Jennifer - By the Yard®

Why So Many Quilts?

Too many is never enoughI recently saw an Instagram reel where a happy quilter pulled Christmas quilt after Christmas quilt out of a chest. There were at least nine of them. All of them unfinished, of course. I’m sure the casual observer would say, “That is a ridiculous number of quilts, let alone Christmas quilts”. If the same video were shown to the average quilter, I am sure they would conclude, “That’s not so many quilts”. Why so many quilts? The answer is simple.

To a quilter, a quilt is not just a practical thing which keeps you warm and toasty in bed at night. For that purpose, you’d literally need one quilt, maybe two if you had a summer one and a winter one in a diverse climate. But to us quilters, a quilt is not a mere utilitarian object, it’s a work of art! Hours are spent choosing the design, the layout, the color scheme, the type of stitching, the type of binding and more. Maybe we are choosing the perfect arrangement as a gift for an important life chapter such as a birth or a wedding. Maybe we are making a gift following a theme we know the recipient will love. Maybe we are creating a wall decoration to emit a certain vibe. Maybe we are honoring a loved one with blocks made from cherished bits of clothing.

No matter the motivation, every quilt is different. Each has its own personality and its own purpose. For that, we are going to need a lot more quilts!

Halloween vs. Christmas Grudge Match

When I was a kid, way back in the early 80’s, Halloween was not much a of a big deal. You thought about your costume literally days before the big night and you usually ended up with grocery store fodder: one of those cheap plastic masks with the vinyl poncho printed up to look like your favorite cartoon character. In later years, I’d actually start planning my costume a week or two in advance, so I’d have time to make something myself. Usually, I’d scrounge some old clothes and pull it all together with some face paint if I was feeling very ambitious.

These days (look at me sounding like a real old timer), it seems that the Halloween season starts even before Back-to-School season. This year, I definitely saw back packs right along costumes in the local Big Box store and Halloween now has as many decorations, kick knacks and outfits as Christmas. I have even seen Halloween “trees” – black artificial tress with purple, green and orange sparkly ball decorations. As a quilter, this really offends me. Every good quilter knows that fall is for making Christmas quilts, pillows, placemats and adorable fabric gift bags. Now that Halloween is crowding my style, I feel the pressure to make Halloween stuff too, which leaves me so much less time for Christmas. What is the dedicated quilter to do?

I feel like there is just not enough time to do both, so I’m going to have to go about it like a divorced parent: alternate years. This year, I am picking Christmas. I have that Log Cabin couch throw that I started back in 1996 that still needs backing and binding, and I had some ideas for some fun new stockings. Next year, I might skew Halloween, or I might just skip it altogether. Either way, poor Thanksgiving is drawing the short straw. I’ll be lucky to put out a store bought tablecloth!

This is No Time for Cleaning

If you have time to clean, you have time to quilt

I hate cleaning. There are no two ways about it. If given the choice between cleaning and literally any other task, I would choose anything else. Cleaning takes hours and hours and hours every week, and for what? For the privilege of doing it all over again? Let’s do some simple math. Let’s say you do the absolute minimum of cleaning – barely doing a load of laundry per week, making dinner every night for seven nights (wait, didn’t I just make dinner last night?), the lamest job possible in keeping the bathroom tidy… just slightly above grime-inducing levels, and let’s just forget about ever putting anything away or keeping your office space from attracting mice. Even with the very minimal of Cinderella duties, we are talking at least two hours of cleaning per day literally flushed down the drain. What could you have done with those fourteen hours instead? You could have made an entire quilt top! Why, YES, Eleanor Burns, you really can make a quilt in a day! A pretty long day, but still technically a day.

You could have made seven of the very cute Baby Puzzle Ball, a pattern from Sew Fun®. You could have made at least a half dozen quilted placements. You could have made enough themed potholders for your entire neighborhood potluck club! I think you are getting the message. Time spent quilting is time better spent than cleaning, or even cooking for that matter – don’t get me started! When you make a quilt, it stays made. When you make your bed, well you are just going to have to do that again tomorrow. Your path is clear! Just sweep everything on your kitchen table into a box and set it on the floor. Now you have a whole clean space to start your next quilting project!

Sick of Quilting? Oh My!

It can happen to the best quilter. You are sick of the quilt you are working on, or worse yet, you could be sick of quilting altogether! What’s a dedicated quilter to do? You converted the entire downstairs to support this all-consuming passion, spent more on a sewing machine than you did on your last car and now you are ready to put your entire stash up on eBay? Do not panic, you are probably suffering from quilting fatigue. There is hope.

Before you leave your sewing machine by the curb, consider other options. Try another outlet for your creativity. When I’m exhausted from measuring, cutting, hunching over, and pushing yards and yards of fabric through the machine, I find relief from other simpler endeavors. My go-to fiber relief valve is crochet. Crochet is basically the opposite of quilting: it simply involves a funny looking stick and some fuzzy string. You can do it anywhere, specifically, on the couch while knee deep in a good binge watch. You can bring it with you. You can even do it in the car! You don’t have to worry about complementary colors or matching corners. You don’t even have to worry about making something square. You could literally just go round and round in circles until you run out of yarn or maintain your composure, whichever ever comes first.

After a little bit of stitch, I can always return to my considerably more complicated quilting projects with renewed perspective. I can appreciate the colors, the prints, the diversity of shapes, the piecing, and the reward of making a really big project. If crochet isn’t your thing, you can experiment with other hobbies. Baking, painting or beading, to name a few, although I don’t recommend scrap booking because that’s just a big black hole you will never return from. Many times, your side projects can help inspire new quilting projects. Recently, I crocheted an entire chattering of baby chickens then felt inspired to quilt a flock of chicken potholders as holiday gifts.

Taking a break from your quilt can sometimes be the best thing you can do to help get it finished! What do YOU do when you need a break from quilting?

Just Like Candy

I can resist fabric about as well as I can resist Halloween candy. They always get me, with their big colorful bags and their “fun size” or “minis”. It’s only a “mini”, how bad could it be? Those little bars in the big bag are as bad as fat quarters. Sure, they are only 22”x18”, but they are all folded up in a cute bundle and there’s 42 of them!

Just like candy, my tastes in fabrics also change from day to day. Sometimes I feel like a Snickers, then sometimes I feel like a Starburst. Sometimes I feel like a cute novelty pickle fabric and sometimes I feel like a holiday plaid. This leaves my stash looking as eclectic as a plastic pumpkin full of Halloween candy dumped all over the living room floor.

I have purchased a lot of fabric over the years just because it was cute or pretty. I have even more because “it would make such a great____ (fill in the blank)____”! So, I buy it, but I never have time to make the (bank). It’s a real problem. I have more fabric hanging around than cellulite from all those minis. The solution to both problems is really the same: don’t go into the store in the first place, or, if you simply must, just get one thing. Just get one candy bar instead of the pack of forty. Just get one fat quarter instead of enough to make a California King size quilt.

Finally, understand if you go to the convenience store when you are feeling snacky, you are definitely going to buy candy. It follows that if you go into the fabric store feeling hungry for creativity, you are going to buy a whole lot more stuff for the one hundred ideas you get from wandering the aisles, many of them you never even thought of before entering the fabric shop. In an effort not to go over your budget for fabric calories, consider the mountain of projects you have just sourced and narrow the herd down to the top one or two projects you are likely to have the time and enthusiasm to undertake. Put the rest of the stuff back and be sure to grab a peanut butter cup on the way out!

Back-to-School Supplies are Not Just for Kids

My absolute favorite season of the year is fall. It’s not just the crisp air, the colors and the smell of the leaves, it’s the anticipation of back-to-school supplies! Kids might hate it when the stores break out the displays of backpacks and pencils, but I could not be more excited.

I always loved school and I was very good at it, so I always looked forward to September not only for the new school experiences but for the back-to-school shopping excursions. I loved new pencils, a new lunch box, cool erasers and of course a new notebook. I spent a lot of time agonizing over what kind of notebook I was going to have that year, what kind of folders would I use and most importantly, how I was going to decorate my notebook before school started. My best year I think was 8^th grade, the year I made a denim cover for my 3-ring binder with a rust-colored leafy print quilting cotton on the inside. Denim was very hip due to the popularity of skintight “designer” jeans, a new thing at the time. I’m sure the other 80’s kids were unimpressed with my denim notebook cover, but in my creative mind, this one-of-a-kind creation was infinitely cooler than any Trapper Keeper.

Even though I’m now long done with school (and college, and grad school… I’m really done, I promise!), I am still very enthusiastic about my own version of back-to-school shopping. With the long, hot summer months in the rear-view mirror and a merciful end to sticking to my fabric, I turn my attention to fall decorations and handmade holidays projects. The quilt shops are full of leafy prints in orange and rust, fun Halloween novelty fabrics, even cute Christmas prints and now is the time to get started. Every year my ambition always exceeds my accomplishments but nevertheless I persist. And what would a big pile of fabric be without a couple of cute new notebooks for my fabric measurements and project design ideas? While I’m at it, I’ll grab a handful of folders and a pack of colored pens, too!

What is your favorite supply, back-to-school or otherwise?

Subscribe!

Thank you!