Am I crazy or something?

I think I’ve been overloading on You Tube videos and other social media. Why, you ask?

Because it feels like I am constantly being sold something else when it comes to quilting.

Oh, I know, I’ve mentioned this before.

BUT it seems like it has gotten so far out of hand.

How do people have time to sew up all the subscription boxes that they are gettting?

Or are they not?

Does it bother people to just get all these “things” that aren’t fabric every month? I guess I’m kind of amazed at how many there are out there and how much stuff related to quilting (but not fabric/patterns) is being sold and marketed.

I am positive that I do not know about all of the monthly or yearly specialty boxes.

I have heard of some people having to stop them because they just had so much stuff that they weren’t using up or projects not getting to - that it was all just taking up too much space. They ended up giving a good bit of it away. I noticed Corey Yoder doing that and also Tammie Earnest gave away her whole Spooky Box.

But when I get to where I want to make a quilt that is on a You Tube video, almost always it seems like it is something ELSE that I have to buy.

And I will say, as much as I love Lori Holt stuff, she seems to be the embodiment of a “maximalist” when it comes to quilting. I mean, the lists are huge as to what you (or I) need to make one of her quilts (not counting fabric!)

Recently I saw a scrap quilt (not Lori Holt) being marketed as a “free quilt pattern”, but in order to make it you had to buy 4 or 5 different sizes of paper piecing packs. Each pack is from $15-17 and you needed 4 different ones. To me, that’s not much of a free pattern. To me that is a marketing campaign to sell paper piecing packs under the guise of a free pattern.

But maybe that’s just me.

But I digress.

But I think I’m seeing something that is beginning to concern me—at least in my life.

OK.

Let me go back in time to what I saw with my kids - esp. my boys. They used to love Lego sets. Inevitably we would get them a set or two for their birthday and/or Christmas. They dug into them, almost immediately, or at least as soon as the mess was cleared up and the table was ready for all those little pieces.

What does the company put inside the Lego box that you just opened? Before you even get a chance to look and enjoy the set you have, there is advertising for “the next one” or “next series” of Lego sets, that you MUST HAVE.

I would get so frustrated when my sons would start looking at that paper either before they even made the current set that they had sitting in front of them OR immediately upon completion of the one they just had and they began to want it.

They hadn’t even spent time appreciating what they had JUST gotten before they started wanting the next one.

I felt frustrated back then about that situation. (I know, it’s marketing!)

BUT

I find myself doing the same about quilting, and I am fighting it. It is terrible. There are so many beautiful things “coming” and I want to appreciate what I have “right now”.

I know that the channels are about making money. They want us to salivate and “be impatient for” the next thing.

I know we have a business as well so in part this post may be counterproductive towards our business.

But it’s gotten beyond crazy at times, it feels.

I think I need to take a break from watching all those channels, don’t I? I mean, I have so many projects I already want to do PLUS design some more of our own quilts, and here I am telling myself, “Oh, that would be nice to have”!

So….tell me…do you all fight it as well, or are you immune to those who project and tell us about things that are coming up in a year or so away so that we start wanting it “now”?

I grew up without a tv and really haven’t had one even here in Poland so I’ve been kind of impervious to advertising such as this in the past. I never even heard things like, “Coming soon at your toy store near you” when I was a kid. I suppose I’m having to learn it now.

But I guess I just want to learn to “live more in the moment” and fully “enjoy what’s already here”.