You Know You're a Quilter When...
  1. ..... you use the word "between" more often as a noun than as a preposition.
  2. ..... your spouse no longer mentions the pieces of 1/4" wide masking tape stuck to your backside. He/she just politely removes it.
  3. .....you happily spend all day prewashing quilt fabric but when it comes to doing "real" laundry, you procrastinate til everyone is on their last pair of undies and socks.
  4. .....you request double prints when you take your film in for processing - and there isn't a kidshot on the roll.
  5. .....when the phrase "Block Parent" doesn't refer to neighbourhood safety.
  6. .....when your 3 yr old knows what an Ohio Star is and looks forward to finding "frabric" in the mail as much as you do.
  7. .....you insist that the floor tiles in your new den are 12" square, so you can lay your quilttop or backing down and square it up perfectly.
  8. .....you REWARD yourself for every onerous job with a trip to the quilt store (I have to go to DC tomorrow, and instead of taking the train like a sensible person, I'm driving so I can stop at the quilt shop on the way home!).
  9. .....Your sewing room is the gathering room of the house, not the family room.
  10. .....You actually enjoy going to the mailbox everyday to see what goody is there waiting for you - another magazine, an exchange block, fabric you ordered.
  11. .....You have no qualms about driving for 2-3 hours just to see a quilt show or go to a quilt store.
  12. .....You start saving those jeans the kids outgrow instead of donating them. They will make an excellent jean quilt someday.
  13. .....Your daughter is 6 months old and has already been to 10 quilt shows.
  14. .....You walk into the local restaurant and your daughter takes a look at the floor and says "look mommy a quilt pattern!"
  15. .....Just as you are getting that first kiss from you SO or DH when you get home and the PERFECT vision of a quilt pops into your head. You take off running to put it to paper before you forget it.
  16. .....You find yourself NOT telling your kids where you are going so that you won't hear "Oh no, not another quiltshow!"
  17. .....You start to bribe above mentioned kids so that they will not say above mentioned line when you do go.
  18. .....To tease above mentioned kids, you do tell them that you are going to a quiltshow!
  19. .....DH tells you that he has been taken to soooo many quilt shows that he now has plans to make a quilt, and not a easy one, he decides he wants to make a colorwash quilt. He then starts to collect his own "stash" to make said quilt and looks at you suspiciously whenever you get about 10 feet near it.
  20. .....You start hiding the credit card bill when it comes so that noone else will see the number of charges you have made to your quilt store.
  21. .....When you get meat at the store, you cut out the good parts of the freezer paper and save it.
  22. .....You get more quilting magazines in the mail than your DH gets computer magazines. (I am losing on this one, DH has decided not go to the library to read them).
  23. .....You have a section in your daytimer specifically for quiltnotes, quiltnet notes and ideas that may come up.
  24. .....Your address book also has email addresses in them.
  25. .....the line outside your restroom "stall" during the play's intermission gets longer &longer because you're trying to sketch the complex design in the tile floor because it'd make a neat quilt design!!
  26. .....your non quilting friends start sending you cards with quilts on them because they know you'd like it.
  27. .....You buy chocolates in heart shaped boxes in various sizes to use as templates.
  28. .....You think in terms of yards and feet rather than inches. etc., etc. fill in the blank and lets see some telltale signs of a TRUE QUILTER.
  29. .....You look at the skirt of the person next to you in an elevator and envision it cut into 6" squares.
  30. .....you covet your male co-workers' print shirts. (Dan, our publicity man, has two Hawaiian shirts I have "dibs" on when he's tired of them.)
  31. .....You need new clothes and spend two hundred dollars on material instead!
  32. .....you give gracious compliments to the guys at work for their wonderful ties (all the while wondering how long they keep their ties and trying to figure out how you can get them for quilts).
  33. .....You have no idea why they sell freezer paper in the kitchen section of the variety store, or in the grocery store!
  34. .....People are constantly picking ravelings off your shoulders, out of your hairs, off your back, etc.
  35. ..... at dinner with your husband in a nice restaurant, you look at the carpet (or curtains or somesuch), and say, "Wouldn't that look wonderful in .....(insert appropriate project here!)"
  36. .....you sit in a staff meeting and sketch a new quilt idea based on a guy's tie before he leaves or notices you.
  37. .....when you walk into an antique store and only see the things that would make great emblishments for quilts.
  38. .....when you come across lots of antique gloves, handkerchiefs and think..now how can I use that for a quilt?
  39. .....this humble Dane, raised with the metric system, realizes she now always eyeballs a perfect 1/4" seam-allovance when cutting fabric.
  40. .....My sister sends me a lovely postcard from a vacation on Malta, and all I can think of is if she's found some nice fabric there.
  41. .....you're making travel plans and one of your first thoughts is if there are any must-see quilting stores within a 100-mile radius of your destination.
  42. ..... when your mind associates the number 13 with a needle size instead of "Friday the...".
  43. ..... the 5/8" seam allowances used on patterns for clothing look EXACTLY 2 1/2 times too big.
  44. ..... you have to convert the bed in the guest bedroom, which you've been using as a sorting table for fabrics pulled from "the stash" for the next project, back into a bed so that a friend can stay over for the night without sleeping on the couch. (Of course, the friend _could_ sleep on the couch, but you'd have to move some of the quilts, including the current project, off of it first.)
  45. You know you're _married_ to a quilter when picking snippets of cloth and thread off of each other goes unnoticed and becomes a habitual behavior, similar to the grooming activities of primates.
  46. You know you're married to a _modern_ quilter when your electronic mailbox gets filled with 50 messages every day and it's _all_ related to quilting.
  47. You know you're married to the _right_ quilter when the joy that he/she gets from the quilting art, coupled with the beauty of the objects that he/she creates, makes the "quilter's eye", the snippets, the "stash", the overflowing email, the visiting of fabric stores on vacations, and all of the other "quilters' anomalies" extremely worthwhile.
  48. .....you have more DEADLINE entries in your Daytim
    49. er related to quilting than you have for work or family - or worse yet, more than work and family combined!!!
  49. .....the speedial number on your phone is to the local quilt shop.
  50. .....you get those 10 rolls of film developed from vacation only to find there are more pictures to be filed away in the quilting ideas box than there are of places you visited!!!
  51. ..... you have multiple copies of KQ around the house and can envision whole pages without even looking at the actual catalog. Or maybe that's when you know you should cut up your credit cards.
  52. ... I can never get that straight.
  53. .....you are getting a manicure, haircut, whatever and you check out the floor and ask if they have any extra floor tiles because the pattern would make a great quilt.
  54. .....you ask your father, DH, SO and brothers to save their ties for you.
  55. .....Everyone in your building comes to you when they have a rip in clothes or a falling hem, because they know you have needles and thread.
  56. .....Your weight has shifted since childbirth and you are removing some "small" items from your closet and run across a sundress you wore on your honeymoon. At that very moment, your DH walks in and says, Oh, I always liked that dress, don't give it away. And you're thinking to yourself, give it away? Duh! that's cotton!
  57. .....You know all the deadlines and color themes for all the "swaps" you've gotton yourself into, but don't know what you're having for dinner tonight!
  58. .....your housemates/warden start asking you when the thesis is going to get written...and they ask you whether you're going to make your supervisor a quilt...
  59. .....every time your boss wears a particular shirt you have to bite your tongue to keep from asking him if you can have it when he gets tired of it.
  60. .....Your fingertips are so rough that you can't pull on a pair of panty-hose, but you don't care.
  61. .....Your first motion when your computer comes up on a workday morning is to check your quiltnet messages.
  62. .....If you had the choice of going to a quilt show or going out to dinner with your DH, you'd go to dinner with your DH, but you'd THINK about it.
  63. .....You carry a needle safely stored in your purse, to check the "needleability" of fabrics you are thinking of buying.
  64. .....You look at fabric clothing in charity stores and garage sales, but not with the idea of wearing it.
  65. .....Your Ginghers are kept in their protective sheath, and hidden from the family.
  66. ....."Featherweight" doesn't mean a boxer.
  67. .....you keep asking your out-of-college child when she is going to move out because you covet her bedroom for a sewing room.
  68. .....your ironing board is always set up but you never iron clothes on it.
  69. .....there's more fabric in the house than food.
  70. .....you ask for fabric or gift certificates to fabric stores instead of other gifts for your birthday, anniversary, or Christmas.
  71. .....you make a long weekend trip to visit another quilting friend in another state, just to go to HER fabric shops!
  72. .....you look at an empty wall and wonder how quickly you can make a wallhanging to cover it! (I have two of those, one at work, one at home... :) )
  73. .....you have more UFOs than you can possibly do in the next year.
  74. .....you would much rather be chatting on Quiltnet than doing your work! :)
  75. .....your checkbook hasn't been balanced in 10 years (or however long you've been quilting) but you can instantly calculate needed yardage for your new project while shopping at the quilt or fabric store.
  76. .....your family's idea of a home-cooked meal is anything that didn't get delivered.
  77. .....You let your DH choose ANY 100% cotton fabric for a summer shirt and it is all done except the button holes and you notice it is PERfect for your challenge wall hanging at 10pm Sat. nite so you cut pieces from it..got to be done by mon...Mon you run to the store and it is gone, you get something similar, sew like a fool and present it only to be caught like a rat in a trap.
  78. .....your DH wears shirt number one to the neighborhood pool all summer and tells everyone that since he is married to a quilter, he only gets nipple covering shirts since he is a waste of fabric....and NO ONE believes you when you tell them it was a new invention for his sun burning shoulder problem. I also cut a piece or 2 out of my maid of honor's dress but shhhh don't tell her!
  79. .....you dream about ironing fat quarters and such and wake up with a smile on your face.
  80. .....you plan your vacations around quilt stores and events.
  81. .....you celebrate the end of the semester with a trip to the quilt store.
  82. .....you plan on holding your graduation party at the quilt store. (Hey, I've got a little over a year before I get that master's.....still plenty of time to book the classroom, right??? ;))
  83. .....you consider fabric strewn about the room as either a) furniture or b) decor, either of which means you don't have to pick it up. ;)
  84. .....you find yourself trying more new quilt patterns and techniques than new recipes.
  85. .....You always choose the graph paper tablets form the stock room so that you can design quilts when you are supposedly taking notes in a meeting.
  86. .....You're single and your entire social life revolves around quilt groups, quilt meetings, quilt conventions, coffee with quilt friends, etc.
  87. .....Your family buys you "quilt" gifts (fabrics, scissors, tools and toys) for birthday and Christmas.
  88. .....You try and decide if it's fair to have an equal budget for your daughter's college tuition and your quilt habit...$100 for her...$100 for quilt stuff...hmmm seems pretty fair to me.
  89. ..... you find yourself reaching for a head of lettuce in the grocery store and realize you are wearing a thimble on your finger---or---worse yet, drop your thimble into the toilet (Oh Yuck!) because you forgot you had it on. (BTW a goldfish net works well as a retrieval device!)
  90. .....You move from California to Tennessee and plan your whole itinerary around making an extended stop in Paducah, Kentucky. I moved last summer - by myself - with a 17-foot U-Haul and 2 cats. When I pulled into the parking lot at Hancock's in Paducah, a man sitting outside said I must be planning on buying a *lot* of fabric if I had to bring a big ole U-Haul with me!
  91. .....Your dh arranges crackers on a plate and calls it a "Trip Around The World" pattern.
  92. .....Your child knows the names of major sewing machine brands.
  93. .....you move to a new city and buy a house based on where the quilt shop is.
  94. .....when you lie in the dentist's chair looking at the poster on the ceiling and think of a wonderful eye catching quilt that would look much better up there.....
  95. .....when you enter office, surgery, bank,.... etc and see much spare wall space that would be beautifully covered with a wall quilt(s)...
  96. .....when you look at someone's clothing and try to determin (by sight) if it is definitely 100% cotton.....
  97. .....when you wish your Surname is/was Cotton - but the only problem is that, unless your mother and your father both had the Surname of Cotton that you would not be 100% Cotton !!!!!
  98. .....in church you close your eyes to pray but see afterimages of quilt blocks.
  99. .....you are traveling through the America West terminal in Phoenix Arizona and you are fascinated by the pattern in the carpet and sit in the gate area and chart it out on 1/4" grid paper that YOU JUST HAPPEN to have in your briefcase!
  100. .....You buy notecards and other things with quilt patterns on them and you always save at least one of each pattern in case you ever want to use that design...
  101. ..... more than half of the entries in your checkbook register are for Strawberry Patches (or insert your favorite fabric/quilting store)!
  102. .....you offer to teach teenagers how to quilt. (It has to be eaiser to teach other people's kids 'cause my daughter refused to learn from me).
  103. .....When your Keepsake catalog arrives in the mail, you read it end to end before even looking at the rest of the mail.
  104. .....A book of block patterns sits on your bedstand instead of a novel. .....Your husband knows the names of block patterns and occasionally even knows what pattern they go to.
  105. .....Your trash never has fabric scraps larger than 1" by 1" in it.
  106. .....You carry around more pictures of your quilts, than of your children.
  107. .....If you are in a strange city and spot a quilt store, you almost cause an accident trying to do a u-turn.
  108. .....Your sock drawer has fat quarters in it.
  109. .....You buy your daughter a dress because you like the cotton print not because she would look good in it.
  110. .....You pet fabric.
  111. .....a paper cut (or other minor finger bleeder) is as devastating as a broken ankle.
  112. .....When you're flying over the neat and orderly farms in the midwest, and all you can see is 9 patch blocks (alfalfa goes one way, corn another, wheat a third, etc.)
  113. .....when you frequently spend your lunch money on fat quarters.
  114. .....when every graphic design (book covers, ads, greeting cards, tissue boxes, computer keyboard illustrations, even a random spill of post-it pads from the office supply cabinet!) immediately starts translating itself into fabric layouts in your head.
  115. .....you go into the feed store and buy three jars of udder cream, two packages of horse bandages (for thimbles) and three jars of orvus soap, and you don't have any pets.
  116. .....You find yourself contstantly saying "Don't MOVE!" because you dropped another needle in the carpet and can't find it.
  117. .....you have to eat in front of the TV on a quilt because the table is covered with your latest WIP.
  118. .....your DH says "you are talking in code all the time, can you translate that to English?"
  119. .....you visit lots of different churches just to get ideas for quilts from the stained glass windows!
  120. .....You clean up your sewing room and your kids want to know if you're sick or leaving!
  121. .....you wake up at 5:30 in the morning from a dream where you are designing your next quilt and must get up to put it on paper.
  122. ....."stash" isn't a verb meaning to stuff something in a drawer.
  123. .....you give up a job paying $20 per hour to quilt and earn maybe $1 an hour.
  124. .....you have more quilting ideas than time.
  125. .....you spend 2 hours a day reading mail from other quilters.
  126. ....."swap" only means exchanging fabric or blocks with other addicts.
  127. .....your "UFO"s aren't from outer space...tho you *may* be a "Trecker" or is it "Treckie"?.
  128. .....you remember when cotton cost you $0.85 a yard...and you still have some of it!
  129. ....."fat quarter" doesn't mean the heaviest part of your body.
  130. .....You start working on your '94 taxes and after going through your check register for the year, you comment to your husband that you need to figure out how to call this quilt hobby a business because all the related expenses would be one heck of a deduction!
  131. .....You consider your job as an interruption of your quilting time.
  132. .....you're on vacation and its no fun until you find at least one fabric store.
  133. .....you're out in the hallway of your motel tracing the pattern of the wall-paper because it would make a good quilting design.
  134. .....you yell out your car window at the lady walking down the street wearing a jacket out of Jacket Jazz and start a conversation as she walks and you drive along!
  135. .....Everyone around you knows you're a quilter, even though you've never said a word about it!
  136. .....you in 1990 is travelling from one part of Denmark and your sister from another part af Denmark to Odense to enjoy the wonderful exhibit "Quilt Expo Europe". When in Odense we went into our favoritte mail-order bookshop spezializing in Quilting books - we had never been there before. As usual I bought too much and was allowed to let my books wait there until we were finished watching the quilt exhibits (absolutely marvellous!) Whene we came back to the bookstore I asked for my stuff and mentioned my name to the nice lady. She then turned around and cried to the other staff members: "Come out and say hello - the sisters Thoefner are here in person!" Well - this really made us feel somewhat famous!
  137. .....Your first thought when someone announces they're expecting is, "What kind of baby quilt should I make?"
  138. .....You tear out pages of magazines and catalogs that have quilts pictured.
  139. .....when the National Conferences you are in charge of for work find you in the hotel room during small groups with the Bernina you sneaked in, sewing strips for the 9-patch exchange you signed up for on Q-Exchange!
  140. .....when you call Room Service for an iron so you can press said strips!
  141. .....When your boss finally tracks you down to take care of some problem, and you're in the lobby hand-quilting your Border Exchange project!
  142. .....you wish the State of the Union Address was a call-in program so you can ask the President of the United States where he got his Attic Windows tie.
  143. .....you keep hoping to hit all the red lights on the way home so you can sketch out the brilliant quilt idea that just hit you.
  144. .....the staff in a _major_ Denver fabric store all come running over to you because your friend just overheard them asking each other what a "fat quarter" is, and no one else in the store knew (this really happened!)
  145. .....at least half your Christmas tree is covered with either a) quilted ornaments, or b) ornaments that remind you of quilt patterns.
  146. .....you love all cats, but have a special place in your heart for calicos.
  147. .....You spend big bucks to take an Autocad class, telling your husband it will help you get back into engineering after all these years at home, and you really use it to design quilts. Everyone else in class was busy drawing gears, and parts, I was busy drafting penrose tiles!
  148. (I did finish my final faster than anyone else, after using all my other drawing programs Autocad seemed easy!)
  149. .....You go to your 2nd grader's school program on Pioneers and you closely examine the quilt on display instead of video-taping the program. (p.s. neat quilt! -- all curved pieces!)
  150. .....you wish you were on the jury and locked in a hotel for 6 months with your sewing machine, fabric stash, and quilting tools. And no interruptions. Well, expect having to go to court every day.
  151. .....you can't leave a fabric store for under $100.00.
  152. .....you consider buying the whole bolt. And very often do.
  153. .....you've been in the store so much you tell the clerks which table the bolts should be put away on.
  154. .....you're sitting in a courtroom as a prospective juror, and all you can think about is that the ceiling moldings would make a *great* border quilting pattern.
  155. ..... you are preparing a meal for your 4-year-old and you start daydreaming. You take a toothpick and rearrange the alphabet letters in the soup to spell out as many quilt block names as you can remember. Your child then cries at being served cold soup!
  156. .....Your DH can't remember the name of a town in Ohio he's to go to on buisness and says he thought it was called Court House Steps. He tells you he knows it was wrong but he can't think why he thought of that name. When you tell him its the name of a quilt block his face lights up and he realises that where he heard the name before.........
  157. .....your soon to be 5 year old son tells his grandaddy that all he wants for his birthday is a white batman car and a toy quilt and a toy needle and a toy "fimble".
  158. ..... the weather service is predicting a giant blizzard (for those of you who are not familiar with Virginia this is the worst of natural diasasters) and it is more important to get to the fabric store than to the grocery store. (The groceries had to go in the back seat---the trunk was full!!)
  159. .....you hide your scissors!
  160. .....you wait for bedroom scenes in movies and TV shows not for the steamy bits but to see if they've got a cool quilt on the bed!
  161. .....you stop wearing lipstick because you are afraid it will get on your work.
  162. .....you go through your mom's fabric stash in search of a scrap of pink for a square, and find an incredible yellow for a fabric exchange (I have to give her back what I don't use)
  163. .....you use the fabric you purchased for exchanges, before you have a chance to mail them.
  164. .....you spend your 20th anniversary at Sesame St. World as part of a master plan to travel 13 hours to see the touring Quilt National show in Bethlehem Pa. (and it was coming to your town 1 month later AND your kids were 2, 7 and 7)