Maybe, but sometimes it pays off.
I taped down a quilt sandwich with painters tape and after pin basting it, I pulled the tape off and stuck it here. I thought, who knows, maybe it will come in handy later.
This morning while ironing an approximate fat quarter, left over from a project I am working on, I found a very small hole in one corner. I decided to mark it so I won’t forget about it when I pull it out to use it.
Can’t miss it now can I?
Are you a hoarder thrifty too? 😉
Life on the Farmlet 
‘It might come in handy later’ is why my house is full of stuff that I can’t remember why I kept.🤔
Lynn, after my 65th I decided to get rid of most anything that fit into the “I can’t remember why” category. It gets sorted: Give away or Throw away. It is very liberating. And, even though I did reuse a tiny bit of it, the tape is now in the trash too. 😉
I am a dreadful saver of rubber bands, bits of ribbon and short lengths of elastic. Sometime, they even come in useful… I save the clear vinyl pouches that household linens are sold in, paper tissue of all kinds, and *of course* shoe and boot boxes, which become my project and scrap boxes. I save the card squares from inside fat quarter packs and larger pieces wherever I find them, for excellent quilt template material… well, you get the idea, and if I tell you any more, you’ll be sure I’m definitely merely a hoarder rather than creatively thrifty!
No, my thought was, So I’m not the only one! I got into the habit of saving many of those items when I was teaching. Why buy it if I can get it for free? 😉
Now THERE’s the point exactly! (And why some encourage the use of “hoarder”). Exactly who gains from this constant binge and purge of buying? Things made decades ago were intended to be repaired.
You got me thinking about habits of thrift I picked up from my mother, like always saving buttons from worn out shirts. That blue tape made me laugh, though. I use a different blue tape in my work, and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s not thrifty to try and keep the same tape on through the whole job. It ends up being so hard to get off that it’s cheaper to pull it all and retape than to spend hours with solvent and a razor blade trying to get it off. Thrift is good — false economy, not so much.
Oh yeah, hey Linda?! Too-long-Stuck-on masking tape is the devil’s own punishment!! lol
Don’t I know it, Deb. The ones on the table, in their own small way have made their second contribution. The bit on the fabric? Not an issue there as it is covering a hole. 😉 I’ll be cutting around that spot eventually.
Linda, I have experienced the tape issue with regular masking tape. It is horrible to get off! I guess I haven’t ever let the painter’s tape stay on long enough to get good and stuck. At any rate, the tape on the end of the cutting table has met it’s second use requirement and is now gone. The bit on the fabric? Covering that hole it will be trashed when I cut around it.
I can’t even imagine trying to work with a razor blade on a wooden boat to remove nasty tape! Scary.
Buttons! I do this too! I have bottles of them. I even have my grandmother’s saved buttons. I think they are my favorites. I save ours too, and when I cut them off Bob’s shirts I save the better fabric parts for quilt blocks at some later date. I imagine that quilt, when it’s sewn, will be a wonderful comfort to me some day.
Oh yes! Isn’t that the best part about quilting with your own “already-used” fabrics though… Remembering the things they came from (and memories they evoke: ). Saving buttons and zippers is a time honoured tradition, isn’t it? Just before you separate the worn out bits for rags and the useable parts for quilting; )
Just a note — no wooden boats in my life. They’re all fiberglass, which makes things easier. We can’t have wooden boats in these southern waters, for a variety of reasons. Anyone who does have them has to commit to a lot of maintenance. A lot. For one thing, there are little critters in these warm waters that love to eat wood. Not such a good situation! But that’s why you see more wooden boats in the Pacific NW and New England: colder waters. Well, and the Great Lakes, too, I suppose.
In all the years we have been acquainted, I saw you in my mind working on wooden boats. I think it has something to do with the “varnish…” moniker. 😉 And I had no idea the there were wood eating beasties in the the salt water! How ever did our early explorers keep afloat?
Maintenance! Constant maintenance!
Mrs T is. I just don’t put things away.
Why does this sound so familiar? 😉
Thirfty.. I think that’s why I have so many boxes of scraps because people bring them to me for they know I can’t throw out good fabric.😳😀
Deb, throwing out good fabric is a terrible waste. Having seen your lovely work I don’t imagine any fabric lies about for long.
I don’t think I would have kept the blue tape, but yes to pretty much everything else people have mentioned.
Nana Cathy, when I stuck it on the edge of the table it was supposed to be temporary… However, when I noticed the little hole in my fabric I then found it useful. That said, the tape, having served a second purpose, is now in the trash. 😉
Funny how one’s point-of-view alters terminology, isn’t it? But “Hoarder”? I abhor the word. Making use of what you have is just smart and, to call it otherwise is just insulting to those who’ve survived adversity; getting by and making do with what little they had…
Deb, there are few in this day, below a certain age, that would understand your point. I do. However, there are true hoarders out there. Lots of them. My use of the word in this post was supposed to be humorous.
Teachers hoard, because we see a thing and see a use for it in our classroom someday. Anyone who creates gather’s things that they feel may be useful eventually. Quilters gather fabric. Some of us put the most lovely fabrics away and can’t bear to cut them (sigh). That is by definition hoarding. It is no bad thing… well, unless you have to walk sideways through your house to get anywhere and are in danger of it falling down and burying you at any given moment. 😯
I believe that owning something old, but well-constructed trumps having bright and shiny new…
“It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.” –Aesop
As long as we can walk through the house…right, Lynda? 😉
Exactly, Joanne! My Mother-in-law, bless her heart, wasn’t that bad, but she had some amazing things stashed away for a rainy day: Bags of plastic bags; hampers with old feather pillows; lovely dresses from the 70s that were at least 2 sizes too small…
I mention this because as we get older I feel we tend to hold onto a lot of things that, simply put, we don’t and won’t ever need again. I’m trying very hard to be an ‘older’ yet wiser person. And speaking of wise, Aesop was a very wise man. Thank you for sharing his quote.
very clever to mark the location on the fabric!
that blue tape could be placed the same way in my house right now! i often tear strips off about that size and place them ‘just like that’ along the edge of a table or on a frame or even on my arm – then they are ‘right there’ for easy access..
blue tape also marked ‘corners’ in the middle of the floor in the middle of the house where the equinox sun ‘missed’ the noon mark at twelve oclock.. it was 8 or 9 minutes late in reaching zenith, much like the march equinox!
i sometimes put that roll of tape on my arm and wear it like a bracelet – then forget about it. a pr photo shows it, which makes me laugh!
Lisa, I often use the blue painter’s tape, but never thought to wear it on my wrist. There are times when that would be just the thing to do so long as I buy one in a narrower width. I ‘borrowed’ the x-wide roll from the garage. Bob will no doubt be asking about it some day. Maybe I should replace his and buy the narrower one for me? 😉
Your photo reference is funny. Did anyone else notice?
So far no one noticed, but if they know me then they’d probably utter, ‘there she is with that roll of tape around her arm!’
It is your signature piece, more lovely than a diamond, so wear it with pride. 🙂