Old, new, gifted: It's all material

I'm a fabriholic.

I admit it. But I'm not alone.

I buy fabric, allegedly to make quilts. But I would have to live to be 300 to use all the fabric I have. And I'm certainly not alone: According to the latest data, there are 22 million quilters in the U.S. and that number is growing by about 4% per year.

The average age of a quilter is 63-about 65% are older than 45. And since most of them have been quilting for a while, their fabric collection-known as a "stash"-is now worth nearly $6,000.

What does it all mean?

Well, for one thing, it means more than 100 fabric creations by Anchorage quilters will be on display Sept. 14 and 15 at the First United Methodist Church in the annual Great Alaska Quilt Show. It's the largest quilt show in the state-free-put on by Anchorage Log Cabin Quilters, one of Alaska's 26 quilt guilds.

But more to the point, it means all us aging quilters with all that fabric, so much more than we need, have saddled a friend or daughter, or a legal executor, or even ourselves, with one day having to figure out how to get rid of those shelves and boxes of beautiful cotton. 

Notices of yard sales, or simple giveaways, proliferated this summer, sometimes asking as little as $1 per yard for fabric that costs $14 per yard in a store. 

But, the fact is, much of this excess is simply given away, usually to charities or to people who use it to make quilts for service organizations. In this world, Pat Sims, who has been with the Guild since the late 1970s, is a well-known "fabric facilitator."  

"I can't tell you how many thousands of fabrics have passed through my hands," said Pat, whose closets are jammed with shelves and boxes of donated material on the road to being re-donated.

"I love all this sharing," she said.

Sims isn't sure how it all started. She made her first quilt when she was pregnant with her first child. She's always been willing to help move fabric and other sewing necessities from someone who doesn't need them to someone who does. She often brings bags-full to guild meetings and says she usually goes home empty-handed. 

Joan Brewer belongs to another category of quilters needing to recycle: She calls herself a "destasher."

She and her husband were ready to downsize. The children were gone. It was time to move to a smaller house-with no room for what was admittedly a massive fabric collection.

"I would say that I had thousands of yards," Brewer admitted. "I had entire bolts that I gave away." 

About 15 years ago, when bits of Brewer's fabric started showing up in every room of their old house, her husband built her a shed, a twin to his tool shed. But at the new place, there isn't room for two sheds so the "destashing" began in earnest.

"I told myself, 'OK, I won't use this in my lifetime,' so I passed it on."

Much of it has gone to Log Cabin guild members who donate about 300 quilts to charities each year, not counting hundreds of Christmas stockings and small quilts wrapped around stuffed animals that go to small children in various kinds of public care.

A bunch goes to re:MADE, the repurposing enterprise on Old Seward Highway in Anchorage. The Anchorage Senior Center gets some, and finished quilts go everywhere.

Stashes have "nothing to do with need," said Sims. She's currently working with the family of a dementia victim seeking help recycling 80 boxes of fabric. 

Plugging in to the world of quilters opens a new view of Anchorage. Recyclers have to deal with cosmic questions: How small a piece of fabric is too small for a quilter? (No such thing.) Or, is there a piece of old calico so ugly no one will want it? (Probably not).

It's a city of sewing rooms full of quilters cutting expensive cloth into small pieces then sewing those pieces together, of roads full of quilters delivering carloads of fabric to new owners, who will likely one day deliver it to yet more new owners.

One result of all this industry will be on display at the September 14 and 15 Quilt Show-a show, not a sale. First United Methodist is at 9th Avenue at the Park Strip.