#PurJuly day 5

I picked up sewing for a few reasons. It's a good skill to have in order to be able to repair your own clothing and other textile items. I'm able to make my own reuse projects, like a pillow for the dogs made from a ripped blanket or a drawstring bag from the leg of old boxer shorts. I'm also able to make reusable fabric gift bags (hat tip to my Green Drinks cohort, Laura for the idea.) which my family covets in a strange yet satisfying way. Special thanks to friends Amanda and Sister Diane for helping me get started with sewing.

Today, I purged half of this basket of sewing goodies that I bought at an estate sale. The whole basket cost me .75 (I know!) but I hadn't ever put the time forth to go through the basket and find out what I got for my large investment. I knew there were enough things in it to make it worth the purchase and I also knew there was some stuff I'll never use, so this was a nice excuse to go through it and separate everything.


When I'm faced with large amounts of items that I need to go through, I like to make 3 piles-keep, purge and maybe. Then, I count the maybes and split them down the middle. For me, it's an efficient set of rules that helps me make the decisions.

In this case, I only had 2 items that fell into the maybe pile and everything else was pretty straightforward. I have no idea what those little green things with animals woven into them are, though. Anyone recognize these?  I thought they might be kinda nifty as a quilt addition (In the picture, they're folded into thirds, but they're all actually squares) but I'm not a quilter, so I ultimately had to just purge them. Hopefully they'll find love in someone else's hands.

The final purge: