“Quilting Bee”

Last weekend I left town with a package of three rolled up quilts-in-progress under my arm and a quilting hoop dangling from my carry-on. I went to Fulda, where a private meeting of the regional representatives of the German Patchwork Guild took place. I used to be a regional representative for  a couple of years, but that was a couple of years ago already. However, ‘former’ representatives are also welcome, and as the group that gets together for a weekend of working and chatting is such a nice and pleasant group I had quickly said that I would come once again after the last meeting last year. When I had my panic attack  after that planning meeting with my husband  I had seriously debated with myself whether I should cancel. But I had already bought a non-refundable train ticket, my husband had gone through a number of organizational adjustments to make this weekend possible for me, and so I decided that I did not want all of these preparations to be for naught.

Several quilts I am currently working on were in stages where a lot of work by hand was necessary, such as sinking threads and other pleasant jobs like that. So I rolled those up, packed my stuff and set off.

We met in a Franciscan monastry in Fulda, a city which is also the place of the most gorgeous button shop I have everseen. Because I was the first one to arrive and did not know whether the others would want to go there again after we had been there last year already, I went down-town immediately after my arrival to revisit.

Window display at the "Button Paradise"

In the afternoon our group received a guided tour through the monastry’s tailor shop, which was highly interesting. Of course, the group of ten women went wild with delight when Brother Gerhard mentioned that he had no use for the swatch books of the last season, and one of us had the courage to ask whether we could have them.

None of them was left behind!

The remainder of the weekend was spent working. Those interested were given an introductory demonstration of the quilting design software EQ.

None of us brought a sewing machine, as that is the agreed upon format of the weekend: bring work that can be done by hand. So while most of the others were trying out little surprise projects that had been prepared in advance, I took the liberty to stick mostly with my three quilts in the making. I sank about a zillion thready on “Shapes II” and “Shapes III”, and started some surface work – a combination of embroidery/stitching and hand quilting, besides the machine quilting that I had already done earlier.

Hand-stitching on Play of Lines XXVII

Combination of hand and machine quilting on Shapes III

So I was basically the only one of us actually quilting, but it very much felt like a quilting bee nevertheless. I got a lot of stuff done: concentrated work on little stuff is done much more quickly when you don’t have to think about what you are going to cook for dinner today. And sinking threads does need a lot of concentration, otherwise I tend to put if off for much too long to ever get a possibility to feel good about it again.

So it was very well worth the time and money to have gone out of town to work - productivity and focus get a boost in surroundings like this!

Light art on the way to the downstairs facilities

Focussing – again

I wrote about focussing just a little more than a month ago, and how I had not been able to finish the post on focussing because I had been focussing on dyeing, preparations for the April market in Erding and making plans.

One part of the unfinished post that had been finished, however, was the retrospective onto the things I had completed last year. That post was originally meant to be posted ‚at the beginning of the year’, the time when one is still in the mood to look back on the last year, but already full of plans for the new year. By now the year is well on its way and definitely not ‚new’ anymore, after all, just about a fifth of it is over.

This is the section I wrote:

I was pretty diligent and productive last year:

• I entered quilts in several exhibitions and was accepted with at least one quilt in all those I entered except for one.
• I had one solo exhibition at the German Patchwork Guilds annual patchwork festival, which took place in Dortmund in May,
• I have two major quilts in Color Improvisations curated by Nancy Crow,
• I was represented in Birmingham, UK, in August with three big quilts and a little contribution to the German Guild’s Anniversary exhibition „Ein Fitzelchen Silber“,
• I was present in Alsace in September with four quilts in three different exhibitions spread out all over the town,
• two of my quilts went to Vicenza, Italy with the German Guild’s selected exhibition in October,
• and I had another solo exhibition opening in November, which is still on until January 30.

I finally had the guts to go ahead and make real the idea I’ve been harboring for many years

• to start a little business with my hand-dyed fabrics. I made the first set of preparatory dye charts during a wonderful (hot!) week in July together with my friend Regine,
• I designed and executed a first version of a website for justcolours.de because my webdesigner was on holiday (she did design the current version, however)
• I had a postcard printed for advertising
• and I managed to have 18 orders for the introductory collection in November.

When I look at it I can certainly say: Hey, I got a lot done last year!

That’s how far the section on my accomplishments ran in that unfinished post. I think I had meant to go on about how I needed to do something to celebrate, because celebrating is a way of showing oneself appreciation of what one has accomplished. I don’t think I did celebrate last year’s accomplishment sufficiently, really. Not too late to do that, though. Have to think about that one!

So what does this have to do with focussing? For one thing, listing one’s accomplishments can demonstrate to oneself that one must have been pretty focussed at least part of the time, otherwise these things would not have been finished at all. And it could not only have been good focussing during ‚the last minute’, even if there is that nasty comment  „if it weren’t for the last minute, a lot of things would never get done“. (How about a celebration of /for the last minute?)

So: quite a good amount of focussing went on during the past year, I realize, even if it sometimes did not feel very focussed.

Why was that? There were periods when I thought I had too many things going on, and I sometimes felt that I would never be able to actually finish everything I had planned. And I actually did not manage to do one thing I had wanted to do – I did not enter a quilt in Quilt National, which I had definitely wanted to do. The reason why I did not enter was that the quilt I made for Ste. Marie aux Mines kept taking much  longer than I had planned for in my calendar, so I ran out of time. 

So I miscalculated on time once. But apart from that I can’t think of any other things that did not get completed right now, despite the fact that it all seemed to be quite a lot. (Well – let’s limit that to the quilt part of my life. I’m not talking about my writing desk, or some other things. I am only talking quilts and fabric here.)

One important thing in my personal way of focussing is that I always have several projects going on at once. Sometimes there are several different layers of quilts on my design wall which get switched around when I run into a lull with one of them. (Would be nice to have a second and a third large design wall, and a larger studion, too, of course, but I’m already pretty happy to have that one I can work with.) There are also work-in-progress boxes in my shelves, waiting, or should I say gestating?

Having several projects at once is a means of cheating my brain a little. If I turn my attention away from the one project which just got stuck, and concentrate on another project, I push it into the back of my mind to let it take care of itself for a little while. That is also the mode of development I mentioned in my last post on focussing, which can be achieved by going for a walk or by going to turn on the washing machine (and then returning). After I have worked on the new project for a while I can return to the first project and look at it with new eyes – and some kind of idea may have developed to further it , which I would never had thought of had I been trying to think it through by force.

The real issue is finding out about how many projects one can handle at once. Which is certainly a question that may have to be answered differently depending on the day or the kinds of projects one is working on, or the number of deadlines looming, and certainly on the number of „outside challenges“.

Picking up a five-year-old at kindergarten is nothing that can be put off beyond closing time, so I may have to drop something I am doing at that point, even if it had just entered a good focussed stage. But being able to realize immediately when that five-year-old is playing by himself so nicely that he will be safely occupied for at least a little while, and sitting down to continuing whatever one left off to pick him up, that is part of focussing, too. In fact, it is the same mode of focussing as juggling several quilt projects at once.

I had a handmade calendary for last year, made by Susanne Muus, which I loved to have last year, and found too nice to throw out now that it had served its one-year-turn of being my calendar.

Last year's calendar turned list booklet

 And because I sometimes felt like my brain wasn’t holding up with keeping track of all the things and itsy-bits-item I needed to do, I came up with a new purpose for this handmade calendar: I use the empty spaces in the pages to make lists of what needs to be done, and I cross the items off when they’re done.

crossed out items on to-do-list, some still open...

Having them written down helps me remember all of them (and feeling pretty safe about that, too). Crossing them off gives a certain degree of satisfaction – almost like celebrating (though not quite). And it helps to stay focussed just a little bit better, because if I know I wrote everything down I don’t have to wreck my brain anymore trying to remember what else it was I had told myself to remember to do, such as to whom else I was going to write an e-mail (which will definitely pop up only after I’ve switched off the computer...) or ... And writing them all down in a single book makes it easier than searching for one of the myriad of papers on which I used to make lists before. 

Now all I have to do is keep that booklet at hand...