sewing.

it started innocently enough: a small attempt at procrastination when i should be digging into an afternoon of work. the button that has been missing on my coat for almost a year suddenly had to be replaced right away, so i pulled out my sewing basket to do this quick 5 minute chore. it was filled to the brim and beyond, chaotic as always, and in the exact same condition as it was throughout my entire childhood, all the way down to the same sewing crumbs and dust bunnies floating around the bottom.

this was the basket that accompanied my mother on all of her multi-tasked-perpetually-distracted movie watching, the one that was pulled out for all the missing buttons, broken zippers and lengthened hem lines. it was around during my first sewing attempts, some scraps of which are still wandering around in the bottom of the basket {see photo below}.

yet somehow, by some act of the nostalgia gods, it defied the mold and moisture that claimed so many of our things that my parents haphazardly stored away in a friend's dirt-floor basement when they packed up and moved to europe shortly after i went off to college in the fall of 2000.

the despite it's claim on my memories and immediate family history, the basket used to frustrate me. always a little too full to close neatly, a jumble of thread bits worrying themselves into knots as you try to find the one color of thread that doesn't seem to be a part of the collection, it always felt a little raggedy, like most of the things we had growing up, and the list of minor grievances added up against it. but i learned about a year ago, that this humble bit of woven wood is actually a lovely bit of family history in disguise: it belonged to my great-grandmother and was one of the few things that my mother asked for from her grandfather that got passed on before he died suddenly.

so on monday, when i should have been doing any number of other things, not only did i fix the button on my coat that would have been handy to have mended this past fall, but i also allowed the procrastination to spread out further and completely emptied and reorganized the basket. i started with the thread, lining it up {by color}, taking out duplicate colors to be stored elsewhere, disposing of all the bits of dead rubber bands, little tails of scrap thread and completely unnecessary bits that really had no right being in a sewing basket.

now the lid shuts nicely. the thread is organized and accessible. fingers are no longer in danger of being caught in a thread trap or stabbed by stray pins and needles floating around among the items. the dust is gone. and for the first time really, i feel as though i've finally taken ownership of this box that now has traveled across four generations of women in the mikesell family.

it still has all the old charm, though. the thread collection obviously spans the decades back to my great-grandmother when wooden spools were the norm and the plastic tub of buttons i will probably never use {and don't feel right just absorbing into my own button collection} will never leave residence inside. it makes me smile whenever i see the 8 year old handwriting that declared them mom's buttons in uncertain sharpie penmanship i outgrew decades ago. but i've added my own mark: the thread is arranged by color, it's pared down to things i might actually use, and a piece of my own history that i salvaged from the purge will always remind me of one of my few successful high school attempts to make my own clothes:

{sea-oh, look familiar}

and the shabby chic exterior holding a wealth of history and dust continues on its journey one day to be passed on to my own daughter. or if i don't end up with kids {i guess it's possible} or, only of the boy/tomboy variety, i know of one niece at least who will probably take after her mother and find some good use out of it.