Opening the mystery boxes

I’m so excited:  I’m finally going to peek inside the boxes that I picked up from Jim Thompson just before moving from Atlanta to Oberlin in 2012.  

First I had to haul them up from the basement where they've been stored for the past 4 years.  Hmm, some are a bit damp and slightly moldy.  Hope the fabric inside is ok.  There are fine little roots growing on the basement walls - I'll need to get Dominique to take a look at that.

Boxes in the basement

Next step, get them into the my studio.  I have no idea what’s in them.  Let’s see…

Boxes in studio with Sunny

Well, interestingly, many of the samples are additional colors of ones I already have, but there are several new ones, as well.  Plus a couple of boxes of silk scraps and 2 really big bags of more samples.  What a treasure trove.

The unveiling!

Counting them all took me about 10 hours; that doesn’t include the time to stock them.  What I do is keep one sample of each color of each fabric on my shelves upstairs; the rest go on my shelves in the basement. 

My mystery boxes added about 3,000 pieces to my stash – time to get busy!

New fabrics, sort and counted - all 3,000 pieces