While I was residing in Dubai some ladies there used to receive a magazine called "
Quilters home"
http://www.quiltershomemag.com/aboutqh/This magazine was the brain child of a guy Mark Lapinski a quilter and he decided quilting magazines were to "stick in the mud " so he developed his own.
If you ever get a chance to read one of these Mags take it...he puts humour and reality into quilting. This guy writes about real quilters and people like us, he allows copying of his write ups "to your hearts content" he says. He also writes about his family and every day things.
Just read this and you will feel Oh! so better about yourself and your UFO's.
One of his missives..
My super Powers there were times when they had surfaced before, but it was definitely just three years ago when my powers moved into high gear.
2005 was the year Evan turned 13. His “You don’t understand,
Dad” attitude reached critical mass, and his bedroom was a chaos that you
could barely walk through.
I knew one of us would eventually end up on Eyewitness News
for mud wrestling over the state of his room, so I took the sage advice
of my quilt guild buddies who had learned from parenting their own
teens. “Pick your battles,” they’d say. “Just close the door.”
I did.
And that’s when I realized that I could see through
doors. I had super powers! Every time I walked past Evan’s room, I could
literally see the nightmare of dirty clothes, half-eaten sandwiches, and
empty soda cans that lay behind the white six-paneled door.
Lately, my super powers have heightened and re-focused on my
quilting universe.
You see, my friends and family don’t understand that
when I look at the piles of fabric I have stashed around the house,
I don’t see yardage anymore. I see finished quilts. Yup, just like Haley
Joel Osment saw dead people.
When I look at my drawers stuffed full of fat quarters or the bolts
of uncut material teetering in stacks, I know exactly how I would arrange
them into a perfect piece o’patchwork. I can see the appliqué and I can
feel the feathered quilting without ever picking up a rotary cutter or standing
at my APQS.
Now when I go to my local quilt shop, I buy freely and without
guilt. I don’t just come home with yards of great fabric; I come home
with The Dream. I never have to put a single stitch in any of it if I don’t want
to because my powers allow me to see finished quilts.
When I buy books or patterns that I know I’ll never use but simply
must have, I let myself off the shame hook because I know I’m buying The
Dream. For that matter, when people buy my patterns or take my classes,
I don’t care if they ever actually finish the project—I don’t think I’d ever
finished a quilt class project myself— because they bought their own
dream.
As creative mortals and quilters, we have the right (and the super
powers) to dream and buy and never sew a thing and still proudly call
ourselves quilters.
When I’m having a rotten day, I only have to riffle through a
few of my fabric piles to get in touch with the ghosts of my future quilts,
and I immediately feel better, grounded, and at peace with the world.
If I want to cut, piece, and create a quilt with what I have, then great! If not,
that’s OK, too. Nobody but a fellow quilter could ever understand this
fine print in the Quilter’s Code.
So stop beating yourself up for buying more fabric than you’ll
ever use. Get rid of the guilt that comes with UFOs and scads of
unopened patterns, books, and magazines.
Tune out your critics and the quiltzillas who use you as an example
of having too much quilting stuff and doing too little with it. It’s none of
their business, nor do their wallets foot the bill.
Get in touch with your own super powers, then design, cut, sew—
or not—to your heart’s content!
