Hello, 2021

I sat down this morning and made myself write out a to-do list for this year. If I don’t have a hard copy in front of me listing the tasks at hand, I am going to get distracted. This is a b̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ balancing act between the two halves of my brain—prioritizing those things I want to finish while leaving space for creativity to happen.

Rather than post the line items, I’ll give a broad overview in each category:

Quilts: Charisma Horton, the designer whose embroidery retreat I attended in October 2019, had over 100 quilt designs published in the space of 18 months, many of them in magazines. She says that she just decided to start putting things out there to see what would happen. (She also has three longarm machines and a couple of people who quilt for her.) I am trying to adopt a “put it out there and see what happens” mindset instead of overanalyzing everything.

[Someone on Twitter posted an anecdote about a college professor in a creative field—pottery, maybe?—who divided his class in half. He told the first half of the class that they could submit everything they designed to be graded. The second half was told to pick the best piece and submit only that one to be graded. The quality of designs ended up being higher in the half of the class that submitted everything.]

I will start with Noon and Night, but I’ve already got two more designs made up in EQ8. I am eager to start working on one of them. During one particularly delusional moment, I thought my goal should be to release one quilt design a month. I’ve scaled that back to four patterns in 2021. I think that’s do-able. I would like for my designs to feature lesser-known blocks, as we all know the quilting world doesn’t need any more sawtooth star or log cabin quilt designs. Mine will also tend toward scrappier designs, for reasons I’ll talk about in future blog posts.

I expect that my machine quilting skills will expand, too, along the way. A week ago, I didn’t know how to quilt with rulers. Now I do.

Embroidery: I still feel like I am fumbling my way through this. Either I am not reading the right resources or they simply don’t exist, but every time I open a new embroidery pattern, I am struck by how much knowledge is assumed, especially when it comes to threads. (The last time I identified this kind of gap in the creative literature, it resulted in me writing a book on finishing knitted garments. I am not going down that road again.) I don’t think my assessment is far off base, as I am reminded of trying to source class materials for the basic wool embroidery class in Spokane a few years ago when all that was given in the class supply list was “A variety of threads and appropriate needles.”

I am currently working on a wool pincushion. I have an ambitious wallhanging started, barely. And after the embroidered squash debacle—abandoned for the moment—I treated myself to the “Urban Chicken” pattern by Three Sheep Studio. This is a substantial, comb-bound booklet with directions for making nine wool embroidery chickens. The instructions are detailed and the materials called for are ones I already have in my stash. I don’t have to hunt through Instagram posts to find the appropriate videos and stitch instructions. I am reserving that pattern as a treat for when I accomplish something big, like releasing Noon and Night.

Homesteading stuff: My goal was to have the Kratky system set up by the end of November. I am now a month behind. That needs to be done this week or next. Seeds and pigs need to be ordered. (The Baker Creek catalog arrived in the mail yesterday.) I need a master plan for the big garden this season which includes fixing the strawberry bed and establishing an herb garden out there. I need to figure out what to do with the old herb garden, which thwarted all of my attempts to eradicate it. That area might still become part of a bigger chicken yard. I have to investigate whether the Forest Service still sells larch seedlings, and if so, I will get some and plant them out in the woods where we lost all those trees. The basement is crying out to be cleaned and organized. I have a couple of sewing machines to work on. The husband and I probably also need to have our annual farm meeting and check in with each other.

Of course, I recognize that I had a plan for 2020, too, and that went out the window about halfway through January. I am going to be charitable and assume that the universe was trying to tell me that the timing wasn’t right for some of those goals.

I outlined half the stars on Noon and Night yesterday.

I’ll do the other half today, and then figure out how I want to quilt the inside of them. I am trusting the process. It has worked out so far.