5 Crafting Goals for 2019

This year I’ve decided to set 5 crafting goals. Am I going to beat myself up if I don’t reach them? No. This is a fun hobby, not my job. But I would love to sew through some of the projects that are either designed in my head or taking up space in my sewing room.

So here they are.

 

One: Stash Busting (aka #GettingRidofFabric)

When I started sewing, I remember thinking how crazy it was that bloggers would talk about how to organize their scraps and their stash. 3 years later I am now writing that exact same blog post. Fabric seems to multiply while I’m sleeping.

 

Where did all of this come from?!?!? I’ll take a picture on December 31, 2019 and compare.

Two: Learn & Try New Things

This year I want to learn about techniques that I’ve never tried: paper piecing, free motion quilting, and different types of batting. I love learning new things and the details of things that I love. I can’t wait to see what I learn about this year! I may even take some quilting classes.

To try new things, I’ve joined my first block-of-the-month club: MurderMysteryQuilt.com. Every month I’ll  be receiving a chapter of a murder mystery and a quilt block with a clue in it. I’m excited to do this and to share my journey with you!

This is all the fabric I’ve bought for the quilt.

Three:Craft More Frequently

I tend to wait until I have a weekend when I can ignore the world and just craft for hours at a time. But that means that I can go several weeks without crafting – and the projects start piling up. So in 2019 I want to be better about sewing a little at a time.

To help me with this, I am using a crafting organizer for the first time. I chose Lori Holt’s Srappy Project Planner – we’ll see how this goes!

So far in January I have crafted more after work and have knocked out two projects that would have taken a couple of months with the “do it on the weekend” strategy.

 

So far a big win is breaking a project into about half hour chunks and putting that as a goal for the day. That way when I go into my craft room I know exactly what I need to knock out and I don’t spend ten minutes trying to figure out where I was in a project and where I need to be. And I feel accomplished when “all” I do is cut out the pieces or piece together a few blocks.

Four: Share More About my Hobby

For the longest time I kept my growing interest in quilting and crafting pretty close to my chest. I felt like a grandma every time I’d say, “I love quilting.”

Over the past year or so I have realized that many of my friends think that it is cool, not a grandma hobby at all. And there’s a whole community of people out there who also love to quilt and who struggle with many of the same things that I do. This blog is part of the next step of putting more of my work and thoughts out there and letting my quilter and crafter flag fly.

(So follow me on Instagram and make me feel like I’m connecting with people!)

Five: Continue to Have Fun

I quilt to relax and to create useful things. The moment this becomes a chore, I’m out.