More Rules for Living with a Quilter

Simple Rules for Living with a Quilter

Last year around this time we brought you some very handy Rules for Living with a Quilter. Now it’s
about time for a refresher course. Let’s take a look at a few more ways to coexist with these creative
creatures:
1. Couch hazards – Always be careful where you sit.
2. Never sit in your Quilter’s spot – Your Quilter chose their spot because it has the best lighting in
the house, and you can just as easily watch Stargate from the dark side of the couch.
3. Competition for horizontal space – Do you like doing puzzles? Stamp collecting? Perhaps
building model ships? You are going to have to find some other place to do that because your
Quilter will use up all of the horizontal surfaces in the house.
4. No sit-down dinners – Get used to eating on the couch or while standing over the sink because
your Quilter needs the dining room table for layering together their latest quilt, and the kitchen
table probably has a sewing machine and a pile of fat quarters on it as well.
5. Never enough fabric – Your Quilter is just as surprised as you are that they didn’t have just the
right shade of green to finish that quilt. Put your coffee in a To-Go cup and have a little trip with
them to the fabric store!

I’ll Put it on My To-Do List

Put it on the list

When I was an undergraduate, my roommate caught me making a list of homework assignments. He looked at me with mild disgust and sternly warned me, “Don’t be a list-maker”. I believe his intention was to encourage me to “live in the moment” and not be constrained by lists, more specifically, some pre-conceived idea of what I should be doing for the day. At the time, I didn’t understand his point at all because we were both going to MIT, a notoriously difficult school. I could not figure out how he expected me to get anything done without making a list. After all, there was so much to do!
Years later, when I was in graduate school at the very same Institute, we had an in-class project to take the Myers Briggs personality test. I resisted this like the plague but eventually had to acquiesce. In the end, I found out I had the type of personality that would go so far as to make a list of things I’d already done specifically so I could check things off the list. All these years I thought that was just me. It turns out, there’s a whole bunch of people like that and they have their very own “type”! I was greatly relieved by this discovery and went on to make many more lists with complete impunity.
Today, I make lists for my quilting projects. They help me to know what supplies I need to acquire, remember where I am on project, decide which project is more important, and more. Is it a gift? If so, it needs to get done sooner. Is it for a quilting pattern I have to get published? Well then, better put that at the top of the list!