Quilt Now: A Day In the Life of Mary Fons (Feature)

posted in: Day In The Life 0
A screenshot of the article because I have not the skills to post the piece as a PDF.
A screenshot of the article because I have not the skills to post the piece as a PDF.

As editor of Quilty, I schedule, select, and edit a great number of features about the quilters of today. But this summer, friend and colleague Katy Jones, editor of the UK magazine Quilt Now, featured me. I was flattered and wrote a “Day In the Life” piece for her. Here is the text from that piece. It’s great until the part where I talk about how great it is to be in love. I forgot I wrote that part.

Anyhow, thank you, Katy! And everyone, if you can get your hands on a copy of an issue of Quilt Now, do it. It’s a great magazine and I’m honored to have been able to write for it.

A Day In The Life of Mary Fons
by Mary Fons

“Whether I’m traveling or at home, I wake early. Usually very early. Pre-dawn. When I was a kid, it was so hard get out of bed. I remember thinking how weird it was — weird and enviable — the way adults like my mom just naturally got up in the morning with minimal fuss. Of course, I would learn that plenty of adults would like to sleep in, but for most of us, getting up in the morning does get easier as we get older. This is likely due to the fear of responding in an at least somewhat timely manner to the crushing pressure of daily living.

If I’m home, I rise and immediately made a large pot of tea. If I’m on the road, I rise and immediately make hotel room coffee. Either way, there is lots of milk and sugar involved. I can do exactly nothing until I’ve got hot tea or coffee in my hand in the morning, and that’s that. The morning tea or coffee time is for me to write in my journal or read. Sometimes, when I’ve got a big event coming up or I’m under deadline, I’ll use that tea time to work. But I prefer to have my tea or coffee for an hour with just personal pursuits that involve both reading and writing.

Then it’s time to produce. I edit Quilty magazine, and plan and host the Quilty show online. I speak and teach across the land, host a webinar each month, I’m working on a new book, and I do numerous other projects at any given time, so there is always slightly too much to do. I do not, at press time, have an assistant. That would be amazing.** So I’m on my own to write copy, tweak copy, book travel, send bios and teaching plans, stitch, and otherwise coordinate All The Things. I also blog (nearly) every day and I see my blog, PaperGirl, as an integral part of the Mary Fons “thing,” so that is most certainly a priority, even though it makes me zero income.

I’m a freelancer, a contractor. It’s kind of an odd set-up, since I do the vast majority of my work for one company (F+W) but I’ve been a freelancer since ‘05 and I’m stayin’ alive. I like the freedom that comes with it, even though there are frequently invoicing headaches, checks to track down, and of course I have no employee benefits and have to do my own taxes. Still, for a creative person such as myself, I can see no other way to live. I can work at 6am or 6pm, on the road or at home, and there are no clocks to punch. (I would probably actually punch a clock if I had to “check in” for work at this point.)

There is a downside to working this way: I work almost constantly. It’s not the working I mind, but there are times when I wish a janitor would like, shut the lights off in the office and tell me to go home. There is no janitor. I do have a partner now, which is very good; he can tell me to stop working or not take on another project. When I was just a single gal, living for the city, there was no reason to not take another road gig. No one needed me at home to make dinner or, you know, just be home because that feels good. I’m not suggesting my existence was bleak — I rather enjoy being a career gal — but it’s been wonderful to have someone sort of put their hand on my shoulder and tell me to chill out for two seconds and sleep in once in awhile.

I do have my fun. I’m a Bikram yogini, so I go sweat it out in the hot yoga room. I just moved to Manhattan from Chicago, so now I have NYC as a playground and I do intend to start playing asap. I like to dance. I love to read and write. And I really, really love to design and make big scrap quilts. So that’s fun for me. And I mentioned the partner thing: I am wildly in love with someone who fascinates and delights me and teaches me all kinds of new and wonderful things. That’s my fun, too, just being with Yuri.

I think a lot about how short life is and how I, Mary Fons, have to do something extraordinary with my time here. I don’t have a choice. I don’t know when I go to bed. When I’m tired, I lay down. I suppose it’s usually around midnight. And I dream, dream, dream. And then I do it all again.”