Reverse Course

January 7, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Wait. I thought we had just gotten started on this New Year’s thing, you say, and now you want to reverse course? Yes, because I am saving you from taking on too many things. And saving me, too. In some circles it’s called a “chuck-it list,” the reverse course of a “bucket list,” which we’ve all heard of way too much. I’ve also been reading about a parallel concept to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), which is JOMO (Joy of Missing Out), another way to not plow full speed ahead into Everything. For this is the week that resolutions get made, lists of quilts get written, projects get detailed. I’ve seen Way.Too.Many quilt-a-longs this week, too. Some new quilt ideas are genuinely tempting, like this one:

Lindlee of Plains and Pine has designed this, and it really looks wonderful. So many are doing it, so your feed will be filled with color and beauty all year long. I must resist the urge just this year. I’ve already made up my list for 2024, and am doubtful I’ll even get those done (one of which is one of my own patterns, long-lingering on every list I’ve written these past few years, but I want to make it in a different colorway).

What is driving this focus? My Index of Quilts: I’ve made 285 quilts. I count only the ones that are completely finished, which slows the pace a bit. But I’m really close to 300 quilts which is where I turn into a pumpkin, or something. (Stay Tuned.) But in order to get to that 300, which probably shouldn’t be a goal, I have to edit My 2024 List pretty tightly, not letting in other great ideas until I’ve reached that number.

I say this with some caution, knowing that “Focusing on pursuing our goals often leaves us running on a treadmill of desire and frustration,” as Valerie Tiberius writes in her article, “Why you should swap your bucket list with a chuck-it list.” She goes on to say, “Discarding goals that we really care about is difficult; failing to complete them can elicit sadness or regret.” Like me, with the above Temperature Quilt.

If I hadn’t just finished this one, there’s no way I wouldn’t be jumping in. (But there is always 2025.)

And I pinned up this appliqué mid-December, and have finished the two sides. Now to tackle the middle, with those vines. The dots were a birthday gift in 2022, and it’s taken me this long to figure out what I wanted to do. Working Title: Twilight Garden. So right there, there are two projects on my New Year’s List, along with seeing the Total Solar Eclipse in Texas (April), a trip to La Jolla, California (end of this month) with my three sisters to celebrate my recent milestone birthday, traveling with my DH this fall, and a list of quilts to be considered.

In days long past, I’d splash those goals up here — a way to keep “myself accountable” — or something like that. But given the tight real estate on the birthday cake (more candles than cake to hold them), I’ll politely decline that course of action. I’ll consider the best days the ones where I can work happy and contented, able to call out across the hallway to my husband, answer a phone call or take a walk, or pause to watch the bees attack the wisteria blossoms with gusto just outside my sewing room window — interrupting all evident progress.

Sometimes reversing course is the best way forward–

Summer 2016 Goals

May 20, 2016May 17, 2016 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

To introduce my newest goal, I need to talk about my new pattern covers. I made them in a new software I’m trying to learn, Affinity Photo, fearful that any day my upgrades on my Mac will render my old copy of Photoshop more obsolete than it already is. And no, I don’t want to pay a monthly fee to use their software (are you listening, Adobe?) I just heard that Affinity Photo is launching a beta version for PC users, too, although it was developed as a Mac software. So this is the first of my summer goals.

They also have Affinity Designer, which I’m also trying to learn, but since I don’t know Adobe’s Illustrator very well, it’s like banging my head against a wall. When my friend recovers from getting her daughter married off, I’m going to ~~bug~~ ask her to teach me a few things.

To keep reading is another summer goal, and this was the latest book I finished, while quilting up a few things for my Riverside Sawtooth post. It set me down so carefully in time and place. No, it’s not a grip-you-by-the-throat novel, but a quiet one, filled with well-drawn characters from a time in our past. I listened to it on Audible, which I would recommend, as the narrator really gets the sound of the voices and it adds another dimension to the story, I think.

Can I mention Summer Events? Here’s about the only political statement I’ll make on this blog: we recently (and sadly) lost our ability to have a primary election here in California. We’d all been so excited, actually asking everyone “who are you going to vote for?” and really getting interested in politics in general. We are one of the final primaries on the Presidential Election Schedule, and for once, we were going to Have a Say! Except now we aren’t, because of the recent events (which has made great theater, I have to say). So, hope everyone else in the United States had a great time voting–as usual, our votes won’t count. H o w e v e r. . . I will be watching the conventions. After teaching Critical Thinking a few years, and having my students watch the conventions and have them analyze the speeches, the rhetoric, looking for the logical fallacies and spotting all the weakness in candidates’ arguments, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s going to be a long, hot summer out here, and hey! we need something to compensate us for not getting a Primary Election.

And it that’s not enough excitement (!), we can always watch the Brazil Summer Olympics, although with all the talk lately, it may end up being like our primary. Click on the link at the end of the post to see this colorful Olympics design in action.

In other news, my garden is growing well, I’ve got a few more projects in the pipeline, but my main quilty goals this summer are as follows:

1. Finish My Small World.

2. Quilt Shine: The Circles Quilt

3. Quilt Riverside Sawtooth

4. Keep working on this quilt. Remember this? It was one of the units in the New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt. I’m halfway through, and my friend Laurel is all done with hers. And her quilt is gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous, so I need to perserve and Be A Finisher. (However, notice I didn’t say “finish this quilt,” but instead wrote “keep working on this quilt.” I am reasonable.)

5. Finish this quilt top, and if possible get it quilted, too.

6. And… this one, too.
I am all done with the hand-stitching. Now just to figure out the borders, and get it quilted.
Easy, peasy. We are coming right along in our Quilt-a-Long, with Step 5 coming up on June 2nd.

Other summer goals:

7. Be a good citizen and follow the national political process. Every other week ought to be about right.
8. Visit my kids and their kids. And my parents. And my husband’s family. That’s about eight car trips right there. I’d better work on #4–if only to have some hand sewing for car travel.
9. Celebrate my one-year anniversary of recovering from my surgery. I think a night in front of the TV would be appropriate, in my nightgown with hand-sewing on my lap, to memorialize where I was last year at that time.

10. And oh, yeah. Vote in California’s Primary. I’m so excited, yes yes yes.

Quilts

Goals for Quarter2 of 2014

April 21, 2014April 18, 2014 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Okay, translation:

1. Finish Lollypop Trees quilt. I need to finish up the quilting, sew on the sleeve, label and binding. Still looking for a name.

2. Quilt the Sol Lewitt’s Quilting Basics quilt. I have no idea how to do this, or what to back it with, but I’m thinking some of that Charleston Farmhouse I picked up last week.

3. Bee Blocks for April, May and June. There’s obviously no illustration for May or June blocks because they haven’t come my way yet. But *here* are April’s.

4. Finish off my Colorwheel Blossom Quilt Top. I’ve got a couple of ideas on how to expand it slightly. Then, next, will come the headache of How Do I Quilt This? A happy headache.

5. Ongoing: Selvage Blocks. I have centers cut for white, followed by cream. From sunshiny brights to neutrals.

6. Cut out Mexican Quilt. I call it that because the fabric I’ve chosen has a lot of calaveras, motifs, and colors from south of the border.

7. Cut out Good Luck Quilt. When our area had it’s last quilter fun-run, I missed it, but was able to get some of the yardage to make a quilt. I’ve got it dreamed up, now just have to execute.

8. Finish the Amish With a Twist-II quilt. You know: binding, hand-sewing the binding down, sleeve and label.

9. I’ve also thrown on sewing three skirts. Fabric bought and pattern chosen. Motivation missing.

Of course all of this flies in the face of Derek Sivers’ TED talk: Those who announce their goals are less likely to finish them. Watch below.

What I do find is that when I’m brain dead and only want to do *nothing at all* having that list taped to the front of my fabric cabinet gives me a place to start.