Thursday, April 4, 2024

2024 Quilting Ambitions 1st Quarter Check In

With the end of March comes the end of the first quarter of 2024.  Hard to believe we've hit that milestone already.  It's a good time to check how well I'm doing at meeting my ambitions for 2024.  Quilting Jetgirl has a first quarter linky party to remind us to do just that.  




Here's where I'm at with my ambitions for 2024. 

1. Make Quilts. My ambition wasn't just to finish quilts, I also wanted to focus on making progress with all the quilts on my quilt plan for this year.  

Here's what my progress metric looked like at the beginning of the year. 




Here's what it looked at at the end of March. 




One finished quilt, three others moved to finished quilt tops, and the all the blocks finished on another project. I'm definitely on track with this ambition for 2024.  Fingers crossed I can work those quilt tops into finished quilts before the end of the year.  

2. Learn to quilt.  No progress on this goal as yet.  I was focused on the quilt alongs during the first quarter.  I'm hoping to get moving on this ambition once I've recovered from knee surgery.  

3. 15 Minutes to Stitch (Stitching Stuff).  My one stated ambition was to stitch 15 minutes a day at least 75% of the time. I'm at 100% currently.  That won't last, especially since I have knee surgery in a couple of weeks.  I'll have to switch to hand work for a bit, but I've got some room to drop and still meet my goal of 75%.  




I finally figured out a graph that can help track my success/failure with my 15 minute stitching time.  My worst year for getting in my stitching time was 2014, my best year was 2018. We'll see how comparing my current progress with the worst and best performance works for 2024.    

The other ambition, which wasn't clearly stated at the beginning of the year, is to have the linky party posted each week.  So far I'm at 13 linky parties for 13 weeks.

4. Stash Organization. I've not done much on this front. As I said earlier, my focus for first quarter has been on the quilt alongs.  No progress at all on my scraps, in fact I've gone backwards with my scrap bin where I put all my "in progress scraps". 




So I have some trimming to do there to get it back to empty. 

The "to be pressed tub" is full again. I washed a lot of Halloween fabrics for potential use in the SAHRR, so those all got added to the tub. So it's back to completely full status. 



The only place that I've made progress is the fabric closet. Earlier this year I ordered some wire cubes to extend the wire rack at the back of the closet.  




All the fabrics that were just piled on top of the rack have been moved into empty drawers in Grad Girl's room. That fabric will all need to be repressed and folded to conform to the other yardage in the closet.  I still have some wire cubes left, I'm hoping to clean up the right side of the closet and use them there to further expand the fabric storage.  We'll see how that works.  

In summery, ambitions #1 and #3 are going well.  I've got work to do on ambitions #2 and #4.  Knee surgery will definitely impact second quarter progress, but hopefully not too badly.   

10 comments:

Gretchen Weaver said...

It's hard to stay on top of everything in a sewing studio!

Sara said...

Some good visuals like the graphs and photos show just how much you've actually accomplished. Looks like some major success to me!

Karen - Quilts...etc. said...

you have a lot of nice yardage in there

Yvonne from Quilting Jetgirl said...

The project tracking bar graph is a really great way to see progress, and I am glad you were able to visually represent your goal of 15 minutes a day as well. I hope your knee surgery doesn't impact you for too long and that hand work will be a great way to spend time as you recover. Thank you so much for linking up withe the Q1 check-in!

LIttle Penguin Quilts said...

I like your wire storage cubes! They look really useful. It's always seems like rearranging and reorganizing is an ongoing process, but every little bit counts!

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

I'm so impressed with your tracking and organizing.... its cool to see the progress you have made!

Barbara said...

Your stash organization seems like an ambitious project. Hoping your knee surgery doesn’t have you layed up for too long.

Donna said...

I like those wire cubes. Scraps are a never ending battle. They must multiply when we sleep at night!

Melanie said...

Sounds and looks like really good progress on the quilting front. Especially love the rainbow graphic ;) And though you might not have made as much progress as hoped for on the fabric/storage front. It seems to have been a concious choice. All the best for the next quarter and for your knee surgery and recovery. xo

Bonnie said...

What an interesting bunch of info you are keeping up with. I'd say your 15 Minutes to Stitch is going very well. Honestly, scraps are a huge problem for most quilters. Especially those of us who don't want to just throw them away. I was very happy to pull some precut squares out to use this week.