"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Are you a "LISTS" person?

Last week I had two crafty friends visit for a few hours.  They wanted me to show them how to use gold leaf to embellish calligraphy or other paper crafts.  I brought a folding table into the kitchen and set it up next to our round kitchen table, and I put a pile of calligraphy books, inks,brushes, pens, etc. on it so we could use the kitchen table to work on without all the other stuff taking up work space.   I left everything there until last Friday night  when Ken asked if I was going to leave it there.  (Meaning 'when are you going to move all that stuff?')   I left it there to motivate myself to do some more calligraphy and I did actually mess around a bit on Thursday night, but didn't achieve anything much.

I get frustrated because there are so many things I want to try, and I get myself in a tizz and end up just making a mess.  So I moved everything back into my study, and in doing so got into a worse tizz about the mess in there.   I spent an hour putting everything back where it is supposed to be, and while I was in the process, I found some UFOs that I'd forgotten about,  tucked away in a corner, which made me even more depressed! 

I decided to get from the cupboard one of my many blank journals, and list all the things I have to do (not all the things I WANT to do, that's in another journal).  When finding the blank journal, I re-discovered the pile of blank journals in the cupboard along with a list of suggestions on what they can be used for.  So I spent another half hour deciding what I might do with each journal, and made a list...can you see where this is going?  Anyway, I finally got back to my original plan, and used one of my blank books to list the projects I really need to do before starting anything else.

The first thing is to finish quilting and binding the unfinished baby quilts that were given to me by a friend when her sewing machine died.  Then I have to make a Xmas themed item by 25th February, for the One Xmas Item a Month Project.  Without consulting my new List journal, I can't remember what the third most important item is, but it doesn't matter - I must concentrate on the first one if I'm to get anywhere.  So I quilted the quilts today, and tomorrow I'll cut the binding, and hopefully have them bound by tomorrow night. Which leaves me two days to do my Xmas project....I'm only making a stocking from a printed panel this time, as it is quick to do, but hopefully by late March, I'll be more organised and have something a bit more worthwhile to show!

3 comments:

Linens and Royals said...

Oh those journals. I keep buying them too, they look so inviting. Just waiting to be filled with lists or thoughts or something!!
I won't try calligraphy or much else, I will stick to cross stitch, a bit of knitting and maybe one day use some of my fabric collection in a quilt.
Wish I could forget some of my U.F.O's. Think I'll make a list of them....

Liz in Kansas said...

Oh my, yes! I am notorious for making lists so I know just what you went through. I once made a list of my lists! OK, it was for a project to illustrate making a list, so I'm not sure it counts. Ha! Right now there is a list in front of me! Maybe if I could stop making lists I would get more done . . . or not.

Jane said...

You are going to have to have a list of your lists soon,lol. I do like lists, although I don't always follow them. I still get things jumping to the front of the queue