Had I The Heaven's Embroidered Cloths...

...Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I've loved that poem since my teens. Partly the whole "I being poor, have only my dreams" bit - which seemed wonderfully romantic to an impoverished student - but also the idea of these beautiful cloths of the heavens. I adore fabric shops - I'm not sure if Yeats, the poet, ever went into one - but if he had, he might have found them - deep blue and purple and black velvets of night, cerulean blue silks of midday, lapis lazuli taffetas  shot with gold and silver, shimmering in the summer heat, soft grey wool of autumn twilight. I can get quite carried away in a fabric shop - just drinking in the colours, feeling the textures, going all poetic, dreaming of what I could do with just half a metre of this one or that one? [I dream, but rarely buy!]

Is it any wonder that over the years I have acquired such a huge stash? Not that I have actually paid much for this stuff- generous people have given me pieces - other friends have downsized, and not wanting to send good fabric to landfill, passed it on to me. And if a garment is outgrown, or worn out, I have often saved just a remnant, it might be useful someday. And The Great Stash has been useful - for all those play costumes, Christmas Tree Projects, little bags for school activities...

On the spare beds at Cornerstones, I have my two Heritage Quilts - and I sat and talked with Rosie in the summer about all the fabrics - "Your Mummy's School Dress" "Grandad's Shirt" "Auntie Steph's Music Waistcoat"...so many memories pieced together.

But I can't take all my Stash into retirement. I got all the boxes from the loft, pruned them by about 50% and sorted the fabrics into different groups: 'proper' patchwork cottons and fat quarters, black and white fabrics, floral prints, large plain lengths, 'fancy and exotics' for costume making, etc. 

I posted in our local Facebook Sewing Group - and now the bags are labelled and lined up in the hall for people to collect

One lady is just learning to sew, and wants 'practice' fabric , another is into 'vintage' stuff, so snapped up the retro florals, a third is a patchwork fiend, and another wanted all the 'plains', one makes clothes for the children. 

And they all live within 5 miles of here. "but how can you bear to part with it?" they've said. Well, I have to - I do not have the space to keep it. All seemed so excited - a carrier bag full for just a couple of pounds. 

And I'm really happy to have shared the fabrics among this group of fellow stitchers. I no longer have all the embroidered cloths - but I still have my dreams, and I am richly blessed. [and for all that I like his poem, I still think WBYeats was a decidedly weird bloke]