Sit down at your sewing spot and sew!

It wasn’t too long into my quilt life that my friends and family stopped asking me, “How are you?” Instead, they started asking, “How’s the sewing?” The better question, I told them, was this: How’s all the sewing stuff?

By stuff, I mean the various activities that make up the quilt life: guild meetings, workshops and classes, blog and magazine browsing, fabric shopping and quilt show excursions. There’s a lot of quilt stuff going on…which doesn’t leave a lot of time for quilting. It’s easy to get caught up in the myriad of distractions and lose sight of the reasons I started quilting in the first place: the meditative quality and tactile satisfaction of sewing.

On days when I feel as if the quilt lifestyle is eclipsing the actual work, I take a deep breath and sit down in my designated sewing chair. I sit still and let the pull toward the computer and television pass. I don’t answer the phone. I sit down and sew.

Working on a project is a great reminder that you do not need to go fabric shopping at this time. At least, that is, until the current project is completely sewn. And is there better motivation for finishing a quilt than the promise that you can purchase more fabric? For your next one?

All the sewing stuff is terrific. It’s a reason to get involved with the sewing life in itself. But I aim for balance. The sewing life is pretty empty without the promise of making something. And that requires that you sit down and sew.