{"id":8724,"date":"2011-05-05T06:10:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T13:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/?p=8724"},"modified":"2016-11-29T17:57:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T00:57:11","slug":"follow-up-design-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/follow-up-design-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow-up: Design Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday May 1, I posted some information about what was on my design wall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sandy<\/a> commented “You have a lot more going on with your design wall than I do with mine. I get too distracted by a lot going on visually so I can only have one project at a time up on the wall. My other projects are in bags or bins that periodically get pulled out, pawed through, then put away again. Sort of a low-commitment-refresher on what I’ve got going on at any given time. But I tend to be a One Project girl–one at a time, at least until the top is pieced. Then I might move on to something else while waiting for inspiration on the quilting.”<\/p>\n

She made an excellent point, which leads me to more discussion about my process.<\/p>\n

Shortly after I started quiltmaking, I moved quickly from one quilt project to another. I would most often not return to a project once I had moved on and rarely finished projects. This was how I mostly had crafted in the past and I perceived it as a quiltmaking trend at the time. One day I looked in the fabric closet and found boatloads of UFOs. I rarely finished anything. I realized that the time had come to start finishing those projects before I moved on to new projects. I still haven’t finished all of my UFOs, but I am farther along and keep strict track of my progress<\/a> and of the UFOs I finish. Many of the older projects are finished and the ones that aren’t are moving towards the top of the list.<\/p>\n

As described a bit in the presentation<\/a> I made recently, I have thought a lot about my process and how I work. One of the things I realized is that I do a lot of prep work before I focus on a project. The cutting and beginning stitching may seem like part of the project, but for me it is prep work. I only cut to have some patches to stitch. I sew the little pieces into bigger pieces so I can really focus on the piece. Sewing small patches together is a great use of the leaders and enders philosophy. Using this philosophy, I can make a lot of progress without focusing on the project exclusively. Then suddenly I am ready to put blocks and a quilt top together.<\/p>\n

Also, test pieces are not real projects for me. They are just that: tests; techniques and things I am trying out for one reason or another before I commit to a full quilt. I don’t count them as projects.<\/p>\n

I am really trying hard to work on one large project at a time and see it through to the end. I am trying to finish everything I start, which means a lot more testing goes on before I commit. It doesn’t always work like it should because I can’t work on the project if it is at the quilter and I can’t watch TV while sitting at my machine.<\/p>\n

I still have a number of projects going at once, but they are all organized and moving forward, even if they are not at the front of the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday May 1, I posted some information about what was on my design wall. Sandy commented “You have a lot more going on with your design wall than I do with mine. I get too distracted by a lot going on visually so I can only have one project at a time up on … Continue reading “Follow-up: Design Wall”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[400],"tags":[353],"class_list":["post-8724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-400","tag-process"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}