warning, rant ahead
Oct. 22nd, 2011 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmegaeraI went to a quilt show today. This is something I do on a regular basis, as I am a quilt show junkie and I am fortunate enough to live in a place where there are over half a dozen quilt shows annually within an hour's drive of my home. This one was put on by the West Sound Quilters, and it was, as usual, wonderful. A lot of interesting piecing and applique, a Dear Jane quilt (I can admire those quite extensively, somehow, yet never in a gazillion years would I attempt one [g]), and even some really lovely hand quilting in amongst all the machine work.
I perused the vendors at the quilt show, too, which is always fun. This time I was looking for quilting stencils, which are one way of putting the designs onto the quilt top to use as guidelines when hand quilting, to add to my collection (a collection I use regularly, I just want to say). Alas, only one vendor had them, and that was a shop that specializes in Asian fabrics and designs, so they were Sashiko stencils. Lovely, but not what I was looking for.
So, after the show, since I was on the other side of the bridge, anyway (the show was on the west side of Puget Sound, I live on the east side, and the only bridge charges a $4 toll so I wanted to get my money's worth), I decided to hit a couple of the quilt shops local to that show, and see if they had any stencils.
In both stores, as soon as I asked the question, the clerk grimaced and said, no, we don't carry them. One went so far as to say, no one hand quilts anymore. I didn't think to ask, "then who made those lovely hand-quilted quilts I just saw at the quilt show?" (and at every quilt show I go to) until after I was out of the store.
This is not the first time I've run into this reaction when I admit that I'm a hand quilter in a quilt shop. AAMOF, it's an almost universal reaction. I don't ever dare mention my feelings about machine quilting (or its even more egregious cousin, sending a top out to someone else to be machine quilted, and then calling yourself a quilter) to other quilters, either.
I -- understand's not the right word, neither is the phrase I see where they're coming from -- know where this comes from. From the shop owners' point of view, as I read in an editorial in a quilt magazine once, it's that we hand quilters don't buy fabric and supplies often enough to "keep the shop open" (I put that in quotes because that ties into a larger concern that I'll get to in a minute). A machine quilter can make half a dozen or more tops a year, then pay a longarmer at the shop a hundred bucks or so to have each one quilted. It takes me a year or more to make one quilt. From the -- I'm sorry, to me this is the right word -- brainwashed quilters' point of view, it's that "I'd never finish a quilt if I hand quilted it." And so our craft is bastardized.
My reason for being a quilter is not to keep quilt shops open. My reason for being a quilter is to make quilts. Similarly, my reason for being a human being is not to be a "consumer." I am not a consumer. Yes, I do consume goods and services, but I am a person. And I do what I do and create what I create to satisfy my own creative urges, not to keep the economy afloat.
The only decent economy is one that understands that consuming goods and services is incidental to actually living. And the only decent economy is one that thrives when people are frugal and flounders when they aren't.
Quilt shops do not need to make hand quilters feel like second-class citizens in order to stay in business. And if they do, well, then, maybe they shouldn't have gone into that particular business to begin with.
Thank you for listening.
I perused the vendors at the quilt show, too, which is always fun. This time I was looking for quilting stencils, which are one way of putting the designs onto the quilt top to use as guidelines when hand quilting, to add to my collection (a collection I use regularly, I just want to say). Alas, only one vendor had them, and that was a shop that specializes in Asian fabrics and designs, so they were Sashiko stencils. Lovely, but not what I was looking for.
So, after the show, since I was on the other side of the bridge, anyway (the show was on the west side of Puget Sound, I live on the east side, and the only bridge charges a $4 toll so I wanted to get my money's worth), I decided to hit a couple of the quilt shops local to that show, and see if they had any stencils.
In both stores, as soon as I asked the question, the clerk grimaced and said, no, we don't carry them. One went so far as to say, no one hand quilts anymore. I didn't think to ask, "then who made those lovely hand-quilted quilts I just saw at the quilt show?" (and at every quilt show I go to) until after I was out of the store.
This is not the first time I've run into this reaction when I admit that I'm a hand quilter in a quilt shop. AAMOF, it's an almost universal reaction. I don't ever dare mention my feelings about machine quilting (or its even more egregious cousin, sending a top out to someone else to be machine quilted, and then calling yourself a quilter) to other quilters, either.
I -- understand's not the right word, neither is the phrase I see where they're coming from -- know where this comes from. From the shop owners' point of view, as I read in an editorial in a quilt magazine once, it's that we hand quilters don't buy fabric and supplies often enough to "keep the shop open" (I put that in quotes because that ties into a larger concern that I'll get to in a minute). A machine quilter can make half a dozen or more tops a year, then pay a longarmer at the shop a hundred bucks or so to have each one quilted. It takes me a year or more to make one quilt. From the -- I'm sorry, to me this is the right word -- brainwashed quilters' point of view, it's that "I'd never finish a quilt if I hand quilted it." And so our craft is bastardized.
My reason for being a quilter is not to keep quilt shops open. My reason for being a quilter is to make quilts. Similarly, my reason for being a human being is not to be a "consumer." I am not a consumer. Yes, I do consume goods and services, but I am a person. And I do what I do and create what I create to satisfy my own creative urges, not to keep the economy afloat.
The only decent economy is one that understands that consuming goods and services is incidental to actually living. And the only decent economy is one that thrives when people are frugal and flounders when they aren't.
Quilt shops do not need to make hand quilters feel like second-class citizens in order to stay in business. And if they do, well, then, maybe they shouldn't have gone into that particular business to begin with.
Thank you for listening.
