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.