Notions

I must have started and stopped the opening to this piece a dozen times. My mistake was writing the title first. Usually I just start keyboarding, and then think of a title out of what develops, but this time I wanted to write about one of my favorite quilting topics – NOTIONS. Oddly, when that word appears before me in black and white, I can’t think straight, and I start to babble. I’m not convinced that what I just wrote makes sense, but if I don’t keep going, I’ll never get this written…

In the years before I started quilting, I would visit quilt shows and fantasize about how those pieces went together. I studied fabric, and what worked or what didn’t. I was mesmerized about the secrets between the seams and inside the quilt, wondering how the sum of the parts created the whole.

My own first attempt was a clumsy piece with only a few seams – 5/8” seams, I might add, because I only knew pre-serger garment construction. The next attempt was the result of trying to follow a simple quilt-in-a-day type publication, and I didn’t believe the part about the accuracy of the ¼” seam. Experience is an excellent professor.

Then came the first completed quilt, which I named “First Try”, because I was either a.) in denial about the 5/8” seams and the inaccurate ¼” seams in the first two, or b.) not about to own up to them. Either way, this was my point of no return. From that quilt on, I was a quilt maker and proud of it, which is code for, “Leave me alone. I’m quilting.” Little did I know the cross-addictive properties of the art. Until then, I’d only heard about fabriholics.

I didn’t particularly like having to lay out a small fortune for the huge ruler and cutting mat recommended by my first official quilting teacher, but whatcha gonna do? I had previously purchased a rotary cutter, so I didn’t have to reduce my fabric-buying kitty by another six bucks, and I had already sprung for a floor-model Q-Snap frame. I contently assumed that I had everything I needed, and my attitude at the time was, “Let’s go buy some fabric and get started!” I call what happened next “Quilter’s Crack”.

It started in the book sections of quilt shops. I bought one, then another book of how-tos and patterns, and before I knew what hit me I was mainlining Fons & Porter. I wasn’t surprised to learn there is a tome distributed by Main Street Publishing called The Big Book of Quilting. I was in the early stages of addiction, and didn’t think for a minute that I needed any Big Book, which most certainly carried with it the requirement of going to 12-step meetings.

Hand-quilting accoutrements were the next stage in my downward spiral. The thimble pushers were shameless. I had my sights set on the Holy Grail of thimbles, one that came in my ring size with the fingernail space cut out. On one outing, I made Hubba drive all over kingdom come until I found one, and he gasped at the price. College expenses were in our future, he reasoned, and should we really be investing in a thimble?

“Shut up and pay the woman,” I told him. “I know what I’m doing.”

Collecting marking tools and mylar templates was almost more than I could bear. Sometimes I’d go to the little quilt shop downtown – I had already bought one of everything there, but I could hope a new shipment had arrived in the intervening hours since the last time I checked. Mary Ann Kepler at Country Calico would let me check out quilt templates instead of buying them. I tried that, but I always bought them. Mary Ann could satiate that desire, but it was almost an hour’s drive to her shop.

Before long I stopped looking at fabric altogether. A good quilt shop for me means one that has lots of books and lots of notions. A great one has lots and lots and lots of books and notions. When I find one of those, I enter the name, address, and phone number into my PDA, so I can look at it when I need a fix. I’ll probably add a GPS before long, so I won’t have to waste so much time looking for shops. In general I don’t get along with machines, but I love techie stuff. My PDA keeps infinite amounts of quilting information and shop locations in a slim, sleek little gadget that fits in any purse. Techie stuff and quilting notions.

Some Columbian quilt-lord has shamelessly introduced the Quilter’s FabriCalc™ onto the market. Uh, oh: techie quilting notions. The Quilter’s FabriCalc™ promises to simplify my quilt making by doing quilt math, and will even figure out how much fabric I need for one of my designs. I’m saving up for one of these – even though no one, including me and the Quilter’s FabriCalc™, knows how much fabric I need for a quilt before I start making it. Yet, we’re talking about something that’s techie and a quilt notion, and I feel myself being drawn in.

Notions. All I can say is, they keep me out of the dance halls.

Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns June 2006