You're going to be seeing some changes in the Quilt Maverick Webring in the coming days. We've had some growing pains (again) and are trying to focus the ring on our core goal, which is to be a home for those who are neither art quilters nor traditional quilters. We're better defined by what we are not than what we are - makes it difficult to explain.

We're not art quilters. I'm not saying there is anything wrong or bad about them. It's just not what we do. Art Quilters have a great webring of their own as well as websites and mail lists that serve them. They've got at least one major show all to themselves and certainly spots in others. They have a place.

We're not traditional quilters who follow the rules set down by the Quilt Police. You know those rules: seams must match, everything must be perfectly aligned, no chopping off the points of the triangles, quilts must lay flat. Perfection, perfection, perfection. Unfortunately, the traditionalists don't have a webring (that I'm aware of) but they do have an awful lot of publications and a stranglehold on quilt show judging. They have lots of places.

So we're not artists, we're not perfectionists. We are quilters. Quilters who quilt for the love of quilts, for the comfort that they give, and the love that they contain. We quilt because it makes us happy and not to meet overly-high standards that others set. We cut off the points of our triangles and match our seams however we want to. We have no quilt shows and very few books.

I'm not saying that every Quilt Maverick fits into my description. They don't - we're a diverse group. Not every quilt we make fits this little cubbyhole either.

I think the most important function that we provide is a home for like-minded quilters who don't fit in to either of those big groups previously mentioned. Nor some of the ones that I haven't mentioned like the crazy quilters. We provide support to one another and interact - we're a community.

Kinda like the island of misfit toys in the Rudolf Christmas special (the name of which completely escapes me). This is our place.

We recently decided to make changes in our membership so that it would better reflect who we are. We had some people on our ring whose blogs focused on art, art quilts, and crazy embellishing - there's nothing wrong with that, but they each already have a webring that better suits them.