How many quilts?

This was the question asked on Stashbusters, one of the Yahoo groups I'm in (and mostly lurk on) How many quilts do you finish in a year?

My answer ties in to an idea percolating for a while about an artist's manifesto ~ this would be my quilting manifesto.

Whether or not you choose to count up "how many" depends to some degree on what your intent is in quilting. Do you want to crank out as many quilts as possible? To compete with yourself? Then it makes sense to add up your numbers. I have a tendency to start projects and not finish them, so I've set a goal to finish one project a month (and that can be new or a UFO) and I keep track of that. I'm in the UFO challenge to whittle down my list of UFOs. And keeping track of yardage in and out prevents me from mindlessly buying more fabric "just because."

Honestly, I quilt because I enjoy the process. I like digging through the bins for material. I like thinking about my design. I like rotary cutting for piecing and fiddly cutting for applique. I like sitting at my machine, listening to it hum as I feed the pieces through. I like ironing (and yes, I know I should press, but it still works when I iron!) and nesting seams to make the pieces into blocks. I like arranging the blocks into a whole. I like deciding on a border (or no border).

I'm not so fond of sandwiching, but it's a necessary evil :) 

I love FMQ, except when my tension goes all wonky and I have to pull out all the eyelashes on the back :( I absolutely adore sewing on the binding, because I'm almost done and I can admire what I've accomplished.

So, no, I don't have any idea how many quilts I finish in a year. It depends on how the mojo goes that year. And I usually don't have any idea how long it took me to make a quilt, either. Because it just doesn't matter to me.