Thinking Outside the Box: All the Good Research Projects are Taken

When my brothers and I were kids we learned early on to never tell our mother or father “I’m bored” or “There’s nothing to do around here.” Before the last word was out of our mouth we would find ourselves transplanted in a flower bed with instructions to “weed” or loaned out to the widows in the neighborhood for chore duty. It was better to use our noggins and think outside the box for our own entertainment solutions than to use the B-O-R-E-D word in their presence. That’s the kind of parents we had; they were so “mean” to teach us responsibility and to use our imaginations to find ways to creatively entertain ourselves!

Which brings me to the quilt history portion of this entry – all the good research projects are taken, right? Wrong. Here is one of the hundreds of ideas still out there - what about utilizing the newspaper archives in the libraries located in your county and documenting your county’s quilt history? You might even be able to take one of those stories, research it deeper, and have an informative quilt history article for your efforts - a piece you could submit to a quilt history magazine or journal like the Iowa Illinois Quilt Study Group’s Pieces of Time or the American Quilt Study Group’s Blanket Statements.

Life is full of opportunities – think outside the box and remember the next time you drop by my home, do not use the B-O-R-E-D word, because the next thing you know you’ll be in my backyard picking up rocks out of the grass near the driveway for a penny-a-piece. Just ask my son, he’ll tell you his mother is mean that way.