When we got the bad news about how much stuff the moving company estimated that we have in our house, I culled books from the library mercilessly. Quilting books were not exempt, either. I also thought that the many back issues of American Quilter, Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, McCalls Quilting, and a couple of others needed a hard look to see if I was really ever going to use any of them for anything.

I tackled QNM first, and looked through every magazine page by page, but pretty quickly, and tore out interesting articles or pictures of quilts that I liked or that I thought were inspirational in technique, design or color usage. The pile dwindled to nothing much faster than I thought it would, so I continued on with the IQA Journal, which is pretty thin and usually doesn’t have much in it that’s very interesting except pictures of the winners from the show in Houston. I went through this entire stack:

And kept out only this small bit of articles and quilt pictures:

Hoo Ah! Then I was sitting here thinking that this couldn’t be all of the issues of QNM that I had, since I’ve been a subscriber for years off and on, but mostly on. I started looking around further and guess what I found? Lots more:

It still wasn’t too bad going through all that, and then I just kept going through all the rest, because it didn’t take that long and it was kinda fun anyway. Nearly all of my many pounds of back issues have been reduced to a stack that’s about 2¼” high. A couple of days later, I tackled the old Martha Stewart Living mags from at least 10 years ago that were still sitting here as well. Hoo Ah Hoo Ah! Read the rest of this entry »

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I won’t bore you with details or pictures of all the books I’ve been culling from our main library which are taking up half the open space in the living room right now, but I did select more than an entire shelf’s worth of quilting and sewing related books to give away. Just for reference, I started out with three shelves and got it down to under two, and in the interests of full disclosure, about half of the books I took out were sewing related, not quilting books.

I can’t imagine why I was keeping some of those sewing books! Like I’m ever going to need to use The Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Sewing again! Not. Even when I was sewing clothing, I didn’t use the books much, since I know perfectly well how to put in a zipper, make button holes, etc. There’s an 18″ tall stack of quilting books leaving the house as well, most of which are at least 8-10 years old and I haven’t looked at them in years. Most of my book usage is confined to design books as opposed to pattern books these days, so there are many pattern books are hitting the road. Anybody need some books? Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m sure that I’m totally behind all of you quilters who live in the States, since your LQS probably had this book quite some time ago (like years, right?), but I finally got my hands on this book! Help! I Married a Quilter by Mark Hyland is a hilarious look at The Quilter’s life from the poor, put upon husband’s point of view. A friend from the quilt guild shared her (husband’s) copy with me last summer, and I thought I’d order it for my husband for Christmas, and then I forgot (my bad ). Hey, better late than never, right?

When my (husband’s) copy arrived in the mail, I put it on the table next to his place so he’d see it and he could read it. I mean, I was trying to help him out, see? There it sat, for days. I finally decided I’d read the dang thing myself, since the bits I’d seen last summer were roll-on-the-floor funny. Mark Hyland has been married to The Quilter for 17 years (at time of writing), so he’s had quite a bit of experience with things like The Stash, Block-of-the-Month quilts, monthly quilt meetings, hauling bolts of fabric to the cutting table at the quilt shop, visiting quilt shops while on “vacation,” etc. He exposes Quilters’ quirks and our secret language, and what it’s really like to live with a Quilter.

He thinks he’s got a lot of it all figured out, but I note that having it figured out hasn’t helped him much. He draws on his experience as The Quilter’s spouse to create this definitive reference guide for spouses of Quilters, imparting words of wisdom and tips and tricks for preventing quilting from completely taking over the house and life, and a quiz to determine if it’s already to late and the spouse is a “GONER.”

After I devoured the book and laughed myself silly, I decided that the reason ITMan hadn’t bothered to pick up the book and read it was that he could already tell (without taking the quiz and seeing the points add up and break the scale) that it’s much too late for prevention. In fact it’s been too late for years, and he’s already a GONER.

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