I came to the greatest realization today- I am sitting at my quilt frame for hours guilt free… ignoring laundry, dishes, housework and anything else that can be put off for a little while.

I try to set up three quilts each year to hand quilt on my old-fashioned floor frame. This is my only way of keeping up to an ongoing quilting habit and actually completing all of the projects. My love of hand-quilted quilts and traditional work therefore requires some sacrifice to my family’s home and hearth. Since I don’t have any out of the way room big enough, I have to set up the 8’ x 8’ boards in the middle of my living room. I also have 12” extensions for quilts larger than 90” on any one side. This basically takes up the whole room, with a little space to walk around to get to the kitchen table.

This room is also the front entry to our house. Visitors, my kids and their friends, relatives and especially my husband (who is very understanding of my addiction) see this monster contraption in the middle of the room every time that they come in. A pretty quilt catches their attention and they don’t stop long enough to wonder why I would cover my coffee table and push the couches into my front curtains. It certainly does not make for a great decorating scheme. But I love to hand quilt, and this is the most efficient way of getting the job done creatively and within a reasonable length of time.

It usually takes me eight to ten weeks to quilt a double or queen size project. This is working sporadically, usually an hour in the morning before the family gets out of bed, and another hour or so while cooking supper and before the cleanup- just a couple of hours each day to sit and think, plan, organize and design new quilts in my head. On weekends I can usually steal a couple extra hours as well.

However, these sessions have to be timed perfectly. One quilt goes up in the fall, one in the winter and one in the summer. The fall quilt has to be out of the living room by December 1^st when we put up the Christmas decorations and make room for the tree. We also need the furniture for entertaining. The winter quilt goes up when the decorations come down and has to be finished by mid-February before my work schedule goes into overtime. The summer quilt is my favorite as I can set up mid-May and quilt leisurely until August.

While I write this, it is the end of November. I have just a week until deadline. I am only halfway across the quilt because of weekend road trips to Toronto, North Bay and Killarney. Quilts on the Rocks and my oldest two children starting university have caused other disruptions in my carefully timed schedule. So my kids are starting to make noises about Christmas coming, my husband eyes the progress daily and the room really needs a good cleaning soon.

But I sit quilting peacefully, ignoring everything else as they cheer me on to complete this piece. They don’t care that we are eating soup and hot dogs, and they are doing their own laundry. They don’t mind that I am sitting for hours at a time instead of running them to school and to the mall- bus tickets are in my wallet. I really enjoy this guilt-free quilting time and can’t imagine anything else that I would rather be doing. Merry Christmas to all of the guild members, and may you find your own guilt-free quilting time in the New Year.