As we come in to a season that is typically busy and over-scheduled, let’s plan a slow down in our quilt life. With the onslaught of fast paced video and quick clips, I feel like I’m losing touch with what I’m truly passionate about, this community and my art. If you are feeling the same way, join me as I share tips and practices this month to slow down and refocus on what is important.
Each week of November I’ll share what my focus will be and how I’m choosing to slow down and savor this season instead of rush through it. I’ll be focusing on simplifying, contemplating, exploring, and gratitude. Remember, it’s all about slowing it down so I’ll try to post four times a week on my Instagram what I’m working on to live in the moment. I’ll also post here on the blog each Tuesday what my focus for the week is and four ways I’ll be working to slow my practice.
Week One | Simplify
This week I’m going to focus on simplifying my quilting practice. For me that means I’m going to start out by writing down a priority list of what I think I should focus on this month. Part of that process will be to choose just one important task each week and two to three less important tasks. The goal is going to be to let go of anything I don’t actually get to. For most of us, quilting is a hobby. Few people, like me, are attempting to make this a business or an income. And the main priority of a hobby should be to enjoy your time with it, for it to relieve your stress, not add to it.
hobby [hob-ee]
noun, plural hob·bies.
an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.
One of the main reasons I have decided to refocus and slow down this month is that my social media has been overwhelming lately. With a bigger emphasis on fast-paced video clips, I have been losing touch with the community I love. I am going to tidy my digital life by unfollowing and unsubscribing to things that don’t fit the criteria I’m looking for in my online quilt community. I want to be inspired, educated, or entertained. I am no longer going to follow or subscribe to things that cause me to have FOMO (fear of missing out), especially when it comes to consuming products. Do you have accounts you follow that you always skip their stories or never like their posts? Has an account you used to love suddenly converted to Reels to please the algorithm and you’d rather see still images? Is there a newsletter in your inbox that never gets opened and you just always delete? Let’s clear this clutter and simplify our digital lives so we can focus on what really inspires us.
My third area of focus for the first week of #QuiltySlowvember will be to tidy/purge/organize my sewing space. If you’re like me, you just finished your QuiltCon submissions in a flurry of crazy before the deadline and you didn’t take the time to clean up along the way. I’ve got fabric everywhere! Not only that, but I have a trunk show that I never put away and probably even some projects that I need to abandon (and not just stuff in the back of the closet). Let’s get our physical spaces clean so we can use our energy to create beautiful things and not stress about the mess.
I hope you’ll join me for week two to contemplate our quilt practice and find mindfulness in our art.
I have recently gone through my entire sewing room and de cluttered and reorganised so I’m feeling very pleased with myself now for doing that. I must say I really should do a digital detox though. It sounds so familiar to me but I never take the time to do it, I think you have inspired me to take the plunge and do it this week.
I have a new bookshelf being delivered next week. Once it’s assembled, the clean-up, reorganization and purging will begin! I’m one if those people that finds it difficult to get centered and think in messy and chaotic spaces, so I’m really excited to get to this long overdue task and clean up the remains of the last five projects. Your words and thoughts struck a chord. Thank you.