Come Stitch With Me

What’s important to you? What are your top 1-3 things that must get accomplished on any given day?

Do you focus solely on completing one goal before moving on to the next? Or do you hop around and wind up getting nothing accomplished? Do you completely disengage from work when you get home? Do you turn off your phone or put it in airplane mode an hour before you go to bed?

Since today’s staff meeting only pertained to homeroom teachers, the rest of us were tasked with working on professional development activities. I did just that. I’m spending more of my professional learning time in areas that benefit the whole me, not just the library me. Today’s topic was personal productivity and effective weekly planning. I watched a couple of videos by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. In essence, I’m setting up today for the person I want to be one year from now. And I have to be 100% committed to the goals I set for myself. That’s non-negotiable for achieving the goal. Being 98% committed means you still have an out and you really aren’t all in. Keeping your options open often leads to decision fatigue and analysis paralysis. The end result is you are like a hamster on the wheel – busy, but not moving forward. This really hit home.

There’s a lot of indecision/uncertainty right now as we try to figure out the plan moving forward, but there are three things we do know to be 100% certain: (1) hubby told his boss that he’s leaving in March 2022, (2) he has a 12 month non-compete clause in his contract and (3) the cost of health insurance at COBRA rates will be $22,800 per year for our family.

So, my 3 priorities for the next 30 days are to finish the patterns I agreed to write, do some serious thinking with regard to how things might look for me in Fall 2022 and to turn off my devices by 10 p.m.

Good night!

So, I said yes to writing patterns for a nationally known quilt designer. Normally, I tech edit, so this is definitely new territory for me.

One pattern morphed into four that she needs help with ASAP.

Trying to understand someone else’s patterns when you’ve never made anything (that you know of) by that designer takes a bit of time. She did provide patterns for me to study and use as guides for drafting the patterns she needs help with.

I printed the EQ8 block files, raided my stash and made a block from each of the designs.

Two were very easy to figure out the yardage requirements, block construction sequence, etc.

The other two were a bit harder and dealt in 1/8″ math instead of 1/4″ and 1/2″ increments that I can do in my sleep.

There’s more than one way to make the different units that make up a block, so I had to find out the preferred method of Flying Geese, Square in a Square blocks and HSTs.

I drafted directions on a legal pad in terms I can understand.

I calculated and recalculated cut measurements/number of pieces more times than I care to admit. EQ8 figures yardage one way and if you use a different construction method, you have to figure everything out yourself.

I successfully got one pattern laid out in InDesign. I’ll start the other one tomorrow.

My notes on the two more difficult patterns ones were sent to the designer for review before I load them into InDesign.

So, I’m glad we were out on Fall Break this past week. There’s no way I could have wrapped my head around everything entailed putting the actual pattern together had I been working full-time last week.

Every day, I check my biz email during my lunch break. Last week, I received an email from someone higher up than me in the quilting universe asking if I knew of anyone who could assist with a special project. What she was looking for required a slightly different skill set, but not something I couldn’t handle. So, I took a deep breath and responded that I might be able to help.

Well, after a lengthy phone call after school on Thursday, we decided to give it a go. At the very least, I would be able to write the pattern verbiage/check math/illustrations and she’d load it into her template in InDesign. In a perfect world, I’d be able to take the EQ8 file and generate a ready to sell pattern complete with illustrations.

So, I’m spending my Fall Break learning something new. I’m drafting two patterns right now based on EQ8 files.It’s fun. I enjoy trying to figure out how quilts are put together, so this is somewhat of a game. Once the instructions are written, I’ll try my hand at using InDesign to produce the instruction pages. Illustrator will have to come later.

Here’s the thing. If I hadn’t asked myself, “Why not me?” when I read the email (and acted on it), I would have missed a really great opportunity. This has the potential to be a sustainable part-time gig to go with me when I transition out of the school library.

So if there’s something you have some experience in, but maybe not everything being asked, ask yourself, “Why not me?” and give it a go.