There are no mistakes in quiltingThere is an old anecdote about Amish quilters that asserts every quilter must deliberately leave one mistake in each quilt as a lesson in humility. Speaking for myself, I certainly don’t need to make a concerted effort to leave a mistake in my quilts as they are full of all kinds of blunders. From the block sewn in upside down to the piece where I didn’t quite have enough of that one fabric left, it all goes back to how I learned to sew in the first place. When I was a kid learning how to sew, I didn’t go out to a fabric store to buy patterns or even fabric for that matter. I sewed with whatever leftovers scraps I could find in my mother’s sewing machine cabinet, and I just made patterns up from whatever came to mind. I was in a hurry to “make-do and get done” so I could either start playing with what I had just made or move on to the next idea that had already popped into my head.
Today there is a lot more pressure on quilters to be perfect thanks to endless pin-worthy pictures online. Every quilting blog is full of magazine-quality photos coupled with a dubious humble-brag about “just learning to quilt less than a year ago”. We must not fall victim to all that marketing hype. It’s OK to make mistakes and I would even go so far as to say making mistakes results in quilts that are special and unique. In this quilter’s opinion, it’s better to get done and be different than to give up in frustration or to produce cookie cutter perfection. Anyone can make a quilt that looks just like the one on the pattern cover but only you can make one that is truly your own.
Many quilters will attempt to conceal a fabric acquisition by claiming its “been in the closet forever”! Why is it that if a stash of fabric has been in your closet a long time, you somehow feel less guilty about buying it than you’d feel if you bought it yesterday? Perhaps responsibility for fabric related splurges is inversely proportional to time because if you bought 20 yards of fabric years ago, it was certainly a lot less expensive than it would be today. Or perhaps your fabric buying behavior was rampantly out of control six years ago and your shopping today has become politely more restrained.
Maybe today you are mostly “shopping from your stash”. If that were the case, you would be among good company. According to the 2020 Quilting in America survey funded by F+W Media, 41.1% of respondents said they are consuming more of their stash than buying. That may not be too much to brag about because with the same survey quoting the average quilter as having a stash of fabric worth more than $6000, there is still clearly a lot of fabric acquisition going on. At the end of the day, don’t worry about whether that fabric has been in your stash for years or you just bought it yesterday. The important thing is to get quilting. Make something beautiful today!
Work less, quilt more!As crazy as it may sound, I have indeed skipped work in order to sew. In my defense, I was trying to finish a bridesmaid’s dress for a wedding I was in…. which pales in contrast to what the bride did. She didn’t finish her dress in time for her destination wedding, so she brought the sewing machine to the hotel the night before the wedding in order to finish the dress. Fortunately, there are simpler ways to make more time for sewing.
• Cut Down on Cooking – No, I’m not talking about skipping meals or getting expensive takeout. Try making twice as much food as you normally would for one or two meals per week. Then you’ll have an entire meal ready to go for later in the week! No food prep, just heat and eat. Hours saved.
• Go on a Social Media Diet – We all think we have “no time”, but have you ever really taken a look at how much time you waste online, especially on social media? One quick peek and before you know it, you are down the rabbit hole. Same thing with email. When I was a software manager in a previous life, I often advised my harried and overworked teams that they could get more of their day back by only checking their emails first thing on the morning and before they left for the day. This significantly cut down on the running around all day trying to answer every little thing. Note that if it’s really important, they will call you.
• Judicious Punting – When I was a freshman at MIT, the first week I was on campus I was advised by an upper classman that the key to survival at The Institute was “judicious punting”. Not “punting” like on the Thames, “punting” as in football: just kick it away. Decide what is really important, and just don’t do the rest. Do you REALLY need to make something homemade for the bake sale or could you just buy something? Do you REALLY need to answer that work email after hours that was CC’d to forty people? Nothing copied to a huge recipient list is ever legitimately urgent.
With a bit of practice and a little bit of prudence, you can cut your to-do list down to what’s really necessary. And THAT leaves more time for quilting!
It’s OK that you didn’t finish that quilt before starting another
Legendary America actress Katharine Hepburn once said,
“It’s not what you start in life, it’s what you finish.”
She must not have been a quilter. We quilters have a way of starting a new project before one or more old ones are even finished. What is the motivation behind this contradictory behavior? Let’s take a look:
Burnout – Many times I’ll take a break from a large, complex project to basically rest and recharge. An easier project where you can quickly get a sense of accomplishment might be just the ticket to renew your vigor in wrestling the more difficult project to the ground.
Deadline – You know your niece Suzie’s baby shower that is coming up next Saturday? Well, if you don’t want to show up empty handed, you are going to have to take a break from your epic queen-sized quilt that matches your new bedroom paint in favor of some duckies and bunnies.
I Just Went in to Get Thread – It’s happened to all of us. We just made a quick stop to the quilt shop to “get thread” and we spied new fabric so beautiful we could not live without it. Before we knew it, we spent $200 and started a new quilt that same day. Whoops.
What Was I Thinking? – Sometimes, you have a project that you grow to hate so much, you’d rather burn it than spend one more minute working on it. Occasionally, it turns out to be too difficult but more often than not, it turns out to be just too ugly. Sure, that tropical teal background and pink hibiscus floral print looked great in the fabric shop, but now…. not so much. I wouldn’t blame you for starting something new and just quietly donating this fabric.
I Never Wanted to Make This in the First Place – We are looking at you, T-Shirt quilts everywhere. Sometimes, we commit to a project for a friend or a family member that we never would have made ourselves if given our own freewill, but we are guilted into it “because [you] can quilt!”. I have one of these myself. I promised to finish a quilt for a friend who took a quilting class back in the 80’s but never finished her quilt. In my defense, it’s only been on my sewing table for a few months. I think a few more won’t hurt.
More time for quilting!
I am not a huge fan of cooking. All that chopping, hovering over a saucepan for hours, sauteing and whatnot. Let’s just say the only “deglazing” I’ve ever done is picking the toppings off a donut. Given the same amount of time, I’d rather be quilting than cooking. Here are the top 5 reasons that quilting, in my opinion, is vastly superior to cooking:
Didn’t I just do this last night? Cooking dinner night after night is such a tedious chore, not to mention lunches and breakfasts! Quilting, on the other hand, I could do it morning, noon and night… plus a few “snacks” thrown in between.
Leftovers. You know those “still perfectly usable also I’m saving them” scraps left over from your last quilt? They are not going to turn into a spoiled, quivering, moldy mess if you leave them on the shelf for a couple of years. Try doing that with what’s left of last night’s delicious bean casserole.
Eat ramen. Make quilts. Cooking, even for a small family of four, costs hundreds of dollars per week. Imagine how many quilts you could make with that same amount of money!
So many widgets. Unless you are one of those people living in a van, cooking uses a zillion tools which take up an entire dedicated room – the kitchen – to store. Quilting, on the other hand, only necessitates a sewing machine, a few pins & needles and some scissors. If you want to get fancy, thrown in a rotary cutter and a mat. That’s it and you are good to go. Try subsisting with such as small number of kitchen widgets and you’ll ending up steaming spaghetti in a hub cap.
Blink and it’s gone. You know that incredible puff pastry encased salmon you made last night? Well, it’s gone now. That equally impressive quilt with the scalloped edges that I made ten years ago? I still have it.
So tonight, skip the grocery store and pop by the quilt shop instead. You will be glad you did.
This was the very first By the Yard® ever published way back in January of 2018. Like many episodes of By the Yard, it was pretty much ripped from the headlines of Quilt Girl and Train Guy’s lives. Quilt Girl was puzzled by Train Guy’s insistence that she buy and entire bolt of fabric, when she only really “needed” a few yards. She immediately suspected treachery. This incident spawned the By the Yard® comic strip where two crafty people collude in all kinds of hobbies, mainly quilting and model railroading… but they also enjoy knitting & crochet and covering the yard with old junk tractors, respectively.
