This is a great tale! It has mystery and suspence..when will Nell get to
quilt?! Will she find the BOMs when she has time in her life to give to
quilting...
I loved it! Thank you Nel!
Diana

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http://photos.yahoo.com/lunamom44
"Nell Reynolds" wrote in message
. ..
I came to post at RCTQ because my DH put it on my favorites list when he
installed new equipment while I was out of town. It took me several weeks
before I got down to it, because they were listed alphabetically. This is
the only one I still follow because all the others, even though DH chose
carefully only topics that interest me (after 38 years, he oughta know!),
but the others are unpleasant either because of personal attacks on other
posters or because of extremely foul language.
I came to be a quilter slowly. We never had quilts when I was a kid, only
blankets. When I got married, my DH's grandmother, a quilter, had quilted
3
quilts for my MIL to give to her DILs when her sons got married. Since we
were the first to marry, I got first choice. I picked out the plainest
one,
being unimpressed by quilts. Boy, was that stupid! The other two were
applique, and really quite pretty, but I picked out the one that was plain
muslin with blue binding and quilting. We still have it, stained in
places,
but otherwise intact.
The Bicentennial, I think, is what got me interested, with its emphasis on
history and early American things like quilts. I bought a preprinted
queen
size cross stitch quilt top and started stitching...and stitching...and
stitching...and stitching. I should have started out on something like
tea
towels. After a year or so, we moved when my DH got a job elsewhere, and
it
got packed into a box -- and never has been unpacked since then. Not much
later I saw a Tree of Life double bed size applique quilt kit and bought
it.
See, I was learning -- slowly, but learning. This was smaller and only
required me to sew the colored areas on, not create them with cross
stitches. Then I finally found a fulltime job with an hour's commute time
each way, and my diminished sewing time became fully committed to making
clothes for myself.
I always bought the McCall's Sewing and Crafts Magazine when it was a big
quarterly publication and read it cover to cover, mentally planning out
how
I would finish several projects, what colors I would choose, and where or
how I would use the completed projects. There was one coverlet made of
velvet that had a Moorish look to it. It was made entirely of wavy
diamonds -- the sides curved instead of being straight. I was going to
get
a yard or two of polyester velvet in purple, blue, and turquoise, cut it
into myriads of wavy-sided diamonds, and construct myself a gorgeous
bedspread. My mother tried to talk me out of it, stressing the difficulty
of sewing all those bias shapes together in a slippery fabric. I was
undaunted. Then she pointed out how many yards I would have to buy,
helping
me measure the size of the bed and the side hangs. Armed with the yardage
needed, I went to the fabric store and looked at the price of that velvet.
That did daunt me. I walked out empty-handed.
Then I started seeing this little magazine called Quilter's Newsletter.
It
came out monthly and was cheap, so I started reading it cover to cover.
The
projects looked interesting -- and they were all quilts. Pieced quilts
caught my eye. I figured this was for me: I already knew how to sew --
quite well, thank you very much. On the machine, it would go quickly, so
my
lack of unoccupied hours and hours did not present a problem. And since I
sewed a lot, I had plenty of scraps to make quiltse out of.
Whoops! I hit a snag. This was in the days when polyester and double
knits
were riding high, with polyester double knits riding highest of all. I
needed a
different kind of cloth, different thread, different needles. Ah well, I
reasoned, I was working fulltime, going to graduate school at night, so
what
business did I have adding more onto that? Stuff it back into a mental
closet, but keep reading the magazines.
Then in 1995 0r '96, Cloth World (now JoAnns) came out with precut BOMs.
Just $3.99 a month, so I started buying, opening and reading them. Then,
recognizing my lack of time, I put them carefully away in the translucent
plastic box labeled with the quilt name -- until the next month's BOM
appeared. Now they cost $6.95 a month, and I hoard my 50% coupons to buy
them, with an extra on payday.
Quilting is like any other addiction, starting out innocently. Then
slowly,
insidiously, it twines its tentacles down into your very being until it
owns
you. This newsgroup has no similarity to Alcoholics Anonymous, but a
great
similarity to the dealer on the corner.
I started working at the Texas Education Agency in 1998, visiting school
districts to check on their compliance with school law and the quality of
their teaching programs. Boy, doesn't that make me sound like a high
muckety-muck! In reality, we had a set format to follow, with specific
things to check, and a set format for the report we had to write each
week.
If everything went smoothly, I might have some free time on Thursday
afternoon of the visit, so I learned to haul out the local phone book on
checking into the hotel and looking in the yellow pages for quilt shops --
fabric shops if nothing was listed under "Quilts." Then I started making
sure I had time to visit quilt shops. I hit the jackpot one week when a
Central Texas Quilt Hop was scheduled. I was staying in a town with one
shop, and visiting a school district in another town that had a LQS. My
traveling partner was coming from Houston, meeting me at the hotel Monday
evening. I left Austin as early as possible, and managed to swing through
two other towns -- and LQSes -- listed. The school district was all
hunky-dory, so we had plenty of time. My partner had brought his golf
clubs
and was able to get in a round while I went LQSing on Thursday. We
finished
by 10:30 on Friday, and I had no deadline to arrive home. I looped around
the map and caught four more LQSes by 6:00 when the last one closed and I
had to go home. That was an expensive traveling week for me, because I
couldn't just walk in and leave empty handed.
No two quilt shops are alike, but all of them are fascinating. I kept
rationalizing that "Now I have money, if not time. Soon, I will retire
and
have time, if not money. It just makes sense to stock up now." Well,
here
I am almost retired, thanks to the Texas Legislature cutting funding for
education, and my annuity will be less than $2,000 a month -- not a living
wage. I can go back to work for a school district after October 1. The
problem there is that they can get English teachers for a lot less than
they
would have to pay me -- the pay scale is set by the state, depending on
years of experience and education level. A school district can pay over
the
state rate, but must pay all equally-qualified teachers equal salaries. I
love teaching, but it will seriously cut into my quilting time.

Well, this ought to have given you some reading. You probably were not
expecting me to go on and on so much. I hope it was pleasurable.

Nell in Austin

"Diana Curtis" wrote in message
...
Im recovering well... certain things coming in the mail keep my spirits
up,
thank you muchly! But the days linger long sometimes. I havent energy to
do
much yet, but you, yes YOU, have the power to entertain and amuse me if
you
feel like it, and I hope you do...
Would you please tell me how you came to post at RCTQ, and why you stay,
and
how you came to be a quilter and what you hope to find in your quilting
future. Maybe everyone else will get some pleasure in reading these ..
then
I wont feel so selfish! lol
Thanks in advance,
Diana the slightly bored

--
http://photos.yahoo.com/lunamom44