The Zeigarnik Effect: the Power of the Unfinished

July 6, 2025July 4, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Adrian Zumbrunnen, a human interface designer, wrote recently about how “Blooma Zeigarnik [on the right] and her professor of Gestalt psychology were having coffee at a bustling restaurant…While waiting for the check, the two eagerly discussed an odd observation they both made. Somehow waiters seem to better recall bills that were still open than the ones that had been settled. It seemed like the moment a bill was paid, it vanished from the waiters’ memory. Based on this simple insight, Zeigarnik conducted a series of experiments that showed that unfinished tasks loom larger than finished ones.”

As I was fascinated by this idea, and after chasing down a few rabbit holes (see complete bibliography at the end), I came to learn that the unfinished has a certain power that finished items do not.

The term for this is the Zeigarnik Effect.

This is not hot news for quilters.

Joshua Everts defines it as the “power of unfinished business or interrupted or uncompleted activity to hold a privileged place in memory,” in other words, those undone tasks just won’t leave us alone. He notes that they “create a cognitive burden, weigh more heavily on the mind, and are more easily recalled than completed tasks.”

In another unsigned article, it states that the “Zeigarnik Effect explains why people are haunted by unfulfilled goals and may be more apt to recall what they haven’t achieved than what they have. Some have speculated that the cognitive burden of unfinished work causes some to see themselves negatively and contributes to such problems as impostor syndrome.”

But while it is not hot news for us, the people who coined the term UFO (Un-Finished Object), how do these unfinished objects affect us?

Zumbrunnen notes that “Unfinished tasks lead to cognitive tension, a feeling of restlessness and discomfort that makes us seek closure and come back to it again and again. This effect goes beyond remembering individual items on a bill. It affects whether we achieve our goals, our creative output, and how we pay attention.”

Carol and I were discussing our progress on our Posh Penelope blocks, and I wrote:

Public Service Announcement:

Another Public Service Announcement:
The Zeigarnik effect should not be confused with the Ovsiankina effect, an urge to complete tasks previously initiated. Maria Ovsiankina, a colleague of Zeigarnik, investigated the effect of task interruption on the tendency to resume the task at the next opportunity.

Yes, let’s not confuse the two, although maybe what I was experiencing this week was more of the Ovsiankina effect? Nah. I’ve been working on this Posh Penelope quilt for forever, like since 2020. In my mind, the Ovsiankina effect is more like finishing making dinner. Or changing loads of laundry.

Yet Another Public Service Announcement:
What does the Zeigarnik Effect teach us about multitasking?
The Zeigarnik Effect makes a powerful case against multitasking. Focusing on one task at a time will avert intrusive thoughts of unfinished work that will only create delays in finishing all the tasks. Completion of each task approached sequentially instead of simultaneously will clear mental space for the next task.

Will you please stop with these Public Service Announcements:
Yes. But you should know that taking the first step on a project, no matter how small, can create enough tension when the task is interrupted to motivate the resumption of the task, doing an end-run around procrastination. (I can’t help you if you are addicted to your phone. That’s a whole other blog post.)

So I cut out the rest of the Posh Penelope blocks. Over the next few days, I’ll get to the sewing. Understanding that having this project hanging over my head (like an anvil) was in reality stopping my creative work, helped me get going in going forward.

Other Interesting ideas from Everts to aid in managing these open-ended tasks are:
• • Create intentional closure points in ongoing projects. Even if an initiative isn’t fully complete, establishing clear milestones allows your mind to experience completion moments.
• • Develop systematic ways to document and track progress. This helps reduce the mental load while maintaining awareness of important tasks.
• • Practice regular “mind clearing” sessions. Whether through journaling, team reviews, or simple list-making, giving your brain regular opportunities to process and organize open loops is crucial.

Reading this helped me understand the value of placing little labels (or “intentional closure points”) on my ongoing progress. With the BOM, it will run one year, so I know I’ll be finished with the blocks in December, and the quilt some time after that. With the quilting on my New York Beauties quilt, I mark the days so I know what I have completed as I want to finish this by early fall. With the Posh Penelope blocks, I made a chart to “document and track progress,” coloring in squares. These small signposts help me manage the tension that Zeigarnik identified, and keeps my quilting projects from torturing me with their incomplete state.

Good luck in all that you are working on–

Bibliography, by order of appearance:

Zumbrunnend, Adrian. The Power of Unfinished, blog.

Everts, Joshua. The Zeigarnik Effect: Understanding the Weight of Unfinished Business.

Unsigned article, Zeigarnik Effect, in Psychology Today.

How much does your anvil weigh? question on Reddit, my go-to source for internet information now that Google has jumped the shark and insists on putting resource-intensive AI into every answer.

Ovsiankina effect, discussed in the article on the Zeignernik Effect, Wikipedia.

Multi-tasking discussed in the Psychology Today Article (above), as is Procrastination.

And bonus: a video of Adrian Zumbrunnen talking about talking with bots, if you are into that sort of thing. Starts at 2 minutes in.

Creating · Free Quilt Pattern · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts

This and That: No June Gloom, please.

June 15, 2025June 16, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

First off: Happy Father’s Day to the men in your life, and especially the men in mine: my husband, Supreme Quilt Holder, three sons, and one son-in-law, then a gang of grandsons. Here’s a early photo:

(Missing: three more grandsons, three more granddaughters. I just love all those little girls in their beautiful dresses.)

There’s this phenomena about June of every year, when the deserts heat up, drawing cool, moist air further inland from the coast. The locals have a name for it, which I hate. I just call it Reprieve from the Heat for Another Month, or something. because I do love the cool mornings. Yes, I do.

My friend Mary gets too much of this cooling layer and we are always mentioning it in our correspondence, me complaining about the coming heat, and her bemoaning the too-cool summer. Welcome to Sunny California.

So here is my first Posh Penelope for June: all sunny and bright, in a good kind of way.

A little less sunny, but still bright.

Full out fog in these, with all those blues. I’m going to have to ramp up with brighter colors next go-round, but I do like those toothbrushes on the blue fabric.

Here’s the group so far. 41 blocks are planned, and I’ve made 27, more than halfway. But I probably said that last time. You should see Carol’s stack — they are wonderful!!

Here’s Sherri’s Block of the Month for June. It’s a fun series and I’m using all her fabrics (picked up one more new last week). But alas, the Friendship Star and I are NOT friends. Nor do I like these stars:

I also don’t like sour gummies or the smell of coconut shampoo, but I don’t think that has anything to do with quilting.

So I substituted this: I have no idea what Sherri has planned next, so I may be moving other centers of hers around, but since I’m allergic to the star she chose, here’s my spool of thread.

And here’s the back of it. It’s fast: sew the sides on, sewing only between the dots. Then sew from the dots to the corners.

And yes, here’s your free PatternLite. And you’re welcome. Click below the spool to download.

Six-inch Spool_OPQuilt Download

Here are the six I’ve made so far:

This is me, making a mess. It’s good to document messes once in a while. I was learning a new way of making circles. (Last post) I know these photos drives one of my friends crazy; she is a very tidy sewer, but her sewing room is also about 4x as big as mine; a lot of stuff gets piled up in mine. I have learned to focus and ignore the periphery, a skill I learned when I had four small children and had to get the quilt done:

Like this one, from the Early Years. My son Chad now has this Sunshine and Shadow quilt — somewhere, he says — but even if it’s lost in his attic, I still have photos. Machine-pieced, hand quilted with a layer of flannel inside…not batting.

For a fun click, head to this write-up of the kimono exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. The article shows both traditional and more modern kimono.

I think I kind of jumped the shark a couple of posts ago, writing about sewing nightgowns and stuff, but things are going better this week. The New York Times must have known I needed a creative tune-up, and published a five-day “Creativity Challenge.” (If you don’t subscribe, here’s a link to the first article.) In it they note that “Research links creativity to happiness and well-being, and a 2021 study found that older people who participated in creative activities showed less cognitive decline than those who did not” (Passarella, NYTimes).

In an earlier missive, Elizabeth Passarella, the writer, said “You are all creative in some way. There’s a definition of creativity that researchers use: generating something novel that is also useful.”

Generating something novel that is also useful. I need to print that out and tape it to my sewing machine. The first exercise was doodling:

We had to begin with a circle and go from there. I’m do not consider myself a hand-drawing-artist, so I did the best I could with a screen and a mouse. Don’t know where that second drawing came from–maybe from the state of politics in our nation today (doesn’t it make you crazy, too?).

So take a listen to Amie McNee if you need a shot of “why should I create.” Her TEDx talk was something I happened on this week, and I found inspiration in many things she said [words in brackets are mine]:

We need to be at the piano [or the sewing machine] making our art more than ever as we navigate these incredibly difficult things. Art is not just for kids; art is not just for adults…we need it now. [One reason is that] creativity is the missing pillar of self-development. [Another reason is that] when we create, we have agency.
Another beautiful reason to create is because it reclaims your most valuable resource…our attention in a society that profits from you being stuck on your phone. We are a culture of consumption and we’ve forgotten how to make. We need less consumption, more creation.

The act of making art is inherently generous.

I’ve been slowly working on this. There are a lot of thread changes, and some unpicking, as it’s been a while since I was at the quilting machine. I don’t quilt every day, so I like to keep track with the labels.

That plastic bag in the Messy Room photo? I pulled it off this pile of gorgeous goodness from Stash Fabrics. I wish I could say I was influenced by all the pansies I saw in Krakòw, but the truth is I ordered these before I went. But maybe I could see into the future?

In the NYTimes creative series mentioned above, I especially liked how they talked about a form of daydreaming:
“You’ll be more likely to capture original ideas if you’re in “atypical salience processing mode,” which is a fancy term for a state in which you’re focusing on the unconventional. Look at a piece of abstract art, or stare out your window in a way you usually don’t, paying attention to the space between buildings or the shadows formed by trees.”
(You can read the article with this gift link: here)

Happy Day Dreaming!

Layer your summer salad into a bowl:

Cook a cob of corn in the microwave, wrapped in wax paper, for 4 minutes. Run under cool water to cool it down then slice off the cob.
Tomatoes (smaller and flavorful like Campari tomatoes)
Romaine lettuce, sliced
Bit of arugula
Radish chunks
Cucumbers, cut in half lengthwise, then sliced 1/3″ thick
Chunks of rotisserie chicken
Focaccia (my favorite recipe is here — I make it every other Saturday night (10 minutes to whip it up in the evening and in the morning, 10 minutes to prep for the baking, plus rising time).
Drizzle Lemon Vinaigrette over everything.

Anywhere you travel in Europe, they call arugula “rocket” for some reason. Here’s a little joke for you from the internet.

300 and Beyond · Appliqué · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

Kraków Circles

June 7, 2025June 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

I have this line of patterns I call PatternLite. Usually they start out as just a block I’m kind of doodling around with and want to share. Then I decide I want to make it, and take a lot of photos, and work out some helps and aids and tips and tricks, and before I know it, it has blossomed into a full-fledged — or at least partly-fledged — pattern.

Kraków Circle started out as a free block on the post about my visit to that city, and touring all the churches. Then I thought it might be interested to try out Sharon Keightley’s circle method, since there are bunch of little circles in this design. And then I added a different view, different color way, and so on. Here’s my first stab at the little circles:

She has you use a long pin as your handle, and then using the shiny side of freezer paper, you ease up the fabric, ironing to make it stick (Iink is below) I usually do the gather-stitch around the outside, and then slip in a plastic circle and press, with some spray starch. That just did not work on these little orbs:

You can see how over-full they are. The first try with this, it took me about five minutes and the circle was a bit of a mess. But after about 7 or 8 tries, they were nice and round, so I re-did the gather-circles.

Here’s my one-minute video and I hope inserting the video works! (I’m trying something new.) I know there is a little bump on the circle’s outside, but when I appliqué that, I can ease it in with my needle.

Here’s Sharon’s version of making circles. And she also has a version for the petal shapes, too, found on her page of Appliqué Video Tutorials.

I use Painter’s Palette Solids, purchased from here. This has been my go-to color scheme for years, ever since this quilt, but I was happy to see that it also drew on the stained-glass windows from Krakòw.

I bagged the pieces for the blocks, so I wouldn’t get lost.

I made a placement guide for the block, which is included in the pattern. I also added a print-a-ton-of-circles-at-once page, at the end.

I printed that page onto freezer paper, the how-to shown on this post. Sometimes, I chunked the 12 circle sections together, layered them up carefully, stapled the pages together, and then cut them out.

I also folded the freezer paper into smaller pieces, layering it up, then traced on a petal. Staple the layers so they won’t shift, as shown.

In the pattern, I give the tips for tracing the placement guide, and here, I’ve slipped the block underneath, taping it into place. (The placement guide is pinned to a board, but you could also tape it to a workspace.)

One all pinned into place, and another ready to come off the pinboard.

I was listening to a book, so I can’t tell you how long it took me to appliquè these all in place (maybe 90 minutes?) but it didn’t feel tedious, as the circles had been prepared.

I flipped over the block when I was finished, and cut out a small circle from the back — and slipped the paper out. Sharon Keightley suggests that cutting it out in a circle (instead of just cutting a slash) will keep the quilt back more intact.

I slipped out the freezer paper from the larger pieces as I appliquéd them.

Here’s the thumbnail of the pattern: it grew from 3 pages to nine. However, I’ve still priced it as a PatternLite — less than a slice of pizza, a pot of basil from Trader Joe’s (ask me how I know), or a Kouign Amann pastry from a bakery in Kraków.

If you like to make circles, here you go–

Pattern can be purchased in my PayHip Pattern Shop. If you have the introductory version, this one may be more helpful.

Quilting and the Churches of Kraków

May 25, 2025August 17, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Traveling is a blitz on the senses, a clearing of the mind, and making connections that are new or novel. I’m always making quilting connections when I travel, I suppose you are too: new patterns, repetitive designs that could be a quilt are not uncommon on our Instagram feeds or in quilt shows.

If you are new here — and welcome — I often take a small diversion from the *making* to the ideas that propel our quilts. This is one of those posts, and it centers around the creativity shown by a group of Polish parishes during the Communist years in this country. And actually, they are all over the country of Poland, not just in Kraków.

I wrote about the church in Warsaw, our first one to see, and believe me — now that I am home — I vow that if I ever go back to that lovely country my husband and I will rent a car and go see more. They are so different that the usual gothic and decorative churches that we tourists usually go to. (I do like some of these and will show a couple more in this post.) I first found out about what’s known as the Day-VII Churches during the usual pre-trip fatigue: searching for what to see in a given city, I typed in “churches in Kraków” and saw a photo of this church:

Our Lady of Częstochowa Parish, Kraków – Poland

Whoa. All those triangles, the different angles, the airiness — some architect had been incredibly creative in making this. I found out that there were about 3600 churches with similar heritage. The man who hunted down and gathered all these — Kuba Snopek — also worked with Izabela Cichońska and Karolina Popera; together they compiled a catalogue, which I ordered and read. I watched his Powerpoint presentation. I hunted and searched and read and soon realized that I was limited by my time in Poland and had to choose what we would go see. Sometimes there was information and in English, and other times there was not.

Interior, Our Lady of Częstochowa (Some video of the interior)

A lot of these churches were impacted by the changes of Vatican II. In reading about this preciously unknown subject, I learned a lot about how the desire to have the priests more in front of the congregation and to include the participants in the worship experience, changed how the architects designed the churches. Communication with the Vatican was spotty, at best, during the early years after the war, so some parishes/architects turned to the ideas found in theater construction; broad expanses became more common instead of the more traditional narrow nave and side aisles.

(looking toward the rear of church, with hexagon windows)

While we did go to these on a Sunday, we worked to not take photos during their services, with only a couple of exceptions. However, there were many photographers around that day, as it was a celebration of First Communion for a whole group of young people, and the joy and celebration was palpable and only added to the experience we had.

(zoom-in of hexies and organ)

Often when I see a new quilt design, I’m asking How did they do that? Why are the colors distributed that way? Why were those colors used? and finally, Can I replicate this?

I was already working on hexies on our train and airplane rides, so I was familiar with this element, certainly.

But what prompted the architect to insert them where they were? Was the lack of materials the reason for subdividing all those larger triangle windows? I knew that many of these churches were made from whatever was available, and sometimes the parishioners themselves were working at night by the lights of car headlights, using their own small concrete mixers to help pour the larger structural elements.

from here. This church has a nickname of the White Batman, which we did not get to see. Be sure to link over to see the construction photos, all very rudimentary, with lots of scaffolding since there were no cranes (which couldn’t be obtained at that time).

Do we arrange designs by the amount of fabric we have? All.The.Time. I found myself thinking about the nature of making, of design. Do our construction techniques vary according to the design we have in mind? Yes.

However, mostly I was in awe.

Another church, close by, was built in a giant housing project, nestled beside buildings, as were many churches. Imposing in stature, they nonetheless adapted to the area they were in.

The entry is behind that square stone wall. We arrived about 10 minutes before their services started. I had done my research, but somehow open hours were hard to find, but I knew from my own experience that Sunday was probably a good day to visit a church.

The full name of this church is Church of Our Lady Queen of Poland, Kraków, but they call it Arka Pana, and it is in the Nowa Huta section of the city. The outside is clad in small rocks, and St. John Paul II, who had been given a moon rock, donated it to the church (although I think it is not embedded in this concrete).

(upper balcony) We left just as the service started, and went outside:

I wrote this on Instagram:
Our Lady Queen of Poland Church, also known as Arka Pana, is in Kraków, Poland and is one of the Day-VII churches. They are a group of churches built from 1945 to approximately 1990 in Poland, and they are mostly modern in style, built by the Catholic parishes themselves, with different architects. This church was about 30 minutes away from the touristy center, and we walked through a huge Communist housing block to reach the church. It was well worth the effort. We snapped a few shots before Mass began, and only after seeing all the rest of the congregation snapping photos (it was First Communion Day) did we sneak a few more. We then slipped outside to admire this church, reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut in France.

Now for the more traditional inspiration, the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. It’s more modern –haha– as compared to some of the other churches in the area. I learned that:

The church, among the first tall brick-and-sandstone built in Krakow, was originally consecrated in the 13th century. Hundreds of years, later, St. Francis’ Basilica found itself in the center of a very different city. Krakow became the center of the “Young Poland” art movement between 1890 and 1918, a modernist style that became known for its art nouveau style. One of the founders of the movement, Stanisław Wyspiański, won a contest to repaint the church and turned it into what is still the most original church design in Poland today. (from here)

It’s that design by Wyspiański which engaged me:

Parts of these images remind me of the economy blocks I’m currently working on.

It’s not exactly the same, but a suggestion.

Yep. I collected pattern and image and ideas and great ideas to fold into quilts in the next little while.

a Wyspiański window; I loved all his wall paintings of flowers!

Our trip tag on Instagram is #poland_prague2025 if you want to see more of our trip.

And because you’ve been so patient in exploring these ideas, I worked up a small idea from the blocks in St. Mary’s Basilica. Below is an illustration of the pattern and a mock-up of colors. Link to quilt pattern is here.