I helped my SIL with her quilts all day yesterday. I started teaching her to piece quilts back in 1995 and she's still a beginner. Actually, she completely baffles me most of the time. She has never bought a quilt book or magazine. She doesn't want to know how to figure yardage. She doesn't get excited by fabrics or threads or new techniques. It's a struggle just to get her to try new ideas. Now matter how many times I explain something to her she deliberately forgets it before the next time. Yes, deliberately, because as she puts it..... "If I do it once then I have to do it all the time." Huh? Baffles me. So each time she is at my house for a lesson it's like starting from the beginning all over again.
She is the only quilter I know who resists getting a stockpile of quilting related books, gadgets, threads, magazine subscriptions, and so forth. Even a visit to a fabric store doesn't get her interested in looking at anything but fabric. I always want to look around for new gadgets or patterns, but not her. I subscribe to quilt magazines and offer the subscription cards to her. She looks at them and gives them back to me. Not interested.
Her complete quilting stockpile is contained in one bag that she can carry from her house to mine and back. It has her fabrics, a rotary cutter, pins, and pages of whatever pattern I have copied from a book for her.
A person could say that she quilts so we have something in common in order to spend time together but that's not it either. We spend time together when we are not quilting and get along just fine.
I simply can't figure out how a quilter doesn't get excited by new things or want to have lots of quilting stuff around them. Baffling! Simply baffling!
4 comments:
You might as well face it, your SIL is NOT a quilter. Maybe she just wants something to fill her time & decided to use you and your hobby to do it. You're a better woman than me because I couldn't deal with it for very long.
I had a friend like that. After producing three quilts together, I realised she had no real interest in learning to quilt, (she just wanted the quilts,) so she would put in a minimal effort and I did most of the work (all of the figuring and most of the sewing. She would pick the patterns and do some of the piecing, and she paid for the fabrics.) I thought about this one day and decided to limit our friendship to non-quilting activities. After I told her, she drifted away never to return. Though I heard she did ended up doing the same thing to other friend who quilts...
You're both right, she doesn't want to be a quilter. I remember how she used to come to me two weeks before xmas and ask me to make her a quilt or two for gifts.
When I got tired of working day and night to make them (for free) and when I got tired of trying to explain how long quilts take to piece.... I told her that from then on if she gave a quilt as a gift it should be her work. Other wise it was a gift from me not her.
So she's been a beginner ever since. I no longer do any piecing or quilting for her. She does her own piecing but I tell and show her each step. I bought the CL giant templates so she can quilt them herself.
I do like her (and care about my brother) so I tolerate the lack of interest in quilts. Sometimes it just baffles me how someone can RESIST quilting stuff so easily. I'm a sucker for almost every new gadget or fabric I spot.
It is weird that she can resist the artwork aspect of it-- I love looking at other people's work, quilting magazines, ads for new gadgets and what can be made from them-- for me this is pure relaxation, and so much fun! I went to Road to California with my sister and a friend and we had a blast looking at what folks can do with fabric and thread-- we even got Eleanor Burns autograph in her Victory Quilts book, which I am also enjoying-- so I am also puzzled; how does she resist the beauty, creativity and joy that's at the heart of quilting? I sure can't.
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