Chatterbox Quilts’ Blog
Helping Quilters Learn and Improve
If you’re like me, you shudder when you hear the words, “Quilt as desired” in the pattern instructions. This is so not helpful for someone who has never quilted a quilt before. How could you be expected to know what you should quilt on your first project? You would think that the pattern design would have some idea about what would look good on their design. So not fair!
Stop thinking about your quilting in terms of how much money you spend on quilting – a cost - but rather how happy it makes you – an investment in your well-being. This means being cost effective but not stingy. Invest rather than spend and be frugal rather than a penny pincher. Invest your time, your money, and yourself wisely: assess your investments by their value rather than solely by their cost/price.
“There is never enough time!” is a common refrain that I hear from most quilters. While it would be fun to quilt 24/7, the sad reality is that we all have other demands on our time. That leaves us with two choices: carve out more time to quilt or make better use of the quilting time that we have. There are only 24 hours in a day and you have many demands on your time so the hard-to-accept truth is that something has to give. If you are serious about making more time to quilt, you are going to have to make some changes in the way you approach your life.
The reason people don’t find time to quilt is that they don’t prioritize it … and the reason they don’t prioritize it is that they don’t believe they deserve to spend time quilting. Your hobby is as important, or more so, than many other things in your life that take up your time.
Have you tried the Quilt as You Go or QAYG (try and pronounce that acronym!)? If you haven’t, you’ll have to try it. It is fun and, while you can create a regular block with it, I like to use an improvisational approach to this technique.
