Category Archives: quilting

If It’s Not Quilting, It Can Wait

Waiting for a quilter

It always makes me sad when I hear married people complain about the amount of time their other half spends on their hobbies. I think hobbies are an absolutely necessary respite from the daily grind. My life is certainly better off for them. I enthusiastically believe everyone should have some kind of hobby. Certainly, filling one’s days with the drudgery of work and household chores is not very satisfying. I often wonder what people who don’t have hobbies do with their non-working time. Go to the gym? Perish the thought.
My husband and I are both hobby fanatics. He has his model trains, his tractors, his “camper project” (I’m secretly hoping that one never comes to fruition….), but he knows the house rules: “Is there fire? Is there blood? No? Then don’t interrupt me when I am quilting.” Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about the time I spend with my sewing machine, but then I think of all the time this gives him for his hobbies: fixing old tractors, working on the truck(s), generally making a huge mess in the back yard. As long as he’s not setting a can of oil down on my stack of fat quarters, I really don’t mind what he’s doing. He’s happy working on his projects and I have mine. I think it makes us more compatible. Everyone needs time to do their own thing.
Over the years, he’s developed a system of not asking me to come quick and do something but rather he prefaces each request with, “When you have time…” or “When you get a minute…” Me being the consummate engineer by training, that time might not actually come until 20, 30, 75 or more minutes later. Technically, he did say “when you have time”. I can’t help it if that took 90 minutes! He knows I married him for better or for worse. But quilting, my dear, is forever.

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Finish that Quilt… or Not

It seems logical that one should finish one project before starting another, but the vast number of UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) that I have lying around the house would argue to the contrary. I am certain I am not alone in this predicament. It just makes sense that once you’ve spent all the money for the fabric then put in untold numbers of hours planning, cutting, piecing and sewing, you should just power through and finish the darned thing, right? Could there ever be a good reason to start a new project when there is an unfinished one (or two…) just begging for your attention? In my opinion, yes.

Aside from some obvious situations such as running out of a necessary fabric color or type and waiting to find a suitable replacement, there is a good reason to set a project aside in favor of another. You need to have a project which matches your energy and creativity levels at the time. Have a lot going on with the kids’ fall sports or holiday planning? Now would not be the time for the Double Wedding Ring quilt you have planned for your nephew and his future bride. Maybe a big block project with a “don’t-want-to-cut-it” large print might be the ticket for you right now. Is work so slow these days that you are bored out of your skull? I think now might be the time to tackle the tessellating queen size pattern that you’ve been doodling in the margins of your notebook for weeks. Whatever is going on in your life, it’s important to have multiple projects going on at any given time so that you can find the right fit for your current circumstance.

The next time you find yourself starting a new project when there is still something else under your needle, give yourself some grace. You will finish most of them eventually!

In Defense of Keeping that Fabric Forever


When I was in high school, everything was purple. And frequently paisley. Whether inspired by the Little Purple Rock Star, Prince, or just a sign of the times, you couldn’t get away from the stuff. I used it for everything, including a purple paisley velvet jacket that boasted an impressive 28 pattern pieces. It was fully lined, too! You couldn’t pay me to undertake such a complicated project today, but back then with no kids and no job it was just an easy weekend’s worth of sewing. I still do have that paisley jacket in the back of my closet. I know I’ll never fit into it again, even if I did want to wear it ironically. I’ll continue to keep it around, just in case it is ever 80’s theme day at my kid’s high school.
Although I no longer have most of the tragically hip getups I crafted in high school, I continue to hang onto the little fabric remnants from those projects. There isn’t enough fabric to really make anything with them, even if those fabrics were in fashion again. Speaking of which, have you seen those dolman sleeve knit mini dresses that are now back in style? I still have my original McCall’s pattern for those… ripped straight out of the Brooke Shields line. Unlike the old days, with the benefit of my adult sized paycheck, I can now afford a serger to theoretically sew those knit dresses up properly.
I hang onto fabric scraps from those long-ago projects as a kind of tactile scrap book, reminding me of all my Prince and Bowie-inspired threads and how cool I felt wearing them. Just for a minute, I’m a kid again with the coolest jacket in the whole school.

Don’t Fear the (Replacement) Zipper


The one act of sewing that universally strikes fear into the heart of even the most sturdy sewing enthusiast is the act of putting in a zipper. So much consternation caused by two little innocent strips of teeth, but why? I’m going to say the root of this evil is not installing a new zipper, but rather the latent fear replacing a broken zipper. After all, we can sew, right? So how hard could it be to just take out that old broken zipper and pop in a new one? Pretty hard, cupcake. Pretty hard. Here are a few tips to increase your odds of success.

  • Plan… with your phone! I know you want to hurry up and get started, but before you do, let’s make a preemptive strike towards success. Everyone has a cell phone now and thus easy access to something better than memory – photography! Before going at it with the seam ripper, take some pictures of what it looked like before you ripped it apart (both sides!). You are really going to appreciate some reference pics in about 15 minutes.
  • Rip it good – Once you go at those jeans with the seam ripper and quickly find out how hard that is, the initial inclination is to just take out enough stitches to get that sucker out of there. Herein lies the problem. If you just barely had enough room to get the old one out, then getting in the new one will be harder than parking an F150 in a Boston parking garage. You are going to have to rip those stitches back, waaaaay back. You are going to want to rip out enough seams to be able to lay the whole thing flat.
  • Baste, not waste – Next, I’m going to recommend something that is pretty much anathema to modern sewists: basting. I know we live in an age of the Clover® Wonder Clip – possibly the greatest quilting accessory ever – so why ever baste again? Zippers, my friend. Zippers. Basting will enable you to get into all those little, tiny seams and corners. Normally, one rips out the basting stitches after the job is done, but in the case of zippers, I just use the same color thread as is the zipper and leave those little guys in there because, after all, we’ve done enough ripping for today.
  • The right tool for the job – Finally, my last tip for guaranteed zipper success is please use a zipper foot. If you don’t have one, you can get an after market knock off zipper foot at your local big box sewing and crafts store for a few dollars. It is worth the drive to the store, even if you do end up buying more fabric that you don’t need while there. The zipper foot enables you to get really close to the teeth. Trying to use a regular foot will result in you having to sew with the teeth under the foot and that’s going to skate all over the place and leave the stitches really loopy.

I hope these recommendations will help make your next zipper repair project a success. Before you know it, you’ll be doing what I do: taking zippers out of old jeans and saving them, just for the sake of having a bunch of cool little zippers!

Making Room for the New Quilt

I got a ticket for quilitng

Is it ever acceptable to start a new quilt when you still haven’t finished the one you’ve been wokring on? I always feel very guilty buying fabric for a new project when I know there is another project lying in pieces all over my sewing table. However, there are some cases when it’s OK to set an in-progress project aside to start something new. Consider these:

  • A gift-giving occasion has arisen – You never know, a baby shower could pop up at any moment. It is always defensible to set aside the old for the time being to start something new. After all, you are on a 9-month time limit and baby quilts are so cute and fun!
  • I’m pulling out my hair – Your current project is just too difficult or demanding right now given everything else that’s on your plate (work, kids, the garden needs weeding again…). Now would be a good time to undertake something simpler and more relaxing.
  • This is never getting finished – We all have that one project. The one we started with the best intentions. It’s been years now and you no longer work on it. Yet it sits there in the corner mocking you. It’s time to let that one go. Rip it part and make it into something new or donate it and all its parts to someone else who can make good use of it. Try again with something else!

If you are feeling unmotivated or some other new sewing circumstances have arisen, it’s not a crime to set your current project aside. Woking on something new might even generate the spark you need to get the old project finished. Imagine how good you’ll feel with two finished projects!