So far in my blog reading I haven’t seen anyone address the issue of supporting their quilting habit.  I realize that some people have rich husbands, or good salaries of their own, so they aren’t worried about supporting their habit.  I’m retired, and on a fixed income to boot.  My husband is semi retired.  He has a part time job that doesn’t bring in much, so I do worry a bit about the economics of this habit, especially as it grows in importance.

I am sure that some people manage to make money quilting.  This may happen as a result of monetizing a blog, publishing a book, creating patterns to sell, long arm quilting for others, or even designing fabric lines to be produced by the big manufacturing companies, like Moda.   I imagine that people may not so often make money by directly selling the quilts they make.  Quilts take so long to make even when one machine pieces and machine quilts. It must be almost impossible to get even minimum wage per hour for one’s labor doing machine work, much less so doing handwork as in English Paper Piecing.  I imagine that some people sell their work on Etsy at a low cost simply to recover the cost of materials, and get a pittance for their labor, so they can keep on quilting, especially if creating those quilts is fueling traffic to a monetized blog or leading to the publication of books.

I’m going to be ill mannered enough to talk about money now.  I’ve never really minded talking about money.  I find it interesting, and so I am going to reveal the economics of my first year back in the quilting game.

It is a bit early to do this because we are not done with the month of March yet, and I started quilting again last April.   I have decided, however, to put a moratorium on quilty spending for the month of March after I ran the numbers for April 2013 through February 2014.  Therefore, the figures I present here will represent a full calendar year of spending.

I was prompted to take a look at my quilt hobby finances after looking at my available spending money recently.  I wanted to buy a new Macbook to replace my five year old model. I figured it was about time, and I should have the money available for the purchase.  Not only didn’t have the money, I found myself uncharacteristically in the red.  I wondered why, since I often used to carry a balance of a thousand dollars in my disposable income account.  Then I remembered all of those orders for Craftsy classes, fabric, books, and miscellaneous expenses related to my quilting hobby.  I decided to examine credit card statements, determine what I had spent each month since taking up quilting again, and to categorize these expenditures to get an idea of the big picture.

I discovered that I had spent $1770.15 on quilting related expenses over the course of the year, which comes to an average of $147.51 a month assuming I manage to keep myself from buying a Craftsy class or a book this month.

I itemized expenses for each month, so I was able to go back and total up some major categories of spending.  I spent $169.91 on Craftsy classes.  I spent $137.60 on books.  I spent $728.73 on fabric.

I should have known I was going overboard with classes when Craftsy sent me a special email telling me that I am one of their best customers, and they are going to reward me for it.  In addition to purchasing the classes from Craftsy I had ordered about $300.00 of the fabric from Craftsy. ( And today I got an email from Craftsy notifying me a day ahead of time about classes going on sale tomorrow because I am so special.  Well, I’m not getting sucked in this month.)

Adding up the three categories of classes, books and fabrics comes to $1036.24, which leaves $733.91 of miscellaneous expenses such as my Modern Quilt Guild membership, tools, notions. thread, batting, sewing machine maintenance,  a magazine subscription, and a local workshop.

$147.51 a month isn’t really so bad for a hobby.  However, Quiltcon is coming up in February of 2015 in Austin, Texas.  I’ve reserved a room for about $1,000.00 and I imagine that registration, air fare, limo service to and from the airport, entertainment on site, and food will run me another $2000.00 or so  That is going to raise the average monthly spending considerably.  Even if Quiltcon occurs only in alternate years, and I average those costs over 24 months, the cost of attending Quiltcon comes to $125.00 per month over two years.  That nearly doubles my quilting expenses per month, and brings my quilting expenses to nearly 40% of my allowance, and that is assuming that I don’t participate in any other quilting events, which is unlikely.

Obviously no one, except the very rich, can spend whatever they want on a hobby.  In my case I am limited by my allowance, out of which I must purchase everything that benefits only me: clothing, books, electronics, entertainment, travel, hobby expenses, professional lessons for a board game I play, tournament expenses for the board game I play, even a meal out with a friend, and recurring expenses such as my monthly Netflix subscription. The guidelines are simple.  If I want something, and it doesn’t benefit the marriage, I pay for it myself.  If I want something, and my husband wants it too, we believe it benefits us both, and we can afford it, then we finance it using our joint account.  This makes life simple and avoids arguments.  It also makes me consider carefully how badly I want something, and what I am willing to sacrifice in order to have it.  There just might not be enough room in my allowance budget to support my board game and my quilting while leaving enough money to buy underwear now and then.

Quilting is a bit of a gray economic area when it comes to using my allowance because I do make useful things for the home.   When I first started to quilt again my husband seemed to be willing to let me buy fabric without spending my own money on it, but I don’t think he realized the implications.  I anticipated a problem because I knew I would want to create a stash, and I didn’t want to have to justify each purchase and defend a growing pile of unused fabric.  So I suggested that I purchase fabric with my allowance and get reimbursement for materials when quilts are finished.  So far I have been reimbursed $55.00 for the materials used in the creation of a couch runner I made last year.  I have completed a few other projects since then, and it is my own fault that I have not yet sought reimbursement for expenses associated with those projects.   I intend to estimate the cost of materials for them soon.  This is all well and good as long as I keep making items for the home, but I’ll soon run out of useful things to make for the house, and having any kind of stash at all will always put me behind economically.  When I’ve exhausted the items I can justify as necessary to make I’ll have to consider whether I am willing to sell the new items I make to strangers.  It’s one thing to take $55.00 from my husband for something I put 110 hours into making, and to know that I still own it.  It is quite another thing to take the same $55.00 from a stranger and have it disappear from my life forever. Although having blogged about the creation of the object may remove some of the sting associated with its loss.  The solution to my problem might be to gift items to family after seeking reimbursement for materials.  Then I would know that the items would not be out of my life entirely.

Maybe I will just have to get my husband to pay for Quiltcon, or convince him I need a bigger allowance.

Okay, enough about me and my quilting finances.  What do you spend on quilting, if you even know? How do you support your quilting habit?  Do you argue with your husband about it? Have you monetized your quilting life?

I’ll be numbering my progress posts for the Diamond Quilt from now on.  Where does one go after “Even More Diamond Quilt Progress”?  It’s time for numbers to take over.

Since last time I added a border of hunter green hexagons to one of my large diamonds.  While adding that border I was basting about six hexagons at a time and then adding them to the border.  After finishing that one border I decided to get the grunt work out of the way and baste enough hexagons to finish the hunter green borders on the remaining seven diamonds.  I got out my calculator and discovered that at 56 hexagons per border this would mean basting 392 hexagons.  At 1.5 minutes per hexagon that came to 9 hours and 48 minutes of cutting paper pieces, fabric squares, basting, and trimming.  This was broken up into sessions of an hour to two hours each over the course of a few days with no other quilting activity taking place.  I completed all 392 hunter green hexagons, and they now sit in their own bowl waiting to be added to the quilt.

I noticed as I was basting that when the needle came up from behind my work that it was sometimes hitting the nail of the thumb that was holding the fabric in place on the paper.  I didn’t notice until it had chipped away quite a bit on the nail.  I probably would not have seen this happen if I hadn’t been basting so many hexagons in succession without other activities in between.

I am continuing to link back to Jessica’s Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts.  She brought up the subject of how long it takes to piece one’s work.  She has estimated that it takes her about one minute to do a one inch seam when piecing.  I am not sure how long it takes me to do my seams, but my best estimate is about 1.5 minutes per seam based on timing some small units I completed in the past.  My timing may have improved since then.

My goal for this week is to add the hunter green borders to at least three of the remaining diamonds (168 hexagons).  I also want to time how long it takes to add those borders and see if I am doing any better than my estimated 1.5 minutes per seam with my one inch seams on my piecing.  I don’t intend to rush when I time myself.  Piecing hexagons is a peaceful activity.  I just want to know what kind of time I am investing.

For awhile I have been meaning to post about Zite, the news reader application for the iPad.  I spend at least thirty minutes every morning over coffee reading articles related to quilting using Zite.

Zite is like Flipboard only better.  Zite learns what you like and what you don’t like. Just rate articles with a thumbs up or a thumbs down to make your preferences known.  I don’t do that very often, but Zite still brings me new things to read that meet my interests.

I have a category set up in Zite called “Quilting”  This is the first category I read every day in Zite.  After reading my Quilting category I move on to my other interests: Apple News, iPad, Macworld, Retirement, Cats, and others.

Above you can see that all but one of the articles has been grayed out.  Zite does that to show that I had read the article.  This helps in scanning for new things to read.  The little dots at the bottom show how many pages of articles are in the category.  So you can see that I am on page four of 23 pages of quilting articles.

If you don’t care about the order in which your articles are presented you can just look at the “Your Top Stories” feed (pictured in the top screen capture).   This feed will have articles from all of your categories.  I rarely use the “top stories” feed because I like to focus on one topic at a time before moving on the the next.

In the process of reading my Quilt category I have added individual feeds for various bloggers.  You can see them on the right side in the screen capture above.   We see thomasknauersews.com, lifeunderquilts.blogspot.com, jaybirdquilts.com, themodernquiltguild.wordpress.com, and bitsandbobbins.com.   I sometimes check these feeds to see if there is anything new in any of them that didn’t make it into my generic Quilts feed.

I started reading quilt news in Zite last year before I ever started quilting again.  This got my mind moving and sparked my interest in the quilt world.  It was one day, perhaps in April of last year, that I was presented with an article about working with hexagons using the English Paper Piecing method.  I thought, “This is for me.”  I want something I can do any time, anywhere, without being tethered to a sewing machine.  I want something that will be therapeutic and soothing, not rushed and hurried.  So I went to google and found some tutorials and enough information to get started, and now I am blogging about it.  In this respect Zite literally changed my life by presenting me with an article it thought I would find interesting.

I love Zite. I am saddened to report, however, that Zite will soon no longer be with us.  The article “Zite is Flipping Out” in the uppermost screen shot says it all.  Above you can see in the lower right a picture of Flipboard cannibalizing Zite. It is true.

That image is annoying enough on a small scale, on a larger scale it is downright scary.

Zite has been bought by Flipboard.  Zite has been viewed as the primary rival to Flipboard, though it never achieved the mass usage of Flipboard. What it has is a loyal following of users because of its technology. It was bought by Flipboard for this very technology, which is its ability to add more of what you like and hide more of what you don’t.   In the article on the left of the screen capture above, Zite CEO is quoted as saying “Honestly, the sooner Zite goes away, the better.”  I don’t agree, but perhaps what he means is that a speedy transition eases the pain for those most intimately involved.

Zite will be with us for about six more months.  They say that they will be coming up with a way to import one’s data into Flipboard.  Therefore, I recommend trying Zite in the time that it has left.  If you are already a Flipboard user, be gladdened by the fact that Flipboard will soon be better than ever under the hood, which is where Zite has always performed its magic.

I like being a Zite user in much the same way as I like being an Apple user.  Zite may be the underdog in terms of usage, but it has always been the definite winner in terms of quality.  Zite has earned its place of honor on my iPad dock along with the other apps I use the most.

I’m really quite a bit weepy about the prospect of losing Zite.  You could go so far as to say I am verklempt.  I loved Zite’s simple format.  I loved what it delivered.  I loved even more that Zite quite literally changed my life.  How often can you say that about a software application?  I wouldn’t be a quilter and a blogger now if it weren’t for a random article delivered to me one day by my beloved Zite.

I highly recommend that you give Zite a try.

How do you get your daily dose of quilting inspiration?

Since last posting about my progress I have added two large diamonds.

Now might be a good time to show what these diamonds look like from the opposite side.  My method of hexagon basting is to baste 2.5 inch squares of fabric to one inch hexagon papers.  I stitch through the papers.  After basting I hand trim the excess fabric leaving behind seams a little smaller than a quarter inch.

My greens from the Fat Quarter Shop finally arrived.

I never meant for the light apple green (on the left) to be considered for inclusion in this quilt, but the grass green and the hunter green were in the running.  When I ordered these fabrics I was unable to put my hands on my Kona sample card, so I simply searched for “Kona green” on the Fat Quarter web site.

The grass green (in the center) is totally wrong.  The hunter green struck me initially as very dark, and it is very dark.  But the more I looked at it the more I liked it.  I know it is going to add a high level of contrast to this quilt.  I also know that the lattice work it creates is going to take over.  But I think this quilt needs some contrast.  The diamonds themselves, while attractive, are a bit ho hum in terms of contrast.

In order to feel comfortable with my decision about the inclusion of the hunter green I auditioned the fabric with my diamonds. There is something really rich about the contrast between the patterned green fabric and the hunter green.

Then I stitched up a sample to be sure.

I used the green thread I had been piecing with for the sample, but I knew I would have to purchase a spool specifically to piece the hunter green hexagons, and this closeup proves it.Lucky the cat approves of the project and likes to sleep on a diamond next to me while I work.

The last time I reported on my progress for my Diamond Quilt I had pieced four units which ended with a maroon repetition around the edge.  I expressed my intention to add a patterned green repetition to each of those four units.  Since then I have followed through on that goal.  In addition to that, I have completed two additional diamond units, so I now have a total of six units just like the one pictured above.

I am reporting my progress to the Monday Morning Star Count post by Jessica over at Life Under Quilts.  Since my diamonds are so huge I decided to count up the new hexagons I had added to my quilt and translate my progress so it could be measured in terms of a 25 hexagon unit star.

Adding the borders to the old diamonds plus creating two new diamonds resulted in sewing 530 new hexagons into place.  Divide 530 by 25 and you come up with the equivalent of 21.2 new stars. Not too shabby, but bear in mind that I am am retired, and also obsessed.

I am disappointed to report that the fabric that I ordered from The Fat Quarter Shop has still not arrived at my doorstep.  It took them five days to send my oder out the door, which I find very disappointing.  I am hoping that the hunter green will make a nice final border for the diamond units.

Until the new greens arrive I am going to suspend production of new diamonds.  I had planned on eight, but I might fill in with an alternate unit.  I need to take some time to arrange the diamonds that I have on my queen sized bed. I may be doing some additional planning within photoshop using colored pencil versions of the units.

 

I did try out an arrangement of five of my diamond shapes on the king sized bed downstairs to get an idea of how they might look together.  I have thrown in a few smaller maroon units that I am considering as an accent to finish off areas along the edges.

 

 

While blogging is a form of journaling, it is really much more public than a journal.  One feels a sense of obligation to make it interesting for the sake of the readers one hopes to attract.  To post every detail of one’s production and every idea of what might might do in the future would be tedious for the blogger, and boring for the reader.

Yet, I think that it is a good idea to reflect back, evaluate the present, and project into the future on a continuing, perhaps even a daily basis.  Therefore, I decided to keep a journal of my quilt production for my own personal use.  Initially I decided to create a notebook in Evernote, but I wasn’t following through.  I then found a universal app for iPhone and iPad called Day One.  The screen capture above from my iPad shows the timeline view of Day One.  I’ve selected an entry from February 13th  titled “Homage To My First Act Series”  This is a series of quilts I would like to create, but I’m not prepared to blog about this idea yet.  Gee, I guess the cat’s out of the bag now 🙂

Day One allows you to include one photograph with each entry if you desire, although you are free to journal without adding photos.  You can have more than one entry per day.  I find this useful when I want to write about more than one idea and have a photo for each idea.  You don’t need to journal every day, but you can get Day One to remind you to journal on a regular basis if you need encouragement. The upper most entry in the screen capture is about a ruler I found at the Fat Quarter Shop, which will be perfect for the first quilt I want to make in the “Homage” series.

I plan to use my journal to keep track of my progress, add to my bucket list, and to make note of things I would like to add to my collection of tools, such as the ruler I recently found, but have not yet purchased.  Details like that will be interesting for me to look back on later, but are unlikely to be of interest to anyone else now or in the future.

Journaling is an excellent way to reflect on what you are doing.  How do you journal?

After two cups of coffee in bed this morning I was anxious to start working on my paper piecing for my diamond hexagon quilt.  Unfortunately, when I came downstairs this is what I saw.  Just the night before I had been working on this same large diamond shape, and Lori plopped herself down on my lap on top of the piece making it impossible to work on it.  I guess she likes it, or she just wanted attention.

I will have to baste some hexagons until she is ready to move this morning.  I hate to disturb a happy kitty.

Recently I discovered that Jessica Alexandrakis the author of “Quilting on the Go” has started a weekly Monday Morning Star Count on her blog.  I linked back my Diamond Quilt post to her star count for this week.  I had never linked back to anything before.  As I was looking at the other linked back sites I noticed that some of them provided mention of Jessica’s site and a direct link back to her, so I wanted to do that here.  Her book is an inspiration and a visual delight.

When I took the time to visit the other linked back sites, I really enjoyed looking at all of the paper piecing that is being done.  I’m planning discuss my progress again on Monday and link it back to Jessica’s site.  It will be an inspiration to follow the work of all of these quilters.

For lack of a better name I am going to call the quilt I am currently working on my “Diamond Quilt”  I am planning it as a queen sized quilt, and I intend to keep it.  The project began life as two large bowls of basted hexagons.  One of the bowls held solid vivid maroon hexagons.  The other bowl held hexagons made with a polka dot fabric which reads as a solid unless you are up close to it.  It reads as either maroon or brown depending on what other colors are in the local area.  The polka dot fabric can be seen in my header graphic.  It also can be seen, along with the maroon fabric, in this Deliberate UFO. The polka dot fabric was also used in this room divider.  It also also makes an appearance in the quilt runner. The polka dot fabric is obviously a favorite.  I have sought out additional quantities of it on the internet, and what little I have left is likely to be consumed by this diamond quilt.

Originally I had planned to create a lattice of intertwined diamond shapes and do something in the spaces left behind.  I played around on the computer in Photoshop and came up with this.

I was concerned however, with the amount of work that was going to be involved in planning the overlap of the diamonds as well as planning how the remaining areas would be filled.  I wanted to work a little more spontaneously than that. I wanted some mindless stitching to do,  so I decided to create some large diamond shapes designing them from the inside out beginning with my solid maroon fabric in the center.

I have already completed four of these diamond units.

Here is a possible layout.

However, I already know that I plan to add a repeat of the green patterned fabric along the outside edge of each diamond.

So the maroon hexagons will be separated at least this much in the final quilt design.  I believe that they will be separated even farther though, since I am considering adding one more set of hexagons of a solid, darker, and more vivid green.  I am thinking that the darker green would serve as a complement to the printed green fabric in much the same way that the vivid, solid, maroon fabric acts as a complement to the polka dot fabric.

I mentioned wanting to work spontaneously.  I associate spontaneity with speed, yet there is nothing speedy about creating a quilt of hand pieced hexagons.  When I speak of spontaneity I am referring to a sense of open mindedness in the design process.  There is nothing about this design that is finalized yet except the units that have been created.  The one limiting factor in the finished design is how many maroon hexagons I have left.  Currently I have enough to make a total of eight diamond shapes.  I’m going to make a total of five to begin with, and then start to audition possible ways to flesh out the design to cover the surface of the queen sized bed and design the overhang area of the design.  I don’t think I will be doing a design that runs all the way to the edge with the large diamonds because I don’t think I will be able to make enough of them.

I have enough polka dot hexagons that I don’t think I need to worry about running out.  I can purchase more of the green printed fabric if necessary.  I can buy as much of the second green color as needed once I decide what that color will be.  I plan to order a few greens from The Fat Quarter Shop and audition them next to the patterned green fabric.

I’ll continue to blog about my design decisions on this diamond quilt as I work on it.

I am a retired public school teacher, so I can’t help but be excited when I wake up to a Winter wonderland such as I saw this morning.

During my working years such a scene would have meant a day of freedom from students and all responsibility.  It was found time… free time.  The only responsibility I had was to make my call on the district emergency phone chain.  Once that was accomplished I could do as I pleased.

Even seven years after retirement such a sight brings back fond memories and encourages me to spend extra time under the covers with coffee.

Then I will want to spend the rest of the day doing exactly as I please with no thought of practical matters aside from attending to the cats and getting dinner on the table.  Today that means joining hexagons into large diamond shaped units.

My husband is lucky enough to be semi retired with a part time job that allows some flexibility, so he called in today and moved his work day to tomorrow.  That means that I will have the pleasure of his company today.

Life is good.