Coming back to quilting after a long hiatus

In the late 90’s, I owned a tiny internet fabric business called Pine Lake Fabrics.  At that time, quilting as a hobby was somewhat new to me, but I found that my true passion was collecting fabric.  I figured that my dream job would be to own a fabric store, so I decided to start small with an internet mail order business.  

Unfortunately, the reality of the business was dealing with vendors and their inconsistent deliveries, the half hour drive each day to face long lines at the post office, and daily fabric dust headaches….oh, and the fact that I was making at least 4 times the money working at an IT job, and I couldn’t afford to quit for the small wages I was making in the scaled down fabric business ;-).

I either needed to take out a loan and go whole hog into retail or move on to something else.  My brain trumped my heart.  Sadly, in 1999, after 3 years I liquidated my business...after of course keeping a yard or two of each fabric for myself!     

About the time I quit the business, the WayBackMachine started archiving my web page.  I had arrived, apparently, and didn't even know it ;-).  Here's a link to the last entry from my business: http://web.archive.org/web/19990125102233/http://www.pinelakefabrics.com/

Ending the business was a relief, although I missed the customers. They were truly the part that was like a dream.

Tired and burned out, I took a hiatus from quilting.  Had I not ended up with a fabric collection that would put the GDP of some small countries to shame, I may have not gone back to quilting ever again. 

2/3 of my fabric collection, and a secondary use for exercise bikes.

Last year, my concern that my fabric would literally rot on the shelves had peaked. I decided that I either needed to start making quilts again or sell off my fabrics. So I gave quilting a try again. Because I could not justify buying more fabric, I had to focus on actually using the fabric rather than on fabric collecting.  The different focus really created a passion for quilting that I previously never had. So here I am.

The first post-hiatus quilt top that I almost finished was a variation on a corn and beans quilt.  

First post-hiatus quilt top.  Still needs final border.

Knowing that the next step was to quilt this top, a task that required taking my dinosaur longarm quilter -- "a Gammill PDQ-30" from the 80's -- out of mothballs, I took another year hiatus, LOL.

I’m back now, with a new focus and energy, and with the “Quiltosaurus” out of mothballs. One interesting thing I discovered was that in the 13 years away from quilting, my patience level has drastically improved. I had always thought that Quiltosaurus was a temperamental girl, to say the least.  In fact, I believed that her previous owner had swindled me because the machine seemed so hard to use.  In reality, the problems were greatly due my patience level.  From reading others' experiences, I've found that longarms can generally be a tad bit temperamental.  With the new-found studious attention to detail that maybe comes from age and owning dogs, I sat down and really learned how to adjust tension, and learned the mechanics of what makes a longarm machine run.  I literally greased the wheels, replaced the motor, and turned Quiltosaurus into a girl that would really facilitate finishing quilts!

Quiltosaurus, a 30 inch longarm, a product of the 80's, and a holdover from the industrial revolution.  A 100% manual machine with parts that will survive the next dinosaur extinction. She is the definition of workhorse, or maybe a "workosaurus"

A couple of truly surprising developments have arisen while I was away for 10 years.

1. The advent of “Modern” quilting which seems to have created an “us versus them-ness” in quilting that I’d never seen in the past.
2. The invention of the $25 spool of thread.  I exaggerate, but only a little.

I will talk, probably, about each of these things. However, my focus next time and likely for several subsequent articles will be #2, including why I may soon have the 'quilt police' after me.

Truly, how can anyone resist Maxilock Swirls.

Stay tuned! I hope you come visit me again next Threadsday!