I can easily see how this post is a carry-on from my February post, which boiled down to ‘Use It Up’. Not only am I a ‘Fabriholic’, but I am a ‘Stationery Addict’ too – and have been for as long as I’ve been sewing! I remember wanting – and getting – a thick notebook with something like forget-me-nots on the cover of it. Some of my most lasting memories are of notebooks, pens, carbon paper, and wanting to fill in forms on paper. I remember an English lesson where we were told the difference between stationary and stationery. Stationery (the stuff you use to write with and on) has an ‘e’ in it – and if you think of the ‘e’ being a capital letter – StaionEry – the capital letter is like shelves on which you place books, files, pens, pencils and folders!

Anyway – that piece of advice has stayed with me for the past 30 years, and I’ve had the stationery and fabric additions since that time. By way of an aside – I’m glad I’m a stationery addict rather than a stationary addict – at least the addictions I have mean that I am always moving! Back to the point – being a stationery addict, I love pens, pencil cases and notebooks. The extent of this is that I still mourn the loss of a pencil case containing a lot of lovely gel pens that I used for marking books – the pencil case I had bought during an interrailing trip in 2003. I have found a sort of replacement pencil case that I use specifically for my crafting exploits – and contains pens and pencils useful for the crafting. I have always loved pretty notebooks, and have more recently found a worthwhile reason to use them; I’ve noted down presents I’ve received for birthday and Christmas, I’ve got a notebook that I list Christmas presents I’ve bought and who I’m sending them too – along with the cards we’ve received, and who we’ve sent them to. I’ve used them to make a note of the clues for geocaching – and taken the notebook with me, so that I could complete the task. I’ve got a notebook (with a William Morris design on the front) in which I write new recipes – a habit I got from my mum; she used shorthand notebooks (very thick ones) to record recipes from classes she went to, wine recipes and reviews (home-brewing and the results) and crafting classes. This suggests to me that we all turn into our parents / our mothers – which is a topic planned for a blog post later in the year!

I’m on a mission to use up things that I have bought, so this month’s post is all about writing it down. I’ve several notebooks that I write sewing things in. One of the notebooks has my findings in it – all the ways I’ve found of doing different aspects of sewing. These things include what motifs I’ve used on Christmas stockings, notes of how much card making materials have cost – and so how much to charge for cards I’ve made. Other examples in this notebook include multiplication tables – how many squares I would need in my ‘I Spy’ quilts – given different combinations of squares – whether 13*13, 14*16, 16*16, 16*18, 18*20 – or other combinations. I’ve written down what I’ve discovered about making cushions, about cushion backings. It includes details about binding – what size to cut the strips, where to start sewing the binding, how to make sure the diagonal join is the same each time, and how to make the end of the binding very neat. I’ve also made notes about the stitch length and width I need for different stitches; for a good satin stitch, I know that I need to have 0.35 as the stitch length for cotton, and 0.3 for rayon threads, and between 2.5 and 3.0 as stitch width on a zigzag stitch. I know that to get a good scant ¼” seam, I use my ¼” foot and make the stitch width at 4.0 on a straight stitch. I know that when sewing pieces of batting together, I need to use a 3-step zigzag stitch, and set the width at 7.0.

All these things have been written down in a specific notebook (which I chose because it was pretty on the outside, and on the inside). I have a notebook in which I started writing all the details about the quilts and projects I have made – and I’ve tried to make sure that I’ve got a photo of all my projects somewhere – even if I’ve not included a label on it (e.g. Project Linus quilts, blocks that have been part of a group work). I take a photo of ALL my finished projects – and even some of the projects when part way through.

My dad and stepmum gave me a notebook as a present one year (yes, I can actually go back and look at which year it was if it was a Christmas present, and I may be able to say when I got it if it was a birthday present – I have confessed to being a stationery addict). This book has included lots of ideas for projects – some of which I have worked on, and others that are still awaiting work. Last year as part of the UKQU postcard swap a theme was ‘A Song’ – I had so many ideas of songs / song titles I could work on, I thought that I could make lots of postcards with this idea. This also tied in with another idea I had, which came about after my ICU quilt idea (see my UKQU blog – Quilting As Therapy); I had an idea of making A4 sized quilts from pieces of music. I thought about pieces of music that I liked / loved, and what those pieces of music ‘said’ to me – what colours, fabrics, and shapes were suggested by the piece of music. I’ve tried to include these ideas in my quilting notebook.

I’ve got another notebook – one with plain pages, with a magnetic clasp, and a pocket at the back – I’m sure you’ve seen them! I wanted the notebook – but I didn’t know at the time what I would do with it – it is about A5 size. I found a use for this notebook – I use it to draw ideas for quilts – especially if the ideas are coming from a piece of music. I can hear a piece of music, – a song maybe, and it conjures ideas in my head, and that is the point where I write / note down the ideas I have for a piece of artwork; I may have some preliminary drawings – the shapes that I want to include, and then I annotate it with ideas about colours, quilting, other elements.

Ideas can come in the strangest places – I’ve made a few notes of pieces of paper; some whilst marking German GCSE speaking exams (see a later blogpost for more about this), another was done whilst sitting in a meeting (again – likely to appear in a later blogpost), and then things I’ve seen whilst on holiday or sitting watching TV. Notebooks are essential in such cases for writing these things down. In fact, had I not received a notebook and fountain pen as a Christmas present from my husband in 2006, I would not have created the ICU quilt (from my blog last month) – because I wouldn’t have had somewhere to write down my thoughts, feelings and ideas.

Laurel Burch – now there is a name to conjure with. Almost all of us reading this blog post will have heard of her, and I think it is a fair bet to say that a lot of us will have fabric inspired by her in our stash. I have one of those precious notebooks with a design of hers on it – one of those with the magnetic flap and a pocket at the back. At the front of it, I’ve made a note of all the projects that I have started; if possible I’ve noted when I have started them, and then I add the date that I have finished them. In the back of the notebook, I’ve made a list of all the projects that I want to do that I’ve not yet started – just in case I’m ever at a loss of what to do next…(as if that is ever likely to happen!).

Whenever I attend workshops or classes, I take a notebook with me, and I write down each step of the process – so that I can follow the steps again at home, and refer back to what I have done. This has proven to be quite a wise move; there are classes and workshops that I have done years ago, where I wanted to do the technique again, but had I not written it down, I would not have remembered how to do it.

Some of these things that I have described could possibly indicate an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I’ve come to think that everyone has some OCD tendencies to a greater or lesser extent. I am a list maker, a note taker. I sit in training sessions for fostering and make notes – and that applies to the online training as well. Ideas for blog posts – I’ve got them written down as well. I have a couple of small pads of post-it notes next to my sewing machine; I can position this on the machine to remind me of the stitch number, the stitch length, the stitch width I’ve used for a particular project. Slightly larger post-it blocks are also kept next to my sewing machine, so that I can note down anything else that occurs to me.

All these elements combine to make a history of the items I have created. I don’t know why, but I live with the hope / expectation / ambition that my creations will be remembered in history. I suppose this explains part of my reason for keeping written and photographic notes / evidence. I want to remember how much I have done, how much I have made, where I got my inspiration, what threads and materials I used. I want a record of where I got my ideas, what threads I used, how I came up with the design – and more than that, I want it to be recorded that I had a specific monogram / symbol that I used on my labels or on my pieces of work – and that very often I used a particular brand and colour of thread for that monogram.

In all of this I am reminded of a small section of a Tom Clancy book (I like to LISTEN to TV programmes, films, audio books when sewing); in this particular book Jack Ryan takes note of his doctor wife making notes in patient records in the evening; her argument for doing this is that if you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. In the book ‘Debt of Honour’ by Tom Clancy, the hero – Jack Ryan – saves the day and the stock market by using the motto ‘If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen’; the financial transactions were not written down anywhere, so they could go back to a previous time. In the same way – if we don’t write things down, we don’t have any record of what we have done, how we have done it – or why we did it; and future generations may see our work and wonder about the meanings behind them, much as we do today.

Write it down; it is an aide memoire for us, and is also a note about our work for generations to come. That way, people will (hopefully) not be speculating about what prompted us to make the work, but will be thinking about our interpretations of the theme. It also means we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel!

Related posts:

My Quilting Year Book T-Shirt or Memory Quilts, Helen Kent GARDEN FLOWERS BLOG HOP What a Bind