Week 1 of 2019: Stitching, De-stashing and a Final Look at 2018

The first week of the 2019 is now on the books.  Overall, it wasn't a bad week. The first few days back at work were meeting free, allowing me a chance to get my feet back under me after a week and a half of vacation.  Getting back into my evening stitching groove hasn't been too hard.  How did you do at working stitching in to your week now that the holidays are over?

I restart my 15 minute and stash reports on January 1st, so my weekly report only covers the 5 days of 2019.

15 minutes stitching days/week = 5/5 days
15 minutes stitching days/Jan = 5/5 days
15 minutes stitching days in 2019 = 5/5 days
Success rate = 100%

Finding time to stitch in 2018 went really well.  I found time to stitch 339 out of 365 days last year, for a success rate of 92.88%. That exceeded my goal of 90%.  Hopefully, this year will be as good.  Mr. Linky can be found at the bottom of the post so you can share how you've been doing so far this year. 

After several years of failing to use more fabric than I buy it's obvious that setting goals in this area of my stitching isn't really working.  I'm going to focus on using fabric and not worry so much about what comes in, as that seems to be what happens anyway.  The new year got off to a good start as the first thing on my to do list was make the backing for the Inverted Star quilt. 

Fabric out this week:  3.97 yards

I was more successful at finding time to stitch than ever before last year, but for some reason that didn't translate into more fabric usage. I ended the year with a lower than average usage number. 

Fabric out for 2018:  42.17 yards

Since I can't tie fabric usage to any of the activities in my sewing room (fabric usage doesn't even seem to correlate with number of finishes) it just doesn't make any sense to set a value as I'm not sure what behavior I change to reach that.  The fabric closet is absolutely full, so the plan is to really slow down on stash accumulation this year. But I like fabric, so if I add to my retirement stash, I'm not going to beat up on myself for it.    Linking up with Quiltpaintcreate for the weekly stash report. 

There were three other ambitions on my 2018 list.  One was to blog at least once a week.  The weekly stitching time report went out every week, so I easily met that ambition for 2018.  

Another ambition was to work the UFO list down a bit. That didn't happen, I ended 2018 with an increase in the UFO count. 

Though I didn't move a lot of UFOs off the list, I did do a good job of moving projects along last year.  

Progress was made on 9 of the 12 quilts from the 2018 UFO challenge, with three of the quilts getting to finished stage.  I'm hopeful that all the work from last year sets me up for a good number of finishes this year. 

So more stitching time didn't do what I thought it would.  It didn't mean more fabric going out of the stash or translate to more finishes.  But there is the intangible benefit of helping me maintain my sanity when things get nuts, as they seem to do repeatedly during the year.   The sanity maintenance is enough reason for me to keep up with the 15 minutes to stitch.  What's your reason for trying to work in stitching time each day?  Here's Mr. Linky for you to share how your week went.  

1. Chrisknits 2. maggie f 3. Chris in Canada 4. Meloney

5. Julie in GA 6. Andra 7. Marti 8. Shasta

9. Deana 10. The Quilt Charmer 11. DesertSky Quilting 12. Christina's Handicrafts

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