quilting - By the Yard®

Boost Your Productivity… by Quilting?

I wasn’t born rich and all the stock options I’ve been promised by employers over the years have never paid off so I, like most people, must work for a living. It’s too bad that working really cuts into my quilting time. I have stacks of unfinished projects and I’m really starting to feel guilty about all the projects I planned that I haven’t even started yet. It feels like I am putting in more and more time at work, and any “extra” time I might find that I have gets spent on catching up with work. I rarely spend time on creative activities because there is always so much “work” to do. What is a quilting girl to do?

The solution may be simpler than you think: just quilt. Don’t put in the extra time at work, quilt instead… because it’s GOOD for you! As a matter of fact, deliberately carving out time to enjoy your leisure activities will – believe it or not – help you at work. A study conducted in 2014 at San Francisco State University found that people who often engaged in a creative activity scored 15-30 percent higher on performance rankings. Apparently, engaging the creative side of your brain helps bolster your problem-solving skills. There you have it, proof at last that quilting is good for your job performance.

So, tonight instead of hunkering down over some more spreadsheets, I’m going to get back to finishing my Christmas quilt. My boss with thank me!

Two Whole Days of Quilting

Wouldn’t it be great to have two whole days of uninterrupted quilting? As a person with a full-time job, a house and kids to look after, it seems like little more than a dream. Or is it? Here are some ways you could have two whole days of quilting to yourself:

Quilt Cruise – I though it was crazy when I first heard of it but apparently, Quilt Cruises are a thing. They are just like regular cruises – only with quilting! You bring your sewing machine with you, and you spend your time aboard with likeminded fiber enthusiasts. Similar to traditional cruises, you make stops at various ports – hopefully visiting quilt shops.
Laid Off? Quilt On! – I don’t recommend getting laid off on purpose, but if you did, you should definitely spend at least half of your time quilting. After all, you can only send out so many resumes per day.
Work in the Biz – Lucky are the few that have found a way to work and quilt by working in the quilting industry! Pattern designers, fabric designers, quilt shop employees, long arm quilters, quilting fiction writers and more appear to have the best of both worlds…. getting paid to quilt!
Retreat – Tell your work you have to go visit sick Aunt Sally, tell your family you have to go on a work trip but really go on a quilting retreat. Double win!
Hijacked Zoom Calls – I was recently at an online event for people in the fibers arts and there was a participant who was measuring time to completion on a quilting project by the number of Zoom calls it was going to take to finish her quilt. Now that’s multi-tasking: Expert Level.

It’s Not As Easy As It Looks

I don’t remember how old I was, but I know I was old enough to drive so let’s say around 16. I was at our house in Maine puttering around doing something when the phone rang. This is back in the old days when the phone hung on the wall. No one ever called so the opportunity to pick up the phone was an exciting event not to be missed. It was my grandmother, she needed me to come over right away. Now you have to understand, my grandmother talked very fast and always had LOTS to say. I couldn’t really understand what she was saying… something about her eyes? Grammy had notoriously poor eyesight and it seemed she was always recovering from one eye operation or another, so with my parents not being home, I rushed right over. We didn’t have 911 in our town back then so I figured, whatever the emergency, Grammy was small, I could hoist her into the car and be off to the local hospital in jiff.

When I got there, I found out the situation was much different than what I had imagined. Grammy’s eyes were fine, or should I say, the same as usual. The real emergency was much more dire – she could not thread her sewing machine. She tired and tried, but due to her “darn eyes” she just couldn’t see well enough to do it. For a minute, I stood there sort of in disbelief, thinking: “You called me over here in an emergency… to thread your sewing machine?”. Luckily, smart-mouthed 16-year-old-me for once knew better than to say anything. I simply threaded the machine and asked, “Is there anything else I can do?”. Delighted that her machine was back in order, Grammy chirped “No! I’m all set!”.

I paused for a minute. “What if you need to change colors? Should I hang around?”

“No”, she said. “I’ll just stick with white. It’s not like I can see it anyway!”. Fair enough.

For years and years, I used to tell the story of how my grandmother once called me to her house under the auspices of an emergency to thread her sewing machine. For some reason I thought this was hilarious… until I was about 40. These days, it’s considerably less funny. My eyesight is so bad now that I have to use a special pair of glasses to thread the machine, a different pair for running it and a third pair still for cutting fabric. Every time I thread my machine now, I always think of Grammy. I feel bad for making light of her predicament but at the same time, I feel close to her. She loved sewing and continued to do it when she could literally not see a thing. I can only hope that I’m around as long as she was to keep on appreciating all the joy that sewing brings.

How to Save Money at the Quilt Shop

The most obvious way to save money at the quilt shop may to be to simply not go there when it’s open, but how much fun is that? Here are some more realistic ways you can save money at the quilt shop.

Make a List … and stick to it. If you are shopping from a list, you can avoid impulse buys such as all those “just so pretty I had to have it” fabrics.
Just Hold It … for a little while. I read about his technique once in reference to shopping for clothing and to my surprise I have applied it to fabric with much success! The idea is that if you see something you really, really love, just pick it up and carry it around the store while you look at other things. Walk it around the store as long as you have to until the realization of “what am I really going to do with this?” takes hold. Eventually, you will realize it’s just a passing infatuation and you can set it back down where you found it. Sometimes, just “owning” it for a little while is all that you need.
Cash Only – If you bring a finite amount of cash into the store and leave your credit cards behind, you will not be able to over-shop.
Empty Pockets – Sometimes I just want to go to the quilt shop to look at new fabrics, with no real idea of any projects in mind. This is a very dangerous activity. I am usually just bored, wanting to get out of the house or discouraged with a current project. Before I know it, I’m walking out of the shop $100 lighter with a bunch of projects destined for the NESTY* pile. When you are suffering from this kind of quilting ennui, it’s best to head to the shop with no money at all. You can browse and touch all the pretty things with no danger to your wallet. If you see something you really love, and the idea sticks with you for more than a few days, then you can return some other day with cash to buy it, knowing that you have really considered the purchase and are not being impulsive.
Reward Based Shopping – If you have amazing willpower and only allow yourself to go to the fabric shop after you have completed a project, you can avoid those fabric stacks getting too deep.

*NESTY – Not Even Started Yet

When It’s Too Hot to Quilt

Quilting in the summer can be a challenge. The kids are off from school, there are vacations to contend with and pushing yards and yards of fabric through a sewing machine can be a sticky subject. I once created a greeting card about that very topic. When it’s too hot to sew, there are still other quilting-related things you can do, so put on your flip flops and give some of these a try!

Clean Your Sewing Space – The summer quilting doldrums are the perfect time to clean up and organize your sewing space. Halloween costumes and holiday gifts are coming up fast around the corner. You will get more done on the fun stuff if you aren’t tripping over piles of fabric and sewing scraps.
Dig Up Old UFOs – Remember all those “Handmade Holiday” gifts that you lamentably didn’t finish last year? Break them out and get ready to finish them up! Just imagine how productive everyone will think that you are THIS year.
The Boring Stuff – The hemming, the mending, those ugly curtains you’ve been putting off… get all the boring “home maintenance” stuff done and out of the way. This way, as soon as fall hits you’ll be ready for pumpkins, and gnomes and snowmen… oh my!
Fabric Shopping? I wasn’t going to say it, but you know you have been thinking it. Summer is a great time for fabric shopping because many quilt shops have Christmas in July sales on all those fun holiday prints you know you are going to want to have on hand, as well as clearance sales to make room for the new stuff. Not that you need any justifications for buying more fabric.

Have fun in the sun this summer and after the last hot dog is roasted, you’ll be able to hit the bobbin running with all of your quilting projects!

Fabric Shopping Online Can’t Do This

I only buy fabric on days that end in “y”

Yesterday I went to the quilt shop. Ostensibly it was to pick up a few coordinating fat quarters for a wedding/house-warming gifts I had in mind but in reality, it turned out to be so much more. I didn’t just find the fabric I was looking for, I found beauty, camaraderie and inspiration.

We all know you can find endless fabric online – its easy and convenient – but only in the quilt shop can you lay bolts next to each other, pile up fat quarters side by side and really get an appreciation for what those fabrics will look like together. You can also juxtapose fabrics from different lines, something which is technically unworkable online. I’ve tried assembling a weird matrix of windows, I’ve even tried cutting and pasting screen grabs into one document. There really is no substitute for sampling laying the fabrics next to each other.

The quilt shop has another precious resource you can’t find online… people! The people you run into at the quilt shop are the nicest lot. They will inevitably ask what you are working on and then when you tell them in excruciatingly drawn-out detail, they are genuinely interested in every last tidbit! Try doing that with your Significant Other. Quilt shop folks will also empathize with you regarding whatever quilting challenge you may be facing, in my case, a recent stroke. Finally, someone who understands how I really do need to be able to use that rotary cutter for an hour at a time and no, I can’t just “do something else”.

Finally, any trip to the quilt shop comes with something else you’ll never find online and that is: real live quilts… hanging everywhere! I have to call specific attention to the popular Exploding Hearts quilt, designed by the friendly and talented Laura Piland of Slice of Pi Quilts. I must have seen this pattern 200 times online. It’s very popular and seemingly everywhere but I’d never seen one in person. In my local quilt shop it was made up in a red colorway of Kaffe Fassett which really made it mesmerizing. It almost looked like it was on fire. I was also surprised at how big the quilt was in real life, another attribute which you just can’t get a feel for online. I do not know if I would have the fortitude for all of the hourglass blocks required, but after seeing in in real life, I think I just might!

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