The Next Small Step

Hello! I’ve missed you all. It’s been a long time since I have written – I’ll explain why later, but for now, I decided I would jump back into blogging, a little at a time. A lot of times, if I slide in a habit, the job gets bigger and bigger, like a snowball turning into an avalanche. I feel like I need to explain my lack of production, then that becomes a whole other thing. So, I’m leaning into the wisdom I’ve gained from my Creativity Coach, Elizabeth, and taking this small step.

Whenever Elizabeth and I have a session, she takes notes on my inane ramblings, then at the end of the call she magically zeroes in on the one thing I really care about. She asks me what my next small step will be to advance that project. Now, I don’t always take that next step, but it is a good way to get things done. I resist wisdom. It is who I am. I prefer to flail about like an idiot, whine, complain, and avoid doing the work. Or, I go off into a manic blaze and crush a project in lightning speed.

Unfortunately, since October, that mania has disappeared. Most days the sewing feels like a bit of a slog, with the exception of my little landscape sketches. I do one of those just about every day. More about those in another post.

I have been doing some quilting lately, though! My friend Lissa encouraged a group of friends to join in on her guild’s UFO challenge. Like a good soldier, I wrote out my list of 12 UFO’s. We aren’t expected to finish, just spend a bit of time with the project during it’s assigned month.

1. La Passion – quilting, binding
2. Moon glow – borders, quilting, binding
3. Fancy forest baby – quilting, binding
4. City quilt – Original version – quilting, binding
5. Improv sunset – IR class – all of it
6. Hawaiian appliqué – all of it
7. Collection Quilt – AG Version – borders, quilting, binding
8. Dancing with the wall mini – quilting, binding
9. Orbital – hand quilting
10. Silk radiance – quilting, binding
11. Tula Clam – piecing, quilting, binding
12. Kawandi class sample

The guild chose #11 for January, so that is what I took with me to Florida. I cut out the pieces for a Tula Pink Glam Clam quilt years ago. I didn’t count anything, I just went through my stash and cut one clam from every piece I could. I worried that it would be too busy and planned to get solids to fill in and spread out the prints. The idea of selecting colors became overwhelming, so it got put away. This was before Tula had her line of solids.

Everything was boxed up, so when we decided to flee winter and head to Florida with 3 days of planning, it was easy to grab this project to take with me. Especially since I knew I have a full 10″ square of each color of the Andover Century Solids to work with. Surely, 100 different colors will be enough, right? For some reason I’d rather die than just buy a bundle of the Tula solids.

I put it up on the wall during the last Gotham Quilts retreat. (Lissa helped me decide on light in the middle, dark on the edges.) I thought I’d bang it out over the weekend. Haha. This was my first Glam Clam quilt, and man, it is slow to assemble. I was really distraught at first because it was taking so long. However, I settled down when it became obvious that there was no way I could finish it in a weekend. Plus, with all my talk of rejecting the “quilt in a weekend” mentality, it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I decided the “next small step” in this quilt would be to assemble one row. So, that is what I’ve been doing. I’ve been attaching one row per day. It takes about an hour to get it done, and it feels great every time.

It’s pretty weird – it went from depressing that it was going to take a while, to being a daily sense of accomplishment. I’ve allowed it to stay up on the design wall, and after each row I pin the top back up, then move the next row into position.

I’ve let a lot slide on this quilt. I didn’t agonize over sorting the fabrics – I could have done a much better job with color flow. However, I think leaving it this way is more interesting. Plus, if I really wanted to get picky, I’d have to buy more fabrics, to balance the colors a little better.

The solids I’m using for the border are okay. Again, they could be better, but only if I bought more fabric. While I’m not doing a no-spend year, I’m definitely trying to use more than I buy. We are getting serious about down-sizing our household, and I’d like to do as little crying over stash as possible when moving day comes.

Once the top is assembled, I am planning to send it out to be quilted by someone else. I’ve never done that before, but now that one of my best friends is a longarmer, I have someone I feel comfortable collaborating with.

The curves on this have gone pretty well. Overall, I’m very satisfied with the accuracy of both my cutting and my piecing. If you have the template, make sure you watch Latifah’s video. It is excellent.

Okay. This post is already very long. I’m going to write up my family drama in a separate post. That way, you can ignore the non-quilty stuff as desired.

Have you had success with the “next small step” idea? Where have you applied it?