily, needlessly, mindlessly, consuming as every "good" Westerner should, right?

So all of this seemingly innocent "stash boosting"...is it really just a symptom of toxic capitalism? Are we encouraging each other to consume for the sake of consuming? Pushing each other to buy more and more, in a never-ending silent competition to be sitting on a pile of the most stuff?

Yes, we need to have tools to hand and materials available for our use as we create our projects.

But how much of our compulsive collecting is for this, and not for that?

Why do I need to have an entire bin full of black fabric "for my art"; when I can put some black paint on single roll of white fabric, that I can also transform into any colour and pattern I want/need at a moment's notice?

...where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness...What he opposed in it, he must attack in himself.

Salman Rushdie - Fury

Just some things I'm pondering at the moment.

Next up, I'll need to stitch those feathers down.

Maybe I'll work on that tonight. We'll see!

'Til next time.

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*I don't actually believe in heaven, but you get my point. 🙃