New Year Goals (or Oh How Life has Changed)- Part Two

This post follows on from New Year Goals (or Oh How Life has Changed)- Part Two. which you may want to read first.

As I said in that post, I was intrigued by Lisa Call's habit of choosing two words to represent her focus for the year. I didn't think I was going to copy her thing but, in my Zen reflection days ( I told you - you need to read the last post if you don't know what I am talking about,) I found two words rising to the fore: nesting and preparation.

Unless you have stumbled on this blog from nowhere just today you will know that I currently live on a building site. In my head it looks like Buckingham Palace only with less Louis XIV bling. But to outsiders? A big pile of dust and workmens tools. Getting it to an abode more fit for the spoiled Princess I am involves shopping ( no hardship but time consuming) and actually making the lap, bed and wall quilts we want to have on the walls. So given I work full time it is unlikely that I am going to both make the shortlist for House Beautiful and say, fully stock an Etsy shop, enter one quilt no older than 12 months in every category at Festival of Quilts in one year, write an quilting article a month, make a quilt based on each room in the Blackburn museum and have them exhibited in the museum, enter quilts in European and US shows attand two residential retreats the other side of the world,  and and start to teach. All of which I would sort of like to do. (And yes, in regard to Festival , I know that is a crazy idea. But wouldn't it feel like a real achievement?!)

Hence the nesting.  There are I think, a minimum of 24 places in the house for which I would like to create a sewn item ( ranging from bed quilts  through wall quilts to coffee table runners). Now do you see why entering every category at Festival sounds achievable? Of course I could fling together some log cabins and the like and I could do all that fairly quickly. But I don't want ('I don't WANT said the Princess, stomping her feet') to spoil my beautiful new house by slapping fabric down and calling it art. Or even slapping fabric down and calling it a liberated log cabin. I want to make stuff that gives me satisfaction so I feel it is enough of an achievement and good enough quality for me to want to live with it. Although, I like liberated log cabins and they relax me to make them so there might be some of that whilst I cogitate on my next Great Work of Art. Ok. My First Great Work of Art.

Which is kind of how the Preparation part links in. For so long as I have to spend a good time of my weekend  precious quilting time choosing taps and admiring the tile grouting, I am not going to be producing as much as I will when my new, shiny, fit-for-a-Princess studio is ready. And what time I have should go mostly to 'nesting quilts'. But I will not be able to keep myself from other exciting possibilties. And why should I? After all I do this for fun, not to challenge Bobby Sands in the self-denial stakes. So this year is also about preparation for when I have time to do more. I have visions of quilts in my head that I know I do not yet have the skills to actually produce. So I choose to start to learn them now. I choose spend time on small projects in preparation of making larger ones later. I shall start to record ideas and sketches to come back to later. I shall set myself up to get better.

In my last post I talked about making choices not goals and about preserving the feelling of balance and relaxation I have finally achieved in life in general. So I give myself permission to choose to change all of what I am telling you as and when I feel like it.

But my starting choices for 2011 are:
 * to make house quilts that have meaning to me
* to write up those which are suitable for a magazine pattern/ article
* to make a series of quilt kit patterns as commissioned by Magie Relph
* to continue to participate in the Twelve by Twelve group
* to join in the Journal Quilt Challenge for the UK Quilters Guild Contemporary Quilt Group
* to use the last two as ways to  develop new technical knowledge and to breakaway from opting for the easy quick and mediocre and to head towards deeper more meaningful ( to me at least) work
* to keep a sketchbook and basic art kit at work and try to get a few lunchtimes in at the museum for future quilt preparation
* to buy as many quilt books as I like. Its not frivolity. Its education  and preparation.
* to keep ( a la Lisa Call - I swear she is not paying me!) I records of the time I spend on tasks to better inform me of what is achievable and what prevents me from achieving what I set out to
* to finish a quilt I started in Lisa Walton's crystalisation class last August and enter it at the Utoxeter Quilt show in April
* to make one quilt to enter at Festival of Quilts (not counting the fact that out Twelve by Twelve quilts will all be there this year)
* do a little dying and screen printing even if I have to wait until summer and do it outside because my wet studio will not exist for a good while yet.

I might choose to actualy keep my website a little more up to date and to go back to the By Design articles I started. But I am not sure about that one yet. Feels suspiciously like work :)

Oh and right now? I choose to sign off and go to bed with a book.