WE need to start a skill exchange. The part I like the best is handquilting. Give me a premarked, basted white on white kingsize quilt and I am in heaven. I love the look and feel of fabric but cutting it up and putting it back together again gets on my nerves. I volunteer at our local Senior Center. We make quilts for them to raffle off to benefit the center's programs. I am currently trying to piece together our next top. My last nerve is screaming. I have learned to do the "grunt" work like the cutting, ironing, piecing, layering, marking and basting but it is like necessary housework to me. I enjoy that part about as much as I do scrubbing the toliet. The handquilting part is the reward for all that frustrating work.

I don't know if I'd say quilting gives me "comfort" exactly. I enjoy it and I'm obsessed with it and I think about it all the time. There's so much I want to do that it actually causes me stress! As others have said, if I can't quilt, or do something creative just about every day I start to feel like I'm going to explode or something!

I quilt for my own enjoyment, even if I am making something for someone else - so yes, it brings me comfort, and contentment and some kind of satisfaction. I like some of the parts better than others, but really don't mind any of them. Except the mistakes of course, but, even ripping sometimes can be relaxing.

My daughter and her two children, 4 & 15 months, suddenly moved in with us in the last two weeks. We changed my sewing room into a play room and moved my stuff into our bedroom. I allow my daughter 1-2 hours to get away to study. My husband goes out for a couple of beers each afternoon. I told my husband yesterday I need to have an hour or so to myself each day to quilt. I need to quilt because I find it so relaxing.

Most definitely! I call my sewing machine my Calgon, it "Takes me away"! LOL!

I love to make things, so I'm completely at peace when I'm sewing, quilting, knitting, or crocheting. There is something really wonderful about taking pieces of fabric or yarn and making something fun or useful with it.

Agree with all of the above. It's all so relaxing to me. I get lost and the brain goes into another sphere where thoughts are clear, heart is happy, no stress. All very therapeutic for me.

quilting is a very much a comfort to me, I can go to the sewing room and just working on a project makes me feel so much better. Constructing and getting my mind in a peaceful place is very comforting. I would say that quilting is better then going to the doctor and getting any kind of medicine. Quilting is a comfort.

I find every aspect of quilting relaxing and satisfying: I like the "stress" of figuring out a new design, then the calming mindlessness of cutting and piecing, and the Zen of handquilting. I like machine quilting less than the other parts of the process, and I don't enjoy ANY of it if I am being interrupted or otherwise pestered. My only child is now old enough to entertain herself for a couple of hours, so I am back to enjoying quilting even if someone else is present in the house with me! (It was quite worthless as stress release for a few years - anticipating the next interruption was enough to reduce the joy.)

I also find that I enjoy quilting much more if I can tell myself that my chores are done* - quilting as reward!

Alison

*I just have to be able to tell myself they are done; they don't have to actually be done!

Quilting feeds my soul and makes me feel complete.

Yes, beyond the comments that have been made already about the many aspects of quilting, I also find these relaxing, stress free activities related to quilting: I love going to the library, browse through my favorite quilt books and take several home, I can "park myself" at a comfy chair, sofa, or bed and am "content, calm, and at peace with the world." I do the same thing when I am in a quilt shop. I don't have to buy even a needle or a fat square. I also love "music" as I am quilting. I can forget who I am and where I am. Then, seeing all the quilts that are on this quilting board, going to a quilt show, watching a PBS quilt master, and LEARNING brings JOY.

Absolutely it is therapeutic.... I am alone with my thoughts... I am creating something for someone else, be it family or for charity etc. I also find the fellowship of my guild friends and the QB very comforting. We all are walking through this world together experiencing the same life events be they happy or sad. Yes, I find great comfort in all my quilting activities no matter what or where :)

Love this thread! I agree with all who agree it gives comfort, pleasure, creative outlet, and satisfaction. Had to clean up my living/quilt room over a week ago for company coming, and now am itching to pull everything out and mess it up again. It's supposed to rain today, so I hope to get in my walk and then get going! But there are so many interesting topics on this board today....

My son was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2007. The week between his death and memorial service I started cutting out and putting together a quilt using beautiful calming fabrics. I don't know if I would have survived if it hadn't been for the hours I spent making this quilt. I called it "Sanity". I decided to hand quilt it. It is now in a basket in my bedroom and not completed. But that is OK. Every so often I will get it out and work on it for a while and then put it away for a while. It holds many tears and thoughts and if I never finish it, that is OK also. Most of the time quilting is such a happy time for me now. I love going into my quilting room on a sunny day and working on a quilt. As I am 72 and long retired,
I like having something to get up for each day. Having a quilt waiting for me is a good reason to get up and greet the day.

Quilting keeps me sane, fulfills my need to create, & challenges my mind. Doing a bed quilt or lap quilt takes care of the need in me to be practical and doing something "artsy" takes care of the need to create something unique. I love touching, looking at fabric & dreaming of the possibilities.

Yes, absolutely. And I love working on charity quilts because then I get that little extra comfort from knowing it's for somebody else who will appreciate my work.

yes yes yes.............I live with my daughter and if I didn't have my quilting I'd go nuts with what goes on around here. Did I mention she has a 15 year old daughter that just started driving and I have to go evertime she wants to go somewhere?

Mostly, yes. But I'm finishing a quilt for a show next weekend, that I'm really sick of...everything has gone wrong - I've cut pieces wrong, seamed them together wrong, screwed up the quilting and had to take it out. If this weren't for a show, it would be in a box waiting for another time. But I have to keep going, and I'm about ready to spit nails with it!!
But, 95% of the time quilting is wonderfully peaceful and relaxing!

Oh yes. I like it so well that I don't watch tv anymore. I used to quilt years ago and quit due to family and job obligations. Now my kids are grown and I only work part time so I have plenty of time to quilt. At present I am making tops for my husband, 2 kids, 4 grandkids, and 9
great grandkids. After I get the tops made I will decide how to quilt them. I thought about taking the full sized ones to my LAQ and trying to do the twin sized ones on my machine at home.

I find that before I self taught myself to quilt, that knitting and crocheting were "sanity savors" as well as doing something constructive. I have three daughters (not one of the sews), and I made most of their clothes, still do sewing for g/daughters now. After I retired 10 years ago, I bought a "Quilting 101" book and learned the basics of quilting from that book. I am a widow and have lived alone for the past five years. Quiltiing is a comforting or any type of handwork is very comforting to me. When I hear women say they are "bored" I just don't know what to think. I stay busy all the time doing my "hobbies". I agree with everything else that has been mentioned in this thread. I love this board too!!!

Yes, yes and yes. During the last year of tears, moving, separation from my hubby, quilting was the one thing that provides smiles and sunshine.

Absolutely! I always joke it is my 'therapy'. I was out to lunch with a bunch of moms a few years ago and everyone was talking about medications, anti-anxiety & anti-depression, etc. As we were all moms of kids with autisim, many of whom were on meds, I thought we were talking about the kid's meds. I was wrong. They were talking about what they, the moms, were taking. I said sewing was my therapy & med. Even with the price of fabric it's cheaper... and way fewer side effects.

High 5 to that!:thumbup::D

I'm with you. It's a real stress buster

Absolutely, it is my stress -reliever - my creative outlet - I can't imagine a day without touching fabric or thinking about it - I love it and it calms me tremendously.

It is amazing how quilting and fabric can make you feel. I have always said that quilting is my stress releiver and it is. Some days if I am just out of sorts, I may not feel up to cutting or sewing, but I can just sit in my sewing room and feel a calm come over. I will move fabric around, look at it and think about what it could be one day. Flip through a quilt book and dream... it just takes all the bad away..... love it!

Oh my! Sewing has TOTALLY saved my sanity these last two+ years. When I'm busy in the sewing room, my mind is at peace. It helped so much that my husband spent his week's vacation last year fixing a sewing room for me. He's added a TV, blue ray movie player, collected tables for my machines, put in flooring and extra lighting - the list goes on and on! My sewing room is my little haven that I retreat to so that I can regroup and regain my footing. In the process, I create little things that I consider beautiful, if not useful! LOL

It's cheaper than a therapist and more enjoyable. YES from me!

As soon as I open my main stash cupboard, and start choosing fabrics, a calming feeling comes over me. Everything, from start to finish, even the "re-sewing" is comforting to me. I can slow down and take my time with no deadlines. Quilting is my peace.

For me it's my music. My mother and grandmother both played the piano, my middle brother inherited their talent for music and they could play any instrument they picked up. My older brother was a stone carver. The only music I can play is on the DC player, but my quilts are my artistic talent. I, like you, enjoy the choosing the fabric, deciding on a pattern and seeing to come to life. I love making quilts and giving them is a way to show how much I care for those around me.

I began quilting two years ago after I lost my beloved husband to cancer. It became my lifeline then and it is my lifeline now, as I am selling our home and moving into a mobile. The last room to be packed will be my sewing room and it will be the first room unpacked when I arrive in my new home.

I love to stay in my sewing room all day. But I have chronic back pain...so I just charge on thru and try to relax the best I can...when it gets too bad, I switch to the computer and the QB...nothing helps with the pain...take tylenol once a day and sew in spurts..but I still love it all...

It is has been my zen! After batteling with Lupus, RA, AS and IBM I was affraid I was never going to be able to do the things I used to love doing(sewing,quilting,machine embroider,trining and showing horse and playing Irish Whiste and Fiddle). The one thing I can do now is create and sew/quilt and embroider. No more Lupus fog and my body has finnaly calmed down with monthly infusions. So I just can not explain how elated I ma to be able to do this again. It is my only outle. With out it, I would go crazy and depression would suck me up. I hope I can keep on with this for a long time. :)

It usually gives me joy to be creating something in fabric or glass, unless it's being particularly difficult and then it can become a bit stressful. I just have to walk away for a bit, mull it over, find a solution and it becomes joyful again. Colors and textures can bring me a great deal of peace.

I get lost in some of the stuff I do in a dreamy way, and I know all is well in the universe.

Yes I like all aspects, and I think that one reason there are more than on project going at the same time is because if I am doing a lot of piecing and need a break, I can switch to quilting, or vice versa. But yes there is something very therapeutic about it all.

I've found the same thing to be true. Even if I just cut a couple of things out or sew a few minutes, that makes my day better. I just can't go a day without quilting, so the days my knee won't let me are really icky. Granted, I can noodle around on the Board or look at quilting books & that's good, too, but I really like the actual process. To me the journey, the process is as important as the finished product.

I agree... going into "the zone" is a wonderful respite during this hectic life we all live.

Sometimes I feel kind of guilty (for lack of a better way to express it). I make quite a few charity quilts & when people tell me how thoughtful I am (or whatever) for doing so, I always say "I don't make them for other people. I make them for me... the making is my joy". The fact that there's a "product" at the end is just a nice thing. But I'd do it even if there wasn't a "product". It does make me happy that something that brings me such peace & joy also is a good thing for others. Does what I'm saying even make sense? I feel like I'm just mangling what I'm trying to say. Maybe I should go to bed. Nah... more board to look at... LOL!

Maybe. I am not sure I would have ever described it like that. I like to stay busy. Quilting is a more socially acceptable form of sewing. You can always find someone to give a quilt to.

It does not sooth me like it seems to do some of you. I need to feel I am productive and it does that but for comfort I want a good book, warmth (sun, fire, bath) and good food.