Where to start? Somehow, I want to say “Once upon a time” so that is where I will start and hope you won’t get bored reading this. Once upon a time I remembered growing up with Mom would take a piece of checkered fabric and bring it along when our family went on vacation in Wisconsin. Since Dad died when I was in fifth grade, this was a good two or three years before that, Mom was always looking for ways to keep young girls busy. She would have quiet time which meant that Pat (my sister) and I had to sit down and be quiet for 30 full minutes. I think it was her "gather her sanity" time. To help with that, she would take checkered fabric and teach us how to do some stitches. She would take a pen and draw out a straight line on the fabric for us to practice the running stitch. As we got older, she would mark out X’s on the fabric and we could learn how to do a cross stitch. That led me to get into crewel embroidery. That lasted until 1972 (yes, I remember THAT year) but then for some reason I let it drop, and it wasn’t until after Grandma died and Mom and I were going through her stuff that I found her embroidered quilt squares.
Quilts? I remember Grandma having blankets (later to find out that some of those blankets were quilts) but I had never seen her do anything like quilting. Talking to Mom about it, a whole new world opened to me. Once again, I had a craft that I wanted to try. The only problem was where to start. I had planned on giving the quilt to mom after it was finished so I took Grandma’s quilt squares with us, Mom and I went to a quilt store. Wow! Talk about not knowing what we were walking into. Luckily the owner of the store was there, and she took us in tow and by the time we left, Mom had picked out fabric for filler blocks, backing, and what would later be turned into sashing. Did I do it right? Of course not. I was determined to do this by hand. What did I know? I just went with the flow and after being invited to join a guild, and not liking it because they were rude, I decided to just go with the flow. After I had put the blocks together, they didn’t look good so I (cough) appliqued sashing and then added a border all around. Little did I know that would come in handy.
Since I really didn’t know what I was doing, I stopped quilting. Nothing like getting discouraged. Then one of the ladies at work (which turned into 3 ladies over time) helped me learn how to cut and piece a little bit. Still no sewing machine so it was all hand done. My stitches were bad (still are).
When my brother died, he left me just enough money with the condition that I get quilting supplies. Soon I had an Accuquilt Go and dies, my first sewing machine, and other necessary things. I took them home and then after playing with the GO! I wasted a lot of fabric and thread trying to sew something.
Something had to be done and then I found Missouri Star Quilt Company and Jordan Fabrics. I still hadn’t considered going onto YouTube yet but it wasn’t long before I started to realize that even if I didn’t have a lot, I could still watch for free how to do some things. I’m not sure when I ran across Deb’s videos but I like how she stumbled through those early vids (sorry Deb) but I learned some things from her and have been following her since.
You all know what the problem is with getting the craft bug. You start to gather things, start things, and get a lot of UFOs. When I was getting ready to retire, I knew that I wouldn’t have enough money to support my CURRENT craft and something had to be done. I went overboard on getting a lot of fabric and other sewing supplies in preparation for moving. After retiring I suddenly noticed how much I really HAD collected. Nothing was getting done and I still didn’t have a good grasp on how to make some of the blocks. I was determined that I had to work on getting organized.
Are you still reading this? WOW! Thanks!
The first thing I had to do was to get rid of a lot of fabric that I had no idea why I had bought it. I think I was just in a buying frenzy afraid that I wouldn’t have anything to work on when I had 24 hours to myself and without a car to drive anywhere and how to fill up the day. Some of the fabric was mailed to friends and some I…no judgment…was thrown out. I put a lot of the fabric in a box marked free on the edge of my lawn and eventually I got my fabric down. What to do with all the fabric that I had left? That is when I discovered BOM/BOWs and similar programs.
I was terrified of doing a quilt. Even wall hanging sizes gave me tremors. But thanks to Rhonda Woodsmall I learned to look at quilt blocks and patterns differently. You can find Rhonda's page on Facebook but here is an example of how she taught me to look at the blocks not as a whole, but in smaller segments. Here is an example of how she would break down a block.
So, remember you don’t have to look at the quilt all at once. Like that old joke about how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
That is how I also look at BOMs and BOWs. If you see a pattern you like but think you can’t do it? Break it down into bite size pieces. You might not think you can do the full quilt as shown but with BOMs/BOWs you don’t need to do it all at once. Instead of doing the whole quilt in one month…do one block in a month. You can break it down into various stages in that month. One week you can get the fabric. One week you can cut the fabric for that ONE block. Another week you can lay it out on a design board or even quilt that ONE block. By the end of the month, you will have one block done. At the end of the year, you would have 12 blocks done which is only one or two steps away from a completed quilt top. That also works for BOWs (blocks of the week). That is how I do my Blackwork. If I had to look at the whole thing at once I would never get it done.
Do you have a lot of UFOs? Tackle them in the same way. Take one out and look to see what you have to do on it yet. Do you have all the parts to it? Do you REALLY want to work on it or are you past that part in your quilting adventures? Give yourself permission to NOT want to work on something. Your tastes change over time so maybe it doesn’t appeal to you any longer. Can you use any part of it? I have taken some of my blocks from projects I no longer want to work on and turn them into smaller wall hangings or table runners. You can even turn some blocks into hot pads, or sew them together and even use it as batting? Think what else you can do with it and if nothing else…take a breath…and see if anybody else would like it.
Where do Mystery Quilts fall into this theme? For me I have come to the realization that it is hard for me to collect ALL segments of a mystery quilt one month at a time. So instead, I have decided that I will collect them and then if I get all the segments, I can see how it will look. If I don’t like it, then I haven’t spent the money on getting fabric only to decide at the end that I don’t like it.
So now I collect a lot of patterns and before I can start to work on a new project, I have to also work on a UFO. I might not finish that UFO right away but taking those small elephant bites means it will eventually get done…either as it was intended or repurposed into a smaller project that can be completed quicker.
So just remember:
1. Don’t give up.
2. It is ok not to complete the whole project.
3. It is ok to only finish part of a project and repurpose it.
4. It is ok to get rid of a project if you honestly don’t think you will EVER work on it (yes, I have done that and will probably do it again.
5. It is ok to set it aside and work on another craft for a bit. It is ok to put your project in time out. YOU're the boss, not your fabric/pattern/craft.
6. Your brain needs a break too and let your eyes rest from working on the same thing all the time. For me it is why I switch between cross stitch, Blackwork, Quilting, and candle wicking.
I know that not everybody can work like I do, but I just thought I’d give you an idea of what works for me. We never know what might work until we try it. There is more than one way to do a project, what works for you?
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