Seven Final Things.

Daily foibles trying to finish a quilt.

I fell into the same old trap. You know the one where the single line on your to-do list is actually seven items, each with their own requirements for thought and time and motivation?

This week, the single item on my list was “Finish Cherish Quilt”. It was actually on last week’s to-do list but I took longer than expected finishing the quilt top, so I pushed it over to this one. I even naively thought that while I was there, I could possibly whip out my low volume Cherish quilt top and put it through the machine too. Two finished Cherish Quilt tops to celebrate the end of the Cherish Club. Wouldn’t that be fun?!

When I’m being all hopeful and optimistic like this, I have one thing on my mind - machine quilting. I love machine quilting. I love the long straight lines, the feeling of the home stretch, the zone, the story in my headphones. What I fail to imagine is the finding and auditioning backing prints, cleaning up my sewing table so that I can find my machine again, sewing up the backings, then realising that I haven’t pressed the quilt tops, pressing them, moving the dining table and cleaning the dining room floor, finding the masking tape (which in my house, suffers the same fate as pens - you buy them in bulk and spend half your time just trying to find a single one - usually in my 11 year old’s room), laying out the backing, the wadding, the quilt top, and then finally pinning the layers together so that I can finally sit at my machine. After machine quilting, making the binding usually takes a similar amount of push and organisation, but I’m so close to the finish line by then, it’s easier to make myself do it.

I entered Monday this week, sure of my to-do list and my ability to fulfil it, but Monday is a day I set aside for working on my book, so rather than dive in, I kept my date with book-things and promised myself a start on Tuesday.

Tuesday mornings are for admin - email, bits and pieces on my website, Instagram scheduling, etc. I got through those, made myself a coffee and came over to my machine. That’s when it hit me. The whole long list of things of things to do before I could sit at the machine. Ugh. Tomorrow.

On Wednesday mornings, I stitch with my mum. I can’t take a quilt to baste, so I took a book quilt to stitch. Afterwards, I walked home, made lunch, and took another look at my sewing table, and decided it could wait till tomorrow. It was hot and I felt like EPP under the air-con.

On Thursday mornings, I have my weekly meeting with Lisa. We talk over the book, any customer enquiries, Black Friday, Christmas holidays. After we say goodbye, I make myself look at my sewing room. I know I need to adjust my list and just start on the first thing. The first thing is tidy up my sewing table. I can do that. I put on my audiobook (the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron) and start to pick things up and put them away. Just one thing at a time, one thing after the other. I clear a space at the machine, I clear away the ironing board, I tidy up up cutting bench. I’m now ready for the next thing on my list - iron the quilt top. This takes me the rest of the afternoon.

On Friday mornings, I write my weekly newsletter. Friday mornings are when I see if I got through my to-do list. Finished the thing I planned to write about. This week I didn’t. Good things I have next week to try again! This time with a more filled out list and realistic expectations. Choose the backing and sew it up, baste, quilt, bind, photograph. 5 things for 4 days. I’m going to need to do at least 2 things a day.

It makes me wonder if many of you will spend next week with sewing set aside and Thanksgiving to prepare for? I hope you too are able to walk through it with reasonable expectations and grace for what gets put off till later. I hope it’s a good chance for connection and joy. And then I hope you’ll meet me back here for my annual Black Friday sale! Maybe I’ll have a finished Cherish Quilt to share with you!

Happy stitching,

Jodi. xx

PS. Set a reminder! 20% off EVERYTHING starts next Friday morning, Sydney time. That’s Thursday evening for North America and the middle of the night for Europe. See you there!