Welcome to the Quilt Store

  

      My name is Judy Berlyne McCrosky, and I am a fabriholic.
"Hello, Judy."
     I freely accept that there are things I cannot change, and my love of quilting is one of them.  I have also accepted that this is something I have no wish to change.  Quilting brings colour, texture, shapes, and design into my creative life.  The hum of the sewing machine, the feel of fabric between my fingers, the joy of colours that come alive when placed with other colours, the satisfaction of a perfect quarter-inch seam, and of points that are actually pointy, all these feed my soul in ways I didn't realize were lacking.  And, since I have a writing career also, quilting brings serentiy and confidence because, as a friend who also writes and quilts once pointed out, "No one rejects a quilt."
     Pieces of writing, when submitted to publishers, get rejected.  It's a fact of life for the vast majority of writers.  Quilts, on the other hand, always are accepted with joy when given, and are lovingly used.  Actually, I did have one quilt rejected, by my daughter, but that's a post for another day.
      The above photo is me buried in molas.  Molas are a form of fibre art from Panama, and the ones shown above are only a very small portion of my fabric stash.  Looking at my stash makes me happy.  There are so many ideas nestled among the piles of different fabrics.  The stacks folded by my friend Alice are neat, edges aligned, each piece easily visible, sorted by colour or type of fabric.  The ones folded by me are more of a jumble, but that's ok.  As Alice kindly pointed out, my talents lie in areas different from creating perfect quarter-inch seams, pointy points, and neatness.
   Now that I have revealed my addiction to the world, I will tell you something else.  I work in a quilt store, Periwinkle Quilting, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.  This means that all of the time at work I am surrounded by fabric, and even worse, by enablers.  Enablers are not only the other staff I work with, but the customers, too.  They keep coming in, buying things to make amazing projects.  Even worse, they bring in their finished or partially-completed projects to show us.  The fact that we staff all love seeing their projects doesn't make containing our addictions any easier to bear.  The customers use patterns I haven't seen before, or in new ways, and they use colours and fabrics together in ways I have never thought of doing.  Then, of course, I have to try something with that pattern, or those colours, myself.
  Quilting has brought a great deal of joy into my life.  Working in the store has enhanced my quilting in all sorts of ways.  The other staff, the customers, the students in the classes I teach, all have much to share.
  I want to share all I have learned and been given with you.  This blog will be a warm and humourous look at the quilting world, as seen through the eyes of a quilt store employee.  And if in writing this blog, I feed your quilting addiction, I am glad.