My Quilty Secrets

I read a post from another quilter who listed her 10 quilty secrets. I don't know if I have ten or more but here are some that have been perking around in my brain since reading her blog.
1. I love trimming the excess fabric and batting after machine quilting the layers together. It is so rewarding to see the almost finished quilt revealed.
2. I hate unpinning all the pins used to baste the layers together. Ugh. My fingers hurt from pinching open and closing all those pins.
3. I will never quilt a large quilt. I will send it to a long arm quilter.
4. I like the look of all the free motion quilting but I will probably never do it myself.
5. I hate to appliqué. I avoid patterns that have appliqué.

6. I like my quilts loosely quilted, not densely quilted. I go for snuggly not cardboard stiff.
7. I like piecing tops and designing pieced tops. I even like making pieced backs. But quilting, not so much.
8. I like bright colors-like you couldn't figure that out from looking at my quilts! ;-)
9. I think calling soft colors or muted tones 'low volume' is weird. Seems like the wrong term to use.
10. Sometimes an idea for a quilt gets in my brain and I have to draw it in my chart paper journal.
11. I don't get people who just keep making the same pattern over and over, sometimes in different colors but still the same pattern. I have made lots of giant nine patch baby blankets but just because they are quick and I am giving them away.
12. My favorite kind of quilt is a sampler. If I was the judge at a quilt show, that's what I would pick-and no appliqué!