During a recession so severe that most of us are feeling financially vulnerable, I’ve been spending my time, like everyone else I know, obsessing over bigger problems — how will I pay for two kids in college and still be able to buy white wine ($9 a day). When my friend Stephanie phoned the other day, I was so busy inputting new assumptions — the average family of five can survive on three cans of beans a day — that I was only half listening when she said, “You have to get out of this rut. If a giant meteor hit the earth and debris from the impact blocked the sun, she’d survive just fine in some homespun coat she made out of super-warm wool. After all, last year more than 56 percent of households in the United States reported that they engaged in some form of beading or quilting or knitting or soldering — maybe just gluing on glitter — to create all kinds of handmade objects that they learned to make from hip, young magazines like ReadyMade and Make. And in the 1970s, my parents always had some cockamamie project under way, like hand-inking illustrations for their stamp album or learning intricate crochet patterns, or even building model railroads. We fall squarely into the category of employed people who reported, in a recent Pew Internet & American Life study, that there’s less time for hobbies now that our networked lives distract us with work at home, thanks to BlackBerries and iPhones.

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Lonn Pressnall, who portrays the 16th president, will attend the first hour each day of the 29th Decatur Quilt Fest, March 27 and 28. Lincoln’s presence ties in with the event’s theme, “Quilting Our Heritage - The Lincoln Legacy,” said Mary Traxler, a member of the Decatur Quilters Guild. Then, Harriet Tubman will come along March 28, teaching and answering questions about the Underground Railroad which went as far north as Canada, said Kathryn Harris, who brings Tubman to life. Harris, director of library services at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, said she traditionally makes a presentation, and then follows it by taking questions. While attending a quilt show, Harris expects quilting questions to be asked of Tubman, including the suggested tie between quilting patterns and underground hints.

Women trickled in slowly for the regular Tuesday night meeting of the Southwest Quilting Bee, ready to lend a helpful hand and years of experience to others who had brought along their own colorful works of art. Within minutes, it became clear that more than a love of quilting lures members to the sessions, held in a community room at the Southwest Regional branch of the Louisville Free Public Library on Dixie Highway. Quilters at the group’s March 17 meeting Jean Haldeman, Doris Merritt-Kleitz, Shirley Millard, Janet Mikes, Gwen Paulley, Bonnie Ritchie and Pam Wendelgast say the camaraderie has bettered their entire lives. Several of the women also regularly attend Saturday work sessions of another quilting group that meets at the Sun Valley Community Center on Bethany Lane. Undeterred by the largest blackout in state history after this winter’s ice storm, Mikes, of Valley Station, used her foot-pedal treadle machine to quilt potholders. The March 17 meeting brought newbies besides Vannoy of Shively, who has quilted for about six years, her friend Linda Beverley attended and tackled her first quilting project just last month.