Hey, do you suck?
So, if you'd asked me the question even up until a few days ago, I would have said the answer was yes! Over the past year or so, I've been trying to find a few quilt blogs to read, quilt blogs of people whose sense of color and design interested and challenged me, and let me tell you -- these blogs were killing my spirit.
Not just killing my spirit, but resurrecting it and smacking it around again just to really get the point across. These women -- for, let's be honest, I've picked the only hobby more female-dominated than my current employer** -- were cranking out quilts like nobody's business. Yes, they're machine quilting, but I kid you not, every few days it was
O HAI I HAVE FINISHED ANOTHER QUILTZOR SEE I HAZ PHOTOS!
-- and I'd look down at my halfass pile of cut fabrics and think, crap, Amy, finish something. Or at least sew a few seams before going to bed, slackass. Sometimes I would, and sometimes I wouldn't. Some days I come home from work energized, some days I come home seeking craft therapy in the form of straight seams, and sometimes? Sometimes my brain is so baked that my mental capabilities involve lying on the couch, throwing wisecracks at my spouse, calling a friend or two and failing utterly at anything resembling productivity. I resent those nights, resent them with a yawning passion, because at the end of each night I think, "What have I done tonight?" and the answer is a snore.
Except I caught on to something.
1) Several of these people don't work outside the home, or if they do, only work part-time.
and
2) Wait, one of these people just referred to making a quilt for a full-sized bed as unusually time-consuming. What size are they -- TINY QUILTS? Wallhangings? Agggggh, I'm comparing apples to oranges!
I scribbled and did the math. The wallhanging quilts were gorgeous and creative and etc. but it turned out that each of my standard projects, area-wise, equaled about four of these smaller projects. A twin-size is about two, and a king-size could be up to 6. The smallest quilt size I've done is a quilt for a twin-sized bed. In a year's time I did 4 full-size quilts, 2 king-size, and 3 twin-size.
You know what I'm gonna do now?
Shut up.
** libraries!
Comments
Kamikaze Quiltrix! And here
Kamikaze Quiltrix!
And here you've been killing yourself over "not doing enough." Now you know better.
I know. It put a radically
I know. It put a radically different perspective on it. Someone - maybe it was you? - posed a question I couldn't answer: "How many would have been 'enough'?"
Enough volume in my book
Enough volume in my book would equal the ability to sell the excess quilts so you could support yourself financially - ideally retiring early from the manual labor. But I tend to think of money more often than I should :)
Not to mention the color
Not to mention the color matching you do for each quilt, which is extensive and gorgeous - that takes a LOT of work :) Also, you have to remember that a lot of you goes into those projects, and there's no point in putting the tired-cranky-braindead part of you into something someone else is supposed to enjoy (or as a 10 year old girl once told John: "You shouldn't paint minis when you're angry" *grin*). Each project is unique, and there's no point prodding the creative part - it will get cranky and you will have quilt block.
[I'll take the smack for the bad pun later.]
I can crank out a lap quilt in 24 hours (much to my surprise!). The larger quilts I've done for essentially full sized beds have been a LOT tougher - more edges to match, more seams to get right, more ironing...WAAAAAAYYYYY more ironing *grin*. Enjoy that you have made a number of people quite happy - it's not how many quilts you've made, but how many others will enjoy those quilts. You have done a lovely job, and congrats on a very productive year :)