Category Archives: quilting

The Couple Who Hobbies Together

Payback for last year’s Tri-County Quilt Show

I was recently asked, “where do you get your inspiration for By the Yard”? The interviewer was rather disappointed when I replied, “ripped from the headlines of my life”. I don’t have some kind of clever writing process. Instead, almost all the By the Yard® comics are based on real life occurrences. This particular comic is pretty much word for word based on a real event. Train Guy and I had gone to a train show where the organizers were indeed boasting about how many acres of model trains were on display and that the event consisted of five gigantic expo-sized buildings. I dutifully trudged to and from all five buildings, enduring the New England January snow and ice. We had a nice time. We even saw the actual steam train from a village in Maine where my parents live. Train Guy visited every booth, some of them two or three times. He acquired some steam engines he had his eye on, literally dozens of train trucks (for the uninitiated those are the little wheely things that go under train cars) and a bunch of other widgets that served some unknown purpose.

After this auspicious day, a quick Google search revealed there was a quilt shop nearby. Being more than two hours from the house, of course we had to stop in. After all, when would be the next time we’d be out this way? As if we were in some kind of 80’s sitcom, the very second that we stepped into the quilt shop an exasperated patron burst through the doors and shouted out at the top of her voice, “And THIS is for the train show!!”. Train Guy and I gave each other a knowing glance and had to struggle to control our guffaws. He proceeded to putter around the shop while I checked out the goods at my leisure. He then tried to convince me to buy four yards of a fabric instead of the one yard that I thought was all I needed. That would be the inspiration for another comic for another day.

Since then, we discovered there are a lot of quilt-loving/train-loving couples, maybe some more so than others. My advice to couples who must endure their other half’s obsessive hobbies – whether they be trains, tractors, trucks, fishing rods or whatever – just be gracious. Sure, I can’t tell the difference between HO scale or ON30 and Train Guy still thinks a jelly roll is some kind of wonderful dessert, but by going to these events together, we learn more about each other’s’ interests and most important of all, we spend time together doing things that we love.

Top 5 Excuses for Projects I Won’t Finish

Quilters, sewists and crafters alike all suffer from an abundance of unfinished projects. We feel really guilty about it and struggle against it as if it were a rip tide, often to no avail. The causes of the stacks of uncut fabric and the bags of partially sewn treasures are many.  Here are the:

Top 5 Excuses for Projects I Won’t Finish

  1. It’s too difficult – As an accomplished seamstress who has been sewing long before prom dresses had poofy sleeves, you will never hear me use this excuse. For me, no project is too difficult, so I’ll have to move on to one of our other excuses.
  2. It went out of fashion – I know this excuse sounds hard to believe, but it happens more than you might think. Back in college, my sewing bestie and I decided to make sexy knit dresses that were basically a tube dress with a wide off the shoulder band. We trekked down to Boston’s Chinatown, where all the good fabrics stores used to be, and bought bright 80’s knitted prints for what we were calling our “She-Woman” dresses. Neither of us started sewing the dresses for several years. In our defense, we were both undergraduates at M.I.T. and thus were kinda busy. My friend eventually made her dress, but I never did. At least two decades passed, both the dress pattern and the print became hopelessly out of date, and I ended up giving the fabric away.
  3. I ran out of fabric – Running out of fabric is a very good excuse for not finishing a project. Sometimes, this excuse can be mitigated by searching online for just a little bit more of the fabric in question. Both eBay and ETSY are great places to start. You can even use Google reverse image search to find a matching swatch!
  4. I don’t have time – This is both a common and very sad reason for not finishing a project. After sewing for decades and always having a heinously demanding day job, my best advice to ameliorate this unfortunate condition is to make sewing a priority. Don’t wait for the dishes to be done and the laundry sorted before you will allow yourself sewing time! Sew first, do household chores later.
  5. Shiny! Shiny-object syndrome is quite assuredly the number one reason I continue to stockpile unfinished projects. Something pretty and distracting (i.e., “shiny”) will pop up on my Instagram feed and I simply must make it as soon as possible. I always tell myself, “I won’t start a new project until I finish something I’m currently working on”. Predictably, this never works. My best recommendation for combatting this syndrome is to get together with your other sewing friends and have a “finish it up” challenge whereby all participants agree to complete one UFO (un-finished object) by a specified date. You can then move on to the new project with slightly less guilt!

Finding Quilting Inspirations… in Magazines!

When you think of where quilters are most likely to find inspiration you might immediately think of online resources, such as Instagram, Pinterest and a wide variety of quilting blogs. But did you know that 85% of “dedicated quilters” look for inspiration and information about quilt making from magazines? According to the Quilting in America™ 2017* survey, a Dedicated Quilter is one who spends $500 or more per year on the hobby, including books, magazines, fabric, tools, supplies, etc. The survey also revealed these other fun facts about Dedicated Quilters and their magazines:

  • Dedicated Quilters have spent an average of $136 on books, magazines, and DVDs in the past 12 months.
  • They read an average of 3.4 magazines regularly and spend an average of 6 hours a month reading quilting-related magazines.
  • The top reasons they read magazines is to learn new tips and techniques (88%), get quilt making inspiration (75%), find out about quilting products (63%), look at photos of quilts (62%), and find block patterns (60%).

I personally enjoy reading a lot of quilting magazines, both the grocery store variety and the high end, specialty magazines. To me, the appeal of magazines are many: no glaring “screen time” and no hunching over a computer; magazines are battery-free and can be enjoyed anywhere, from a couch, pool or airplane to an office building while you are  you are stuck waiting for a boring appointment; you can cut out images for a vision board; you can cut out pictures and file away patterns for a later date, in your “someday I’ll have time to make this” pile; and finally, they are made by industry design professionals so they are very pretty and enjoyable to just sit back and absorb.

The next time you are looking for quilting inspiration, education, or simply relaxation, pick up a magazine or two!

*Presented by The Quilting Company brands: Fons & Porter, McCall’s Quilting, Quilters Newsletter, Quiltmaker, and Quilting Arts in cooperation with Quilts, Inc., producers of International Quilt Market & International Quilt Festival.

Gifts Quilters Could Really Use

Quilters are a selfless lot. They spend untold hours upon hours making beautiful gifts for others and ask nothing in return. During this gift-giving time of year, they definitely deserve something, but what? Here are some suggestions for gifts that quilters really could use:

  • New Quilting Scissors – Destined to be at the top of the list, you know you ruined Your Quilter’s favorite scissors when you used them to cut cardboard, burritos, wire or even roof flashing. You owe a replacement pair.
  • Restaurant Gift Cards – Remember when Your Quilter spent frantic days non-stop to finish that cherished baby quilt or that unforgettable wedding quilt? Well, they are going to do that again one day soon and they are not going to have time to cook dinner. Have someone else do the cooking for you both. Extra points for take-out!
  • Fabric Store Gift Cards – Your Quilter can never have enough fabric so give a little help to build their stash. Be sure to support local, independently owned quilt shops!
  • A Good Chair – If the gamers get fancy chairs with all kinds of lumbar support, then so should the Quilters, after all, quilting is sitting… for creative people.
  • A Really Big Magnet – Preferably on a stick! Tired of walking on quilting pins in the carpet? Well, if Your Quilter had something to pick those tiny little fellas up with, you wouldn’t be finding them while in your sock feet. Makes a great stocking stuffer.
  • Thread – To the uninitiated, this may sound like a terribly boring gift idea, but I can assure you that Your Quilter would find a rainbow box of threadmore delightful than a box of chocolates.

Armed with this handy list of useful suggestions, I hope you can find a nice gift for Your Quilter, because you know as well as I do… you are getting a quilt!

The Rewards of Shopping Local


Everyone loves online shopping: it’s so easy, convenient, and you get exactly what you want showing up at your doorstep. It would be naïve to say we should refrain completely from online shopping – we are just not going to be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube. We should, however, be aware of our choices and make a conscious effort not to forget about local businesses that make up our communities. Not only do these local businesses rely on us for their survival, but their survival benefits us as well. Let’s think about how:

  • Local businesses are owned and operated by our friends, our neighbors, our kid’s best friend’s parents – all people in our communities. These people represent “the little guys”. Big online retailers and megalithic marketplaces are already getting enough tax breaks and other incentives, its up to us to help the Little Guys buy supporting them with our dollars.
  • Money spent locally in our communities goes back into local economies and helps us, too. When we spend our money in a Local Quilt Shop, that business pays taxes to our towns. That money goes to school, roads, police and other local services in our towns – all making our lives better.
  • Shopping local is much more fun and interactive than sitting behind a keyboard. In a time when “working from home” is all the rage, shopping local enables the chance to get to get out of the house, talk to other people, and learn about new patterns and projects you otherwise wouldn’t have.
  • Local Quilt Shops have many unique products you would never find online, items ranging from beautiful hand-dyed materials to tools and accessories made by local artists.

Now get out of your pajamas and make a trip to your Local Quilt Shop. You will be glad you did!