In the desert: What Gets Me Stuck...and Unstuck

Sticking with the theme of my last post and becoming a more prolific quilter, I'm going to address the ever annoying, what to do if you're stuck???

There's a lot of reasons you can get stuck on a quilt, or just lose your quilt mojo all together. I've dealt with both. Getting stuck on a quilt for me usually involves a tangible problem, losing my desire to sew is almost always an emotional thing.

If you've read more than one post on my blog, you know I always have multiple projects going at once. Usually, this keeps me interested and motivated, but sometimes, it can cause a dam and block up the quiltworks.

Let's say I need to lay out a quilt, so I go to the design wall and see this

This exact quilt was on my design wall for two MONTHS! I don't know what it was, but I couldn't get myself to sew it together, even though I really liked it. Maybe part of me just liked looking at it since it was a quilt I had fun making. At any rate, the piles of quilt blocks were piling up while this sat on my design wall. When I realized that was the problem, I decided if I at least sewed it into rows and numbered the rows, I could then at least use the design wall for another quilt. I've had rows of quilts draped over my mobile carts lots of times. The thing is, once I sewed up the rows, I had no problem finishing assembling the quilt! Since I got that quilt off the design wall I've assembled three other quilts!

Sometimes I need to press a fabric so I can cut it, but I go to my pressing station and see this

So much stuff piled on my ironing surface, which all needs to be put elsewhere before I can iron anything! I know I'm not the only one who suffers from flat surface clutter!

I move that stuff, press my fabric, then go to the cutting table.

Uh oh! I still haven't basted that quilt I laid out on the cutting table. I've got to baste it before my cutting area is available.

I often get stuck when I decide a quilt needs sashing or borders. I tend to cut all the blocks for a quilt at once, but I don't decide on sashing or borders until the blocks are done, and I lay it out and take a good look at it.

There are three quilts in this pile, all waiting for borders. The borders for one of the quilts is even cut. These quilts have been sitting here for a YEAR! Two of them have the same issue which I'll get to in a minute, but the one whose borders are cut? The day I likely cut the borders, I probably came across this.

I like to use my Bernina to sew on borders, but because it has such a nice large cabinet, sometimes multiple projects get piled up on it!

Every single one of these issues can be a roadblock, and if I'm not motivated they can make me quit for the day. However, I can sum up all of these issues in one of two ways. I can look at it as having to finish one thing before I start another, or what works better for me is simply thinking of it as I need to tidy. When I think about it as having to finish one thing before starting another, it feels like a roadblock, like nothing will be easy to do. When I think of it as, "Boy, my sewing areas are out of hand and need a good tidy" that brings all of those projects under one title, "Tidying". It's all a game we play with ourselves, but when I know the issue is tidying, I start operation Clean Sweep and clear off all my surfaces, vertical and horizontal. For some reason, looking at it it as one problem seems easier to deal with than a list of ten things to do. If you feel satisfaction at crossing things off a list, by all means write a list of each task and cross them off with gusto!

The borders I haven't gotten to yet brings us to another common quilting sticking point. Overcomplicating things!

If I'm stuck and it's not a time issue or a tidying issue, it's almost always some type of overcomplicating things. Maybe I tried a pattern that my skills weren't up to doing. My first project with curved seams is still a pile of blocks. My blocks lie nice and flat, but somehow all the drunkard's path blocks vary in size. I need to bite the bullet and just trim them all to the same size, and then figure out how to proceed, or even toss them and only use the alternate blocks in a different project.

The borders I've left languish for a year? One needs pieced borders, for which I have the units done, but I haven't done the math for how many of each unit I need for each border, so they aren't sewn to add to the quilt center. The other quilt is really overcomplicated, because the quilt that needs borders I'm calling Visual Frustration, so I want each border to be different. I ran out of the fabric I wanted to use, so I need to come up with four different plans to use the desired fabric in different ways to border the quilt.

Some other ways I overcomplicate things and get stuck? Deciding a quilt needs really fancy quilting, deciding a quilt absolutely would benefit from the pieced sashing I saw on an online quilt. Thinking the quilt needs five borders instead of one or two, and of course some of those should be pieced.

There are other reasons for getting stuck, but I'm going to address those two. How I handle them is similar to how I handle it if I lose my quilt mojo. I already said I tend to lose quilt mojo when I'm upset about something, whether it's grief, anger, worry, or resentment. The thing is, if I can get myself to sew, I usually start feeling better!

Getting unstuck

1) Set a timer. Timers can be your best friend if you are stuck or unmotivated. Maybe your space is messier than mine and tidying seems like a mountain you don't want to climb. Set a timer for 30 minutes and tidy something. When the timer goes off you are free to do something else. I try to set the timer at least twice a day, but knowing you only have to do something for 30 minutes at a time before you can do something more fun. The timer is great for any part of quilting. Don't like cutting? Cut for 30 minutes. Don't like basting? Do it 30 minutes at a time. Are you doing a Bonnie Hunter mystery and she's having you make 3 gazillion hst's???? Set a timer!

2) Simplify. Does that quilt really need super fancy quilting, or will something easier you already are proficient at work? Cross-hatching looks great on most quilts, and with a walking foot it's super easy to do. Do these blocks really need pieced sashing, pieced borders, seven borders...whatever, is there a way to simplify your idea and still satisfy you. Sometimes the answer to that is no. Visual Frustration will sit there until I'm ready to make four different borders. The quilt needs that. Sometimes I can simplify pretty easily. Was I planning on piecing a backing? Maybe a wideback I've been saving would be a better solution so the quilt gets finished rather than sits there. Was I planning fancy sashing or borders. Look at the stash again, and maybe a fabric will jump out at you that says, "Use me and I'll be enough".

When I first was consistently getting stuck on borders, I realized that the reason I was stuck was because I didn't actually want a border on the quilt, but I thought people would think it would look funny if I didn't add one. When you see a quilt pattern, it looks like a picture on the wall, and the border is a nice frame. When the quilt is being used "in the wild aka on a bed or couch, you don't see it laid out flat and a border can actually look out of place. The first quilt I made for our bed had a border on it, and I had made it big enough for a pillow tuck. The border then crossed the pillows in an obvious way, and since all the other borders were hanging down the sides of the bed, that top border made the bed look weird. I saw one of my kids snuggled with a quilt on the couch, and the way they were wrapped in the quilt, you could only see part of one border, and it looked like it didn't belong. If I'm making a wall hanging, it will have borders. If not, I may skip them, and now that I'm a more confident quilter, I'm ok with someone else thinking that's weird.

3) Combine. Sometimes your quilt really does need the extra work, but if you are stuck on motivating yourself to do that step, combine it with another project you are excited about. I often assemble two quilts at once, using one as leaders/enders for the other. I've pieced the backing while I'm assembling the quilt top, the backing is usually done first, so when the top is done the backing is ready. Start the new quilt you want to be working on, but use the one you are stuck on as your leader/ender project. I've made a lot of progress the last couple years, and I've been pairing tasks. If I'm ready to baste a quilt, I grab a UFO and make myself baste two quilts. Instead of not letting myself start any new projects because I have too many UFO'S, I let myself start as many projects as I want, as long as they are using up scraps, stash or quilt kits I already own. I've only been using UFO's or scrap projects as my leader/ender project for two years, and I have finished so many things that had been sitting around. It's really upped my productivity to pair a fun project with something I'm not as excited about.

Hopefully something in this post will help someone out there. Thinking about it has helped me already!