Daily Quilt Journal
On April 1st I started many new things, and one I’m really excited about is a Daily Quilt Journal.
Basically for me it’s just a Word document where I place photos daily of anything I’ve stitched along with one or two lines of text.
The point to the short text is just to keep this simple. I already journal 3 pages a day so I don’t feel the need to write a ton with each photo, but I do want to document how I feel about what I’m working on, mostly so I can see trends in how I’m feeling and how my work is going.
And in 8 days, trends are definitely showing up!
For all that I preach about accepting mistakes and not ripping, I’ve sure done a lot of ripping the last few days. I took this photo yesterday and my text was: It was a mess when it started and it’s a mess now after three days of ripping. What have I achieved?
Perfection is something I’ve written a lot about. Mostly this is cropping up in Duchess Reigns where it’s easy to agonize over every missed stitch.
So today after a long battle with this section, after finally winning the day, no wonder I’m not feeling hugely happy and relieved – I’m exhausted after a long day of nitpicking my work!
My goal with this journal is two fold – to remember each day through my stitches, which means I have to actually quilt SOMETHING every day, and to keep a sharp eye on my attitude. Not every day will be perfect, not every day will have amazing things created, but at least every day I will be creating something, which definitely makes me happy.
Let’s go quilt,
Leah
Leah – I've been tracking along with you for the last year or so (or more), and enJOYing your transformation as you go along. I loved the Gretchen Rubin book too. An author /speaker that I find very inspirational is Brene Brown – and her book "The Gifts of Imperfection" was huge for me in terms of letting go of my need for perfectionism…and understanding why i needed it! If you have a book list – consider this a recommendation for it!
Always remind yourself it's not the individual stitch but whole appearance of your quilting. No one is perfect except for God.
So, when do you write it, and when do you go back and read it? Is it something you write at the end of each day? Or after you stop working on something for that day?
And do you read over it every morning? Or once a week?
Just curious!
=-)
Wendy – It's a bit early to say! Right now I've been shooting the photos as I quilt – whatever catches my eye as a good photo for the day. Putting it actually into the document and writing the bit of text is usually in the afternoon or evening during my computer time. I try to only touch a computer a few times a day because it tends to "suck me in" if you get my meaning. I can kill hours just bouncing around so I have to really be strict about it. 8 days in, I absolutely love the quilt journal, but you do have to make it work for your life and schedule.