Remembering Aunt Maude

Aunt Maude was awesome. There's just no other way to describe her.

She was in her 90s. She was my great aunt and my neighbor. When I was a kid, she provided me with enough jewelry and gowns to play dress-up for hours. She watched Project Runway. She called Martha Stewart a "bitch with a bad haircut" and all the Housewives "bitches and whores."

She also crafted hardcore.

Random wooden and plastic beads from Aunt Maude's stash

 

When Maude passed away a few months ago, my mom and I went through bins and bins of her crafts. I had already gone through dozens of other bins when she was still alive (in fact, this lunchbag I put on the Martha Stewart Crafts Dept. blog was made with some of her polyester fabric), but there were more. They were stuffed in closets, in the attic, in empty bedrooms.

I have plans for this beaded collar that looks like it was removed from a formal gown.

 

As we looked through the bins, Mom and I could see the dreams of a crafter. Aunt Maude had cut legs off of pants, collars off of shirts -- planning to recycle all of it into something else and just never getting around to it.

 

We couldn't possibly keep all of it. If we kept it all, we'd end up much like her someday, in our 90s with bins and bins of fabric and patterns that we never had the time to make.

 



Random yarncraft needles



My mom thought it was sad that Maude never did anything with all these supplies, but I looked at it differently. It's so fun to go shopping and dream of what you can create out of the fabric and buttons you see. So what if you never get around to making it? I'm sure Aunt Maude's head was filled with a lot of creative ideas every time she picked up something new.

 

I'm putting some things, like the vintage patterns below, into my Feisty Redhead Etsy store in hopes that the patterns will make some vintage collector very happy.



Vintage patterns

Have you ever inherited a lifetime supply of crafts? What did you do with all of it?