I’ve been quilting for well over 10 years now, and I still love it. I love everything about it: the feel of the fabric, the pattern, the colours, the sewing machines (and the old ones!), the stitches, the design styles, the fabric types, the finishes, the techniques, the embellishments, the colours, the colours, the colours and the fabrics and more fabric (not literally).

The thing is, I also love it when someone else quilts. I love looking at the quilts other people have made – I like seeing how different people interpret the same patterns, and I enjoy watching them try out different techniques.

When you’re a quilter, it seems as if your whole life revolves around quilting. You get home, you do the dishes, you make dinner, you feed the kids, you spend time with the kids and your partner, you put the kids to bed. Then you take out your sewing machine and try to get in a couple of hours of sewing (or, if you’re like me, you don’t get any sewing done and spend your free time doing things like watching TV and eating chocolate).

But I’m not sure if that’s the best way to spend your time.

The thing is, I’m lucky. I have a partner who shares my passion and commitment to quilting. He’s supportive of my hobbies, and he doesn’t get annoyed by me spending all my free time sewing. So the days that I do spend doing anything else are a bit of a treat for me. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that I could be doing something else with that free time.

The thing is, quilting doesn’t need to take up all of my spare time.

It would be great if I didn’t spend most of my time in my quilting studio, but I do, and it’s a little hard to do other things when I’m there, even if they’re only for a short while.

It would be really nice if I could spend the whole day sewing (if you can do that – can you?), but I can’t. We need to feed ourselves and the family, and we need to keep our home clean. I can spend a few hours a week in my studio, but it would be really hard to spend my whole day in there (I don’t think that the cats would appreciate it).

So it seems like, the best thing for me is to combine my time doing other things with my time in the studio. For example, I could spend my free time writing or doing another creative hobby.

I’m not saying that I shouldn’t spend all of my time quilting. I love it. But I can’t always. I need to make sure that I make the most of the free time that I have.

That means I need to figure out how to spend my free time. But I want to do something I’m passionate about – I love writing, I love blogging, I love sewing, I love cooking and I love having a crafty hobby. I can’t afford to spend all of my time doing one thing – it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the family. So I need to spend time doing lots of different things.

So my advice is to figure out how you can use your spare time wisely. I spend most of my spare time sewing, but I spend some time doing other things too. Maybe you can spend your spare time doing something that you’re passionate about. Maybe you can do lots of things, but pick one and stick to it. Maybe you can spend lots of time in the studio (even if you don’t spend every hour there) but just try to make sure that you spend most of your spare time doing something else.

I’m not saying that there’s a right and a wrong way to spend your free time. I’m just saying that we all have different lifestyles, and we all need to find the best way to use our free time.

How do you spend your free time? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.