Tuesday, 08 February 2005
Documenting
Part of being a Crazy Quilter in the cyber world is swapping, within the crazy quilt email lists there are frequent organized swaps, some are based on colour, many are based on themes such as garden, ocean, Victoriana, fantasy to name but a few…each swap has a formula as to how much fabric, threads, lace, beads, buttons and doodads to put in each Baggie and the idea is that each participant makes up a number of baggies that are basically the same, sends them to the swap hostess, who swaps them around, and you get back the same number of baggies that you sent in but they are all Different…putting the baggies together is a lot of fun and receiving the swaps back is very exciting….
…But when you have been in a few swaps you end up with a lot of little bits, many swappers tip them straight out on the table to fondle and enjoy and then put them away in whatever fashion they keep their stash but some of the bits are real tiny treasures and I like to know who has given them to me and as there is no way that I am going to remember who gave me any of it if I don’t record it in some way, I open each bag one at a time and record what is in each before I let it into the stash….I mention this because I have spent the afternoon documenting and sorting the contents of baggies from a swap last year…
When setting up my system to record the swaps I decided that if it was going to be done it had to be a simple no fuss method or it wouldn’t get done. I decided to go with a loose leaf binder with a page for each swapper…and NO fancy page layout, just glued on however they fit…For each baggie I keep the swappers name addy etc and I cut a snippet from each of the fabrics, threads and laces and what I can’t cut a snippet from I photograph…having a digital camera has made this easy as I can put it straight up on the computer and print it out which I do on plain printer paper to keep costs down…There is no way that I could ever match every fabric, thread and bead back to the original swapper but recording it his way does enable me to keep track of my favourite pieces as well it gives me a place to keep all the notes, postcards (I put these in cellophane or plastic bags so as not to damage the cards), maps, recipes etc that come in the baggies…and with all the lovely fabric snippets it is nice to look through…Below is a few of the pages from the folder.
And with that little job done I will show you what is on my table tonight.
With all the sorting boxes there is not a lot of Table to be seen but it does look surprisingly neat…Blogging as well as helping to keep me at the sorting is also helping me to work neater, although I do wander how long I will be able to keep it up as I have not normally been a tidy worker lol.
The Black apron in the front left corner is my son’s new work apron, he wants me to stitch a pocket on it so that he has a smaller one for his cork screw, a job for tomorrow, for tonight it is well past time for me to be asleep.
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