Morning Ritual

It has been an awfully busy week for me. We had some people down from corporate at work. They were installing new equipment. Then of course we had to run trials of new product.  I put in 42 hours just Monday through Thursday. Fortunately, Friday was a much slower day and I could leave early.  

Interestingly enough, despite all of that, I found the week to be much less stressful than it has been lately.  I am putting it down to my new morning ritual.  I have been carefully feeding my soul this week before going to work.

I get up at 5:30am. I go out to the kitchen, start the kettle, prep the French press with cacao and pack lunches. When the kettle is ready, I start the cacao steeping and head off to get dressed.  Once dressed I start playing general conference talks on my phone, pour myself a cup of cacao, and eat my breakfast. I am usually done eating by 6:30am. That leaves me a full 30 minutes to work in the studio. This routine feeds my spiritual and my creative side.  I go to work, relaxed and things run more smoothly. I really need to keep this up.

This week, I've mostly been folding fabric and putting it in totes. There is something very Zen about folding fabric.  It energizes me and yet relaxes me at the same time. I've gotten several bags and boxes of fabric into clear totes. I am not sure where I am going to put them yet. I need to do some decluttering in the dining room still. Then I will start with putting things on the shelves in there.  The important thing is I can see the fabric now and I can draw creative energy from it.

My first goal in the studio right now is to clear the area in front of the Long Arm.  I want to get my anti-fatigue mat down. My husband gave me the mat for Christmas. I am about half way to having it cleared. Once the mat is in place I will be less likely to pile stuff in front of the long arm.  More incentive to put things away, right away.  Plus I will have more incentive to use the long arm.  I tend to run around the house barefoot and the mat will make standing in front of the long arm much easier.

In my organizing, I came across some partial quilt blocks from 13 years ago. I had started them in a block of the month club with a very small local quilt shop. I never finished most of the blocks.  I was way too busy with work and the club was not what I needed.  We didn't sit and sew the block there, which is not all that unusual.  What was unusual was the $25 a month fee to get the next pattern. It would have been cheaper to buy the book (if it were still in print). The quilt shop owners were a little too mercenary and charged for everything.  Their reasoning was they had utility bills to pay. I loved the women, but they didn't understand the need to build a clientele with quilters. Instead they alienated them.  The shop closed a few years later.  As for the quilt blocks, they have been sitting in a bin since.  Last year, I sorted some of them out but couldn't bring myself to get rid of these.  This year I've kept the ones that were mostly completed and turned the rest into scraps.   I may make some pillows or little zipper pouches out of the three I've kept. The more I think about it I like the idea of pouches.

While folding fabric I did come across some more scraps tucked in with yardage.  I will start on getting those cut into useable pieces. I also sorted out short yardage and put those pieces in a separate bin.  So I will know up front that the fabric I am choosing will be a yard or more unless I pull it out of the short yardage bin.  Which will come in handy as I shop from my stash first this year.  

I did not get a quilt on the long arm this week.  Instead we canned 21 quarts of cabbage and 11 quarts of chicken. We needed to thin out the chicken flock before chick season starts up. I will be buying chicks this year. Plus the cabbage was starting to split so we needed to pick it.

So if I can figure out how to have energy at the end of the day, I hope to; trim a quilt, make and attach binding to 2 quilts, piece the back for the next quilt going on the long arm, then quilt it.  Plus fold fabric and trim up scraps.  All in 30 minute spurts (morning and night) over the next week.  Lots of plans, and I hope I can find the energy to accomplish it.

How do you include creative time into your busy day?
 

Quilting/Decluttering/Organizing/New Friend

Wow! Three weeks has gone by so fast.  Work has been especially busy and my hours have been erratic. A lot of stress there and some ugliness that will need to be worked out. I am trying to work on being more positive and more focused on the things that make me happy.

I finally quilted the other Church Ladies Apron quilt top last Sunday.  I made several mistakes and that quilt will remain in the house.  However I did  figure out a few things, one of which is how miserable it is to take out a whole row of quilting. This particular pattern was flowers and there were areas where it stitched back on itself. That meant taking out inch long sections of double stitching.  YUCK!!!! 

I also learned a little more about placement. I am learning and hopefully I can improve with each quilt. I am hoping to put a quilt on the long arm each week. Life got in the way this week but next week I will try to have Pretty in Pink on.  

I also managed to get the bindings cut for both the Church Ladies Aprons quilts.  Hopefully this week I will get them sewn and put on. I also started assembling the blocks for the Simply Squares quilt.  I think I am going to call it the Lily of the Valley Quilt. So small progress in a few areas which is good.

I haven't jumped deep into in the declutter challenge. I did go through all of my thread and pitch several spools. I am trying to use up thread on my piecing.  I also removed squatters but another one came in this week and I will need to find a home for it. I am not taking the challenge by days anymore.  I gave up lots of stuff last year and really the thing most out of hand is my fabric stash.

Since, I've decided my biggest problem is my stash storage, that means doing some hard work. Organizing the fabric so I know what I have and having it where I can see it is the biggest hurdle.  I am not going to have an answer for that right away. It will be a few months at least. I am hoping that I can inventory it and remove some stuff that I won't use. 

I listened to a pod cast where the guest was a organizer/studio designer for quilters. She talked about fabric having energy. She says we walk into the fabric store and get all this creative energy. Then we buy all this lovely fabric that has inspired up and when we get home, we put it out of sight.  She says our fabric should be where we can see it and be inspired by it. I am so guilty of this. I have six or eight big bins of fabric sitting in a closet. I have fabric sitting in bags all around the studio. I need to get it out. I need to fold it uniformly. And then for now put it in clear bins. I started that this week. I got six bags of fabric folded. I am going to do the fabric in bags and boxes in the studio first. I am hoping that once I've accomplished that, I can start going through the big bins in the office closet.  I do feel better just handling it.

While doing this Declutter challenge, I discovered that there was another lady who lives near me that was also doing the challenge. In a world wide group challenge, who would have thought that we would both be from the same small town in rural Georgia. She and I met up this past week and just started getting to know each other.  I hope to set up another "coffee date" with her in a week or two. She is just really nice and fun.

All and all it hasn't been too bad month at least on the quilting/home front. How have you been?