A few weeks ago I lost a sterling silver thimble which I had bought when I first started to quilt forty years ago. I had used it on every quilting project I had ever created during my First Act in Fiber Arts, and more recently on every quilting project created during my Second Act in Fiber Arts.
I was basting hexagons one afternoon and got up to take a short break. I thought I threw the thimble in my little Tupperware sewing box when I walked away for a few minutes.
Upon returning my thimble was nowhere to be found. I looked for it all over the living room. I even turned my This End Up couch on end and tore off the pillows. My husband even got in the act and we looked everywhere.
I felt as if I had lost a valuable part of my history, and I will admit that there was a lot of crying and sobbing going on over this incident. It didn’t make sense, yet a few weeks after it happened, with the thimble not having materialized, I was getting ready to blog about my loss.
Then a couple days ago, while tidying up the living room in preparation for a visit from my stepdaughter and her son, I picked up a nearly empty package of tissues.
Something was peaking out of the lower edge of that package of tissues. Can you see it? When I picked up the package I didn’t see it, but I felt it.
A very bad word sprang loudly from my lips as I held the package in my hand. It was a strange reaction, I will admit. It was actually an expression of extreme joy and disbelief. My husband was nearby and wanted to know what was wrong. I said, “You’ll never believe what I found.” He asked, “Your credit card?” (That’s another story.) I said, “No, even better! MY THIMBLE.”
I quickly figured out what had happened. When I came back to my stitching that day, and had been unable to find my thimble, I started to toss things out of my sewing kit in search of it. The tissue package got tossed into a container on the sewing table with spools of thread and other miscellaneous items, and there it remained while I tore the house apart. There it remained for the next couple of weeks mocking me from the sewing table. I guess this is proof that cleaning and organizing are good. Don’t tell my husband I said so. Notice the hexagons on the tissue packet. I think that’s a nice touch.
This thimble had been lovingly used for forty years, which is obvious from the shape the edge has taken on over the years.
I used to carry this with me to do EPP work outside the house. No more. I’ve learned a lesson. If I keep the thimble at home, I can at least be fairly sure that if it goes missing again at some point, it will show up again. I do, however, enjoy using a quality thimble when I work, so I am thinking of buying a second sterling silver thimble for traveling, and I have been looking at the ones available on eBay. If I lose a new sterling silver thimble, all I will have lost is the money necessary to replace it… no big deal. I won’t have lost something of sentimental value.
Sally Maxwell said:
I don’t really use a thimble–what’s the benefit to a silver one?
Terri Schurter said:
There is no benefit to a silver thimble over any other kind of thimble you might use. It just happens to be a tiny touch of luxury in my sewing process. When I started to quilt I happened to see the thimble at the store where I bought my fabric and decided to buy it because I needed it to do the hand quilting. At the time I never used the thimble for any other kind of sewing. Now I use it for all hand sewing because I have gotten so used to sewing with a thimble.