But not the kind of storage you may be thinking of. Of course I have not solved ALL the physical storage problems I have in my craft room, but today I got to thinking about something different. Online storage. Yep, you heard me – online storage for patterns.
Hello, my name is Opal and I am a quilter, a cross-stitch-er, crochet-er, scrapbook-er, zen tangler, amateur photographer, and I’m sure there are more that I am forgetting. On top of that, I am the crafter on my side of the family. Thank you for having me today.
What that means is that when a relative passes away or decides to downsize, I get a call about whether I want their crafty stuff. Or when friends have family members with similar issues and there are no crafty people in their family I am usually consulted and manage to acquire more craft stuff. That is how I have accumulated more than I should have at this point. I am fortunate in one respect though, I have a mother-in-law who is also a crafter.
Don’t worry, I am not forgetting about the craftiness of the Monkey Tribe. We share and share alike there as well. Plus we all have deals with our husbands that if something happens to us they know who to call to come deal with all of our supplies. If you haven’t had that talk with your husband yet, you should. It is important that he knows there is someone out there who is willing to deal with all of the bags and boxes and such squirreled away in your craft room that he has no idea how to use. Hopefully the one you designate is also generous so that things get doled out appropriately to other crafting friends or your favorite charities or even that they will finish up some of your projects so that those finished projects can go to your family members and/or favorite charities.
Back to center. Online Storage. My mother-in-law is a crafter too and we do a bit of crocheting. She is preparing to do some Etsy stuff (and I’ll be happy to share that link when she gets started if you should want to check her out) as she is really good at the doily making and such. I have lots patterns, in the form of leaflets, from friends of friends and my grandmother. My mother-in-law is in the same boat. Unfortunately, these leaflets do not stand the test of time. They have some wonderful projects, but they tear easily and are old. The epiphany I had in the car was that my mother-in-law and I should each scan in our respective patterns and then we can each have a disc (although it might be better for us to each get an external hard drive) where we can store all these old patterns so we don’t have to worry about the condition of the leaflets. Or the leaflets can be stored in plastic sleeves in a binder for easy reference. Yes, I know there is a big disparity between theses two methods of storage. In all honesty, I’m hoping that we will be able to make use of both methods so that the originals are stored in a manner that will keep them around longer and at least in their current condition.
When I suggested this to my mother-in-law, she said that sounded like a good idea or maybe we could do a website so it would be easier for us to access them as we live about an hour away from each other. This has led me to start doing a search. Because, of course, I have to research everything (I blame that on having gone to college – everything is a research project). So far I am not finding any sites to fit my particular need. I have found online data storage sites and I’m sure that is really what we are looking for. However, I have never used one and am not sure if we can organize things the way we want to or what kind of limits online data storage has.
Have you ever thought about doing such a thing? I’m not talking about book size collections of patterns. I’m really just talking about leaflets or single pages as they get so easily damaged. This could work well for your quilting pattens too. And of course I then worry about copyright infringement. However, most of the patterns we are looking at are old – like 60’s and before. Ah well, i suppose that is just one more thing that I would need to do research on…..
Please, if you have battled with this before share your experiences! As we move more and more into an electronically dependent era and seeing magazines and newspapers turn into data files for our ereaders and computers I feel like this is something that will come up for others. Who knows, maybe this is one of those ideas that I can turn into something good for the masses! You just never know!
Monkey's on the Porch 