Monday, April 9, 2018

The Tedium of Quilting

Sometimes when I tell people that I am a quilter, they say "I could never do that."

You would think that this statement should mean they are in awe of my wonderful quilting skills and my abilities to turn fabric into wonderful work of art.  But alas, their tone of voice doesn't suggest the awe and reverence they give to my skills, but instead to the boredom and tedium they associate with such a past-time.

I don't try to correct them. Everyone has a choice of how to use their time, and if they choose to fritter away their time with browsing the internet, watching TV, or talking sports, that is their business.

In last week's post, I complained about the tedium of sewing so many sashing blocks for On Ringo Lake. I think we should acknowledge that sometimes it does seem tedious and monotonous to make the same type of join over and over again.  Maybe I was tired and would have complained about anything. More likely, it was a complaint because I didn't have the time to just finish this step and had to prolong it by working only few minutes each week.

After this week's sewing, I realize that I was eyeing the finish line, like runners might do, and in anticipating being over that line, I stopped focusing on the current run. It's like those runners who slow down and become tired because they think they should be over the finish line already (not that I would know anything about that personally).

I had a better attitude this week. This week, I enjoyed touching the fabrics, examining the colors, and sewing each seam.  I worked exclusively on the On Ringo Lake mystery sashing. I have finished all the sashing blocks, sewing and pressing.


I wrote that last week, planning it to be a prelude to a list of suggestions to avoid tedium. But that will have to wait so I can now get two weeks of results posted.  The last two weeks, I was not able to quilt during the weekdays, but did manage to make up the time on the weekends.

I managed to sew the sashing blocks together, press them and have started sewing them to the blocks.


Days with stitching this week:  7 out of 7 days
Days with stitching this month:  8 out of 8 days
Days with stitching this year:  93 out of 98 days
Success rate:  94%


Linked to:
15 Minutes to Stitch 

5 comments:

Kate said...

Sometimes there is a lot of repetition, but I like to call that my meditation time, my brain just floats while my fingers do the work. Of course if it floats too much, I have to do a bit of unsewing.

Kyle said...

It all can be a soothing rhythm even if there are times with a lot of repetition.

Allie-oops Designs said...

People used to say that to me all the time when I told them I homeschooled my boys - "I could never do that!" Funny how folks get a preconceived notion about things, and don't bother to even try. I admit to boredom when piecing endless squares together, but I'm rubbish at piecing anyway - applique keeps my interest.

Kaja said...

There are boring bits to almost everything; it's about the balance between those and the things we love to do. I enjoyed this post a lot - thanks!

Christina said...

We all hit that block at one time or another. It is okay, we pick ourselves back up when ready to focus on it again and finish it up strongly. Great job on finding time to quilt. Keep up the great work!