Wednesday morning at 11 Central/9 Pacific for
Coffee with Paula Reid on my Instagram Account. Please join us. We’ve got some news to share and would like to share it with you.
I am not able to quilt live again this week due to another commitment. There are moments when I’m grateful for the help of friends when things feel really overwhelming. With the Moxie out of commission for the next few days (depends on when the leveler pole arrives). I am rearranging the sewing room and my office to make them functional for me. Debby introduced me to a new platform for setting goals and working within in that time frame to accomplish certain tasks. She offered to do this for me yesterday (Sunday) and it was probably one of the best things. It allowed me to work in smaller segments and focus on a couple of specific things in order then I’d check in with her, and do the next part of it.
I can assure you this helped a lot. I’m not quite ready to share photos however I’m going to take this approach today with the things I need to do, part of this is to get ready for Wednesday so I can be in the sewing room while I’m on the Instagram Live. But also for another gift arriving that evening. As a quilter who teaches free-motion machine quilting and color usage in the quilting the hard thing is to break things down into segments we can approach.
When my husband and I worked together in ministry with two Priests the skill sets were complimentary, some with the bigger vision, some with the individual steps, and still others who were the fine detail doers. By making the most of our skill sets we were able to grow the ministry in some really beautiful ways.
When we look at quilts we see the overall finished pattern and the steps seem daunting because as quilters we have a unique gift of seeing all the steps in that finished image, all at the same time. I can see another use for the Quilter’s Planner from C&T, write the breakdown steps for accomplishing the project. By seeing the smaller steps laid out like that offers us the opportunity to go accomplish and check off the steps as we do them. We can breakdown some of the tasks further based on the time we have to do them. For example if there is a lot of cutting to do and you have twenty minutes today to work on it then break down the cutting to something like, “cut the red fabric into x, y & z pieces, and label them.” If you can accomplish something else after checking off that task great. If you accomplish that task completely in that twenty minutes, great. This breaking down of the tasks allows us to extend to ourselves a level of patience that we would extend to another quilter and enjoy what we can do rather than focusing in on what we can’t.
As soon as I’m finished writing this blog post I’m setting a timer writing down the things I want to accomplish today including: taking a shower, doing the dishes, one meeting mid-morning, and my break down goals for the sewing room. This does make it easier to focus, and at the end of the day to know I accomplished something.
I look forward to seeing you Wednesday when I have coffee with Paula Reid. Please remember that I have classes available, and a Zoom account. I’ve started a YouTube Channel. Thank you for sharing this quilting journey with me! You’re the best.
Happy Quilting,
Teri
