Quilting has brought a lot of things into my life – there is always a quilt to warm you in my house. There’s fabric to warm you; lots of fabric. There’s a whole room dedicated to quilting but the biggest things that quilting has brought is friendship.

This weekend I spent with 70 or so ladies from the Dallas Quilt Guild at a retreat. There was sewing and laughter and singing and reminiscing of friends who were no longer with us and more sewing. Sewing can be a solitary pass time, but quilters have always found ways to create a community. Women used to gather around a frame to quilt a quilt together in a quilting bee. While many modern quilters still hand quilt, a lot of us do not, and have found other ways to share our passion and our community.

At retreat, we all bring our sewing machines, and equipment, and projects and setup in a resort ballroom and sew for a long weekend. I always get a ton of work done at a retreat because I don’t have the distraction of housework and laundry and there is somebody else is doing the cooking. Some ladies don’t sew much at all, but enjoy the maximum companionship for the weekend instead. Another nice benefit is getting to walk around and see what everybody else is working on. There are always some new techniques or patterns that I’ve never seen before, as well as a lot of “well I started this in 1998 and I’m finally going to finish it”. I brought a bit of both with me on this trip.

Quilting means there is always a common connection so it’s easy to make new friends. I went on my first Quilting Cruise in 2015 – didn’t know a single person in the group but I figured that since we were all quilters, I would make a few friends. That excursion has led to a treasured group of friends who still travel together all over the globe, sewing and knitting as we go.

Over the years I have noticed that my work friends tend to come and go. We are friends because we are thrown together by a project and the regularity of work and as jobs change, those friends come and go. Quilting has given me a circle of friends over the last 30 years that has remained very constant. Throughout our lives, quilting is the thread that ties us all together. This weekend especially, I am renewed by those connections. I can sew at home any time I want, but retreating reminds me of the wealth of friends I have gained through quilting.