Looking at the Forest Instead of the Trees

Part of what makes the husband and I such a good team—once we sort out who gets to be in charge—is that he is really good at systems-level thinking and I am a master of details. Building his new shop is a perfect example of how we work together. He managed the overall vision of what he wanted and I figured out how to pay for it (without taking out a loan). The problem I have is that sometimes I get stuck looking at all the pretty trees and can’t find my way out of the forest.

I watched the latest episode of the A Quilting Life podcast on YouTube the other day, and Sherri McConnell mentioned a new app she had on her phone for managing her life. It’s called AnyList. She’s also got a new quilt planner out, as does Lori Holt. I thought about what I needed to help me manage all of my projects. I don’t want a phone or tablet app. I want something low-tech, because I like to add notes, doodle, and make liberal use of my collection of highlighters.

The husband has a whiteboard in his office. It’s divided into four sections: Bid, Sold/Pending, In Progress, and Done. The job name starts out under Bid and moves to each successive category as it goes to completion. It gives him a higher-level view of what he’s got going on at any moment in time. I looked at that and decided I needed something similar for all my quilt projects, because what I really need is a way to track them through the pipeline, from idea to finished quilt. I’m not a fan of whiteboards, though. I really need something portable.

I picked up a binder, some tabbed dividers, a pack of loose-leaf gridded paper, and a new pack of highlighters in town yesterday and made myself a project management notebook. So far, I like it. I even woke up in the middle of the night and remembered a couple of projects that are languishing, unfinished, in bins, so I’ll dig them out and add them to the notebook for accountability.

In addition to listing each project in the appropriate category, I also physically stacked projects under the same category together. If I have to set them aside for any length of time, at least they can keep each other company.

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I pieced the backing for the latest red Candy Coated quilt and basted that one Monday afternoon. I have a whole roll of that Fairfield batting that I don’t like very much. I think I don’t like it because it’s so thin. I much prefer the Warm and Natural or even the Warm and Plush when I can find it. I need to use up this roll of batting, though, so I used it in the Candy Coated quilt, but I used two layers instead of just one. Two layers made a much nicer batting. The Candy Coated quilt is now in the queue for quilting. I plan to do an allover free motion design—probably loops—instead of rulerwork.

I set the wallhanging aside and started working on the tumbler quilt:

I am echoing the seam lines with stitching on either side. This goes quickly—almost as quickly as free motion loops. Because of how I have to hold the ruler and move the quilt under the machine, I’m doing all the stitching lines on one side of the seams, then turning the quilt around and doing the stitching on the other side of the seams. I quilted a good chunk of the center in about an hour yesterday afternoon. Once the center is done, I’ll do the rulerwork in the border. The thread is a variegated blue/turquoise Signature 40wt that I picked up in Spokane last week. I think it’s going to look really nice in the border. I am getting braver about having my stitching show.

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Pat made a third comforter top with the 5” squares, so when I get mine done, we’ll have four to tie. I ordered backing for them using my Joann+ account, which gives significant discounts when buying in bulk. I thought I would also order more of that modal sweatshirt fabric they just started carrying. I’d like to make up a Simplicity jacket pattern to see if that might work for a serger class next fall. The pattern calls for three yards, though, and when I bought some of that modal sweatshirt fabric in Missoula, I only got two yards.

This is how maddeningly difficult the Joann website is to use: I’ve already filled out their feedback form and asked them to stop listing fabrics that are no longer available (some haven’t been available for two years now) or provide a way to filter them out. It makes the search process clunky, and if the fabric is no longer available, why list it? And forget about the inventory listed on the website matching what they claim is in the store. I don’t think those two systems actually communicate with each other.

I put both the modal sweatshirt fabric and eight yards of a wideback (108”) into the cart. There was a coupon for 50% off a cut of fabric, but when I went to apply it to the cart, I got a message that “Discounts cannot be applied to tiered items.” (Tiered items are the bulk items.) Fine, but why can’t it be applied to the other item, which isn’t tiered?

I took the wideback out of the cart, applied the coupon—which worked that time—then added the wideback to the cart again. The coupon disappeared and I got the same message again about discounts not being valid.

Arrrrrggggghhhhhhh.

One would think that a national chain would invest in a robust e-commerce system, particularly because they are actively pushing people toward buying online. (That doesn’t work well for fabric, by the way, unless you know what you need.) The in-store POS system is about a decade behind, too, but at least they are making an effort to upgrade that.

I ended up having to place two orders. That’s hardly the end of the world, just annoying.