Best Job Ever

Best Job Ever

I have worked at some job since I was 16.  I have sewn aprons for the rubber company people who make tires.  I have silk screened logos onto ski bags.  I sold burgers at a fast food joint that no longer exists.  I worked at a drive-thru Dairy store where you could buy cigarettes, milk and lunch meat without ever exiting your car. 

There was a 4 year stint at an electronics firm that made computer cables from start to finish. I worked the longest time span of 7 years at an advertising print shop as shift supervisor.  I left the business world behind from this job when I married in my early 30’s and I spent some of this new found free time with my mom who was also newly retired and liked to hop in the car and go for short or long trips on the spur of the moment.

Monday

I can honestly say I loved every job I did. I learned so much and had a lot of wonderful experiences.  I met people who broadened my view of the world and I became the person I am today through the process of living my life.

Tuesday

Work is something that needs to be done and I am a firm believer you should do what you love.  Even though I loved all those jobs as I did them, I grew out of all of them at some point and had to break off the relationship and move on.  I “retired” at the age of 31 when my husband said I could leave a horrible situation where my job had degraded into mental abuse and a massive test of wills.  If you are not the boss, you will probably lose a test of wills.  There is no reason to work where you get shabby treatment.

Wednesday

Women have long struggled to gain a foothold in a man’s world and I gave up trying.  I did stick it out for a time, but I turned to my creativity in the end and started doing something that satisfied deeper urges.  All the jobs have led me to what I do now.  I learned skills I would never had learned in any other situation.

Thursday

My first venture into the world of self-employment involved looms, my sister, and 20 years selling hand- made clothing, bags and rugs.  This was satisfying hard work that did not involve testing any wills other than my own to get all that needed to be done each week to prepare for the weekend art show my sister would take the finished goods to sell.

Friday

Leaving weaving behind evolved into quilting.  Each picture is a quilt I quilted this week.  I did not have to piece any of them.  They are all fabulous and I got to touch them and add something to them to help complete a vision someone had while creating a thing of beauty.  This is the Best Job Ever!

Leaders and Enders

Leaders and Enders

While sewing a quilt seems like such a simple thing I have mental issues about waste.  I don’t like wasting thread between bits of sewing, so I employ a process described by a dear friend, Bonnie Hunter, which she calls leaders/enders.  Bonnie is the Queen of efficiency and makes more quilts than anyone can imagine.  You can check out what she does on her website and can find a link to her blog there. 

 Bonnie is amazing and does quilt retreats for guilds and travels all over showing people her methods, all the while still managing to produce an unbelievable amount of quilts, get books published and sew up fabric that people who love her mail to her.

I have followed her progress for years by looking at her website on occasion, and when I needed to know a method short cut or the math for sizing setting triangles I would just automatically go to her website and find my answer.  Always while there I would check to see if she had any new patterns or to see what she had in progress.  Her site is always an inspiration.

One of the things that Bonnie prescribed was having a second project going and as you stopped at the end of a seam on your current project, you would sew two pieces of fabric together from this second project and keep those little pieces in their container.  As you work on a project and sew off between seams with the leader/enders, you first get parts of, then blocks to a whole ‘nother project and in a year’s time of sewing quilt tops, I could manage to get at least two “free” quilts this way.  The little blocks keep you from having long threads that you have to cut off as you sew. I’m sure my explanation is confusing as words, so I have pictures.

leader/ender

The hard part of this prescription for not wasting bits of thread means you have to be organized enough to actually have a second project thought up, planned out and cut and ready to sew.  I’m not as organized as Bonnie and I don’t have so many sizes of scraps available to pull from but I have made my own method to please my crazy brain.  What I end up with for my leaders/enders projects has fondly become what another friend calls Quilt in a Box.

 

I can plan out a quilt and cut all the fabric for it and never stress over my choices because it is a PROJECT and it is READY TO GO!  I have a nice stash of quilts in boxes on the shelves under my ironing board.  I am ready!

Chicken Run

Chicken Run

The nice thing about working from home is having my own schedule.  I can work at a pace suited to the day.  If I can’t get done today, I can push it into tomorrow because I can be flexible with my time.

Today’s quilt is day 2 of a 3 day custom job.  Each day I set a goal for how much of the custom work I feel needs to be done to keep on schedule.  I am very close today.  I just have to finish the feathers in the border and today’s work will be accomplished. 

All this is being said because we are out of chicken and I need to go to Gerber’s Poultry in Kidron, Ohio to stock up.  I would think up any excuse to get in the car and take a trip to Amish country on a fine sunny November day, and it would usually revolve around a quilt shop.  But the chicken excuse is good enough for today. Soon the snow will be flying and the cold air will make me think more than twice about going outside, but today, this chilly weather is offset by the gorgeous sunshine and my need to have chicken in the freezer for meal planning.

There were lots of farm animals enjoying the day but I did not get any good pictures of the assortment of goats, sheep, donkeys and cows out and about.  It is a tad warmer in this area of Ohio and many of the trees still hold their Fall colors.  The fields are being plowed in preparation for the winter. All’s well in this world.

The horse trailers were lining up in Kidron to drop off stock for an auction we were fortunate to miss.  It can get pretty hectic trying to maneuver through the horse drawn traffic, the semis and the tourists gawking at every little thing.

Mission accomplished, home with enough chicken to get us through the next few months.

A Quilt a Day

A Quilt a Day

When I started quilting as my job, I would arrange the quilts that were brought to me in cubby holes on the back wall of the studio.  Each week I would do the last quilt I needed to get done and painstakingly move all the quilts still in cubbies to the left row of holes so I could have my order.  I need order!

This worked fine for a while.  I usually had enough cubbyholes for the quilts on hand.  One day they started lining up along the wall because there were not enough cubby holes and I could no longer realistically look at the wall of cubbies and guess how long this customer’s quilt would be waiting for its turn on the machine.  I needed a plan and I needed it NOW.

I loaded a calendar program onto my computer during my Christmas break in my second full year of quilting and I took each quilt from its cubby in the order they were going to be quilted and I estimated how long I thought it would take me to do that quilt according to what my worksheet said I was to do on it. This took me several days, but by the end of that time I had my order!  I had 5 week of quilts waiting for me to do my magic.

4 quilts in waiting

This freed me from a huge burden.  I no longer sounded stupid when someone wanted to know when I would have their quilt would be ready for pick up.  It also opened up many options for my customers.  They could now schedule a quilt DATE.  What a novel idea! 

The best part was I got rid of the guilt I felt about wanting to quilt one of my own quilts.  What is the use of having a quilting machine if I can’t quilt one for myself every now and again.

It took me another full year to realize I needed to schedule time for me to take a break once in a while.

I Love Quilts!

I love quilts.  I love the way they feel, the way they look, the warmth on a cold night snuggled under it.  I especially love the fact that the person who made the quilt put heart and soul into its construction.

I can’t recall not having a quilt to sleep under.  I grew up surrounded by quilts.  Literally!  Mom would fill the living room with her quilt frame and our 12’ x 14’ living room was wall to wall with no room to do anything else.  One of us kids would have to crawl under the quilt to get to the TV to turn it on for dad to watch the news.  The entire room would be rearranged so he could at least access his red chair to relax after work and mom could get a dining room chair in there to sit at the quilt to do her stitches.  She could quilt a queen sized quilt in 80 hours.  She would put 8 to 10 hours a day in on getting it down to a manageable size to maneuver around and get it off the frame and it then would disappear.

I did not learn to hand quilt, I did not like to tear out my stitches to try to make them smaller.  Big stitches got you thumped on the head with a thimble!  I refused to learn how to do it properly.  I was the original instant gratification gal.  In the long run it was my loss.  My mother was a master quilter and she did beautiful quilts and in her prime she could do 12 stitches to the inch.  Most of what I have of her collection runs about 10 to the inch.

When I did want to quilt, mom was gone.  I did have the honor of piecing my first quilt as she pieced her last one.  On her death bed she made me promise I would find someone who could hand quilt it, she did NOT want it machine quilted, that was NOT real quilting.

What irony.

                                                  

                                                
Friendship quilt dated 1939