Dying with the most toys

Oh y'all. This is about quilts, but I think every crafter can identify. It also makes me think of my mother, who spent most of her time during the last 10 years of her life making quilt after quilt after quilt. Of course, in many ways, that lady wasn't like my mother at all, since my mother had a significant other and tons of friends, not to mention me hanging around all the time. And my mother was also a big finisher, generally, and didn't leave many things unfinished at all. But still... I feel like I knew this woman.

I still have a ton of fabric. I have some of my mother's, but I also have plenty of my own. And it's going to be a while before I'm ready to part with that - even if I don't sew a single stitch (and I haven't in over a year now), I can't imagine letting go of much fabric any time soon. And of course there is my ever-expanding collection of beads. Ever, ever expanding, let me tell you. (I haven't even mentioned the Fire Mountain order that's somewhere in transit, for example.) I partly started the whole Etsy thing as a way to destash, although I think it's a big failure on that score; it just gave me an excuse to buy more stuff, instead.

I guess almost every crafter is a hoarder. Once I was at a quilt class, and somebody in the class said that she didn't have a stash, that she only bought exactly what she needed for each project and no more. Let me tell you, it was comical, watching everybody else's jaws drop. I think people like that are very very much a minority. (And what, she didn't buy any extra at all in case of mismeasurement and mistakes and such? What did she do with anything left over? Throw it away?)

I was primarily a scrap quilter - I didn't like things to be too matchy. Which meant there was essentially no way to operate without a stash. I do this to some degree with beads, too - at least, I like to make things that have an assortment of beads. For example, I really like these little earrings:

The beads don't really have anything in common except color, but I think it works. (I don't generally take this so far as to make my earrings really asymmetrical. Mostly I like pairs!)

Here's one of my "scrap" quilts: I collected greens for ages, and then chopped them up and this was what I ended up with. There are no repeated fabrics in this.

(I never have quilted this - it's still just the quilt top. I really am gonna have to do that one of these days.)