Focusing on One Creative Goal

Published: Wed, 08/21/19

Did you know the word Priority is singular? This word only became plural (priorities) in the 20th century when people forgot you can really only have one priority at a time. I’m chatting about this today as I focus on my single goal: publishing a book about my goddess quilts!

Priority is Singular! Hello My Quilting Friends! Podcast 114

Click Here to sign up for updates on the Goddess Quilt Book. I'm hoping the preorder will begin on November 1st or sooner!

A New Style of Sit Down Longarm

I've set my Q-Zone Hoop Frame up low so I can sit in my chair and quilt! This has been very helpful for practicing travel stitching and getting more control over my movements.

On Friday I shared a video on three designs to quilt to help you practice travel stitching. This is an important technique where you stitch a line, then stitch back along it to continue the design or escape from a tricky area.

Click Here to watch the video on travel stitching these three designs.

The three designs: Tree Roots, Paisley, and Escargot are all great choices for practicing travel stitching.

Each of these designs involve a lot of traveling so I get lots of repetition with each design I stitch. And the smaller I stitch the shapes, the more practice I’ll get in a smaller amount of space.

I continued quilting on my Q-Zone Hoop Frame for this week's Crown of Scraps quilt block tutorial. See how I quilt Sharp Stippling over this scrappy happy quilt block and ruler quilting as well. Because the blocks are so big, I had to advance it through the hoop frame too and you can see how that works if you watch the video.

The neat thing about the Q-Zone Hoop Frame is you can use your home machine on it too! I first quilted on the Q-zone frame with a small Juki home sewing machine. Then I switched to my Qnique 14+ / 15R longarm.

No Such Thing as "Priorities," only Priority

I'm so excited to be shooting the photos for the goddess quilt book this week!

Click Here to be notified when the goddess quilt book is available for preorder.

I’m hoping the preorder will begin on November 1st, but that’s going to depend entirely on the weather as I have to shoot pictures of all the bigger quilts outside.

This book is my single priority and until it’s done, everything else is secondary. I love being able to work this way because it means I can work faster and with better focus. Distraction is distracting!

I’ve wanted to write this book for more than five years. A big reason why it didn’t get done for so long is I kept prioritizing other, easier, faster things instead of it. This goddess quilt book was my “one day” project and it was liable to be put off forever if I didn’t change my ways.

So with this goal in mind, I’ve decided to slow down the podcast to every other week. I’ve done this several times before for various reasons over the years. I absolute love this podcast but I know I can’t do my best on the podcast AND the book at the same time.

Again – priority is singular. It’s easy to think I can do it all, but I can’t.

That's it for this week, . It's officially Back to School week for us, and today was James' first day at a new school for sixth grade. Josh and I are hoping he has a great day!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day