SBQ: Stitcher's last will and testament

This week’s

Stitching Bloggers' Questions

were suggested by Heather.

...in order to answer this week’s questions you should read the following text before you do so.

I recently attended a stash sale organized by friends of a stitcher who had passed away from ovarian cancer. I didn’t know the stitcher, but I quickly learned things about her, such as who her favorite designers were and that she was much better organized than I am (she had almost no duplicate charts!). In talking with her friends,plans were to donate the funds collected from the sale to the hospice which cared for her at the end of her life.

The friends had organized everything, from going through her stash right down to what they were doing the day of the sale, because her family really had no idea of the value of her stash or what to do with it.

It was a rather somber experience; I even felt tears in my eyes a few times thinking of the woman who had once bought these charts in her LNS with plans to stitch them someday, gone home and lovingly filed them away, and then been unable to complete everything she wished todo. I felt guilty I was benefiting from her death and her losses. I felt honored to be offered the opportunity to take care of some of the things she had once loved. I felt like I knew things about her from the kinds of things she liked to stitch.

I realized if something happened to me, most of my stash would languish in my home because it wouldn’t cross my husband’s mind that he should do anything with it, and he’d have no idea *what* to do with it, either.

This experience made me think of lots of questions which would probably be great for an SBQ …

* * *

What would your stash tell others about you?

Most of us stitchers joke about having reached SABLE (stash acquired beyond life expectancy), but have you thought about what you’d like done with your stash after your death? Do you want it to reach other stitchers who will love it, too? Would your family know what to do with it or recognize its value?

How well organized is your stash –would someone be able to come in and put together a sale easily, or would it require lots of organizing work ahead of time? What would you like to see done with the funds collected from such a sale, i.e., should funds go to your family, to a charity or charities of your choice, to a charity or charities of your family’s choice, etc.?

Are there certain items in your stash which are rare and highly desired by stitchers that might make a much larger amount of money if sold on eBay? Have you done anything to designate which items these more valuable ones are to guide your family in how to handle them? Who would you tell your family should handle such a sale so that they don’t have to do it themselves? Have you done anything to make these thought sknown to others, either through discussions or through a codicil to your will?

Have you ever attended a similar sale of a passed stitcher’s stash? How did it make you feel? Did it encourage you to make any changes in your stitching lifestyle?

 

As in my case my stash also contains designs I have copyright to I have thought about this issue, as I will leave loads of designs with my copyright behind.
In ideal situation I will have children who will take care of that and who will benefit from the income, no matter how small it may be. IF I die childless or they die before me I have thought about testamenting my copyrights and let all the income go to Jewish Community of Helsinki. Of course I prefer my possible children to channel the income from the copyrighted material to JCoH, or similar, unless they are themselves in need (i.e.poor) when I pass away.
When it comes to my other stash (designs of other designers, floss, fabric, embelllishments) I hope that they are either sold and the funds used to charitable purposes (JCoH) or given to stitchers who would appreciate the items and who are financially less fortunate - and the freebie designs on my hard disk should be burnt to a DVD and given to a needy stitcher.

I am quite sure that my family would understand (or at least my mother and sister) that my general stash should be directed to other stitchers as no one in my family stitches.

I can't claim that my stash is well organized, though in the spreadsheet where I list my designs, books and somesuchs I have started a project to list the price I purchased the design/book/booklet/etc. with, and as I have the comment field in it I can also add possible OOP notes to them. (At the moment I have one OOP, as far as I know: A Treasury of Jewish Cross Stitch (Crafty Needle has apparently bought huge pile of them when it was still availlable as it was OOP when I bought the booklet... about three years ago.)

And, as cross stitching is not very fashionable in Finland, I have never stumbled upon such a sale.

Sometimes writing a will passes my mind, but I always tend to forget it - and then I need those two witnesses (who can't benefit from it, as far as I know) to make it legal. Though, I am quite sure that at this point of my life my family would divide my possessions according to my will even if the will wasn't official.
Not that I plan to die in next 50-or-so years...