I like to quilt. I can barely remember the first quilt I made. It seems like I’ve been doing them forever. That’s probably because I helped my mom tie quilts for a long time before I started tying my own.

Part of how I define myself is as a quilter. It’s a large part of me. It’s my escape, my release, and my relaxation. Something about cutting pieces of fabric and then sewing them together and cutting them up again and sewing them back together, the art of making the fabric work together, and the math of making the pieces work together, it appeals to every part of me.

It’s not something I could ever do for money, that would take the enjoyment out of it. But if I want to make a special gift for someone, I make them a quilt. Giving someone a quilt is giving them a piece of me, a piece of my heart. It is not something I do lightly.

Some quilts I make to mark special events in my life. I pieced a quilt when I graduated from high school to take to college with me and my mom and I hand quilted it. I made quilts for my brother and sister when they both graduated from high school too.

Other quilts I make just because. Some times it’s because I want to try a new technique. Other times it’s because some fabric at the store just spoke to me and I had to take it home and figure out something to do with it. Twice now I’ve made quilts when I was very stressed with the rest of my life, which you might think is not a good time to start, and within a week, finish, a new quilt, but for me it was. It let me be creative. It let me be analytical. It let me relax. And at the end, I had a new quilt to show off, to wrap up in, and to sleep under or picnic on.

Quilting is what is keeping me from going insane. But it might also be an insanity of it’s own. Only time will tell.