I am going to have a new purse made by the fabulous
Laura Bee Designs, and needed to find a piece of ribbon for the trim. The place to go for ribbon in Seattle is
Nancy's Sewing Basket, on the top of Queen Anne Hill. I used to live near there and visit often, but haven't been there in awhile, so I had forgotten how pleasant the ribbon room is -- a west-facing room with a window bringing lots of sun in.
Standing there looking at all the patterned ribbon, I flashed back to the days when I had really long hair. My mother had fine curly hair that she wore very short, but she insisted on keeping my hair long, straightening it with a heavy iron comb that she heated in the flames on the stove. And she took care of it every day of my life until I went off to boarding school. I don't know that this would have gone on so long if I had had sisters, but my other four siblings are all male, so there was only one head of hair on which my mother could lavish her attention. I would sit on the floor in front of her, and she would comb, braid, and tie it with ribbon -- no rubber bands for me! We moved a lot, and wherever we went -- Raleigh, Tunis, Montgomery, Kinshasa - she would hunt out a shop that sold fancy ribbon, and we would go and buy a wardrobe of ribbon for my hair. I couldn't have cared less about having long hair, but I loved the ribbons she used to buy to tie my braids.
It was a pain to take care of long hair, though, once I was in boarding school and had to deal with it myself. I gave up the ribbon pretty quickly -- too difficult to tie myself -- and resorted to leather barrettes with wood sticks through them, but my hair was not only long, but very thick, and routinely broke the wood sticks. I can't remember how long I put up with that, but eventually, I let someone in my dorm cut my hair... and that was the end of long hair and ribbons. My mother kept some of them for years -- I would come across them when I was rummaging through her fabric and notions -- but somewhere along the way they disappeared.
Standing in the ribbon room at Nancy's, I found it impossible to choose just one ribbon for my purse -- which I knew was going to be the case. The three ribbons at the bottom of the photo are the candidates for that. But I couldn't walk out without also buying a few inches of the two ribbons at the top of the picture. Not to wear in my hair -- which is now fine and curly and worn even shorter than my mother wore hers -- but to stitch into a quilt one day, a little reminder to myself of what it felt like to sit between my mother's knees while she combed and braided and tied my hair with fancy ribbon.
When I had the top laid out unpieced, I liked the way some of the plus signs were extending out into the border area because I hadn't cut all the pieces to size, so I left them that way as I pieced. I don't have any extensions at the top or bottom, though, and it feels unbalanced to me. I can add some to the top and bottom or I can unpick the sides and take out the pieces that are extending into the side border area. I'm trying not to let my decision be driven by the reality of which approach will take less work.
