Quiltmaking! I should warn you, however, that there is risk involved
that quiltmaking will not remain a hobby and will take over your life.
There's a whole world of color and texture and technique waiting to be
explored. There's enough in traditional quiltmaking to last several
lifetimes, and when you get bored with that, expand into quiltmaking as
fabric art, and add embellishment, quilted jackets, dyeing and painting
your own fabric, abstract, landscape, portrait, everything to do with
art can be translated into fabric and hung on a wall. Quiltmaking
sometimes leads people to giant decorative kites and parachutes or
miniatures. There are books on quilting, internet groups, magazines,
local guilds, people to meet when you travel. There are shows to attend
and enter, workshops to take, celebrities to meet. (Quilt celebrities:
I'd rather meet Nancy Crow than Julia Roberts any day.) Collect
colorful fabric and thread (call it a stash); work by hand or machine.
Sell your work at museum consignment shops or donate to any of the
number of groups that keep home made quilts in hospitals and police cars.


Kids who land in emergency rooms are sometimes comforted by having
something special that's all theirs to hang on to when medical
procedures are done. Kids who have just watched Daddy beat Mommy to a
bloody pulp are sometimes found cowering in the closet when the police
arrive. The police can take nothing from the crime scene when
delivering the kids to emergency foster care and like to have something
they can give away that the kids can hang on to. In both cases, the
police and hospital workers need a supply of quilts that are cozy,
colorful and unique, something that they can give away at their
discretion and not worry about getting back. There are quilt making
groups all over the country that supply hospitals and police.


--Lia


Dee Randall wrote:
> I've done all the hobbies that I've wanted to in my life. I can't think of
> one more thing that I want to do.
> What are your hobbies, and what do you want to do that you've never done
> yet -- hobbies, mind you.