Finishing Strong

 

Rapidly approaching July 4th, the last day of Ventura Modern Quilt Guild's 100 Day Challenge.

Back in March, the guild challenged members to set their own quilting goals for 3+ months and to work at least five minutes each day toward reaching them. I had high hopes for creating three quilts, but lots of other things called for my attention. So, I will just have two wall hanging sized quilts to take to show & tell at our next members' meeting: # 3 & #4 in my "Q is for Quilt" series.

About half of #4 has been hand quilted at this point, so I'm making a last push to wrap it up in the next 10 days. I've chosen to echo quilt in the large areas, which outlines the solid shapes of blue and orange and creates an interesting texture in the background. Once the quilting if done, I'll square it up and put a binding on it to finish off the edge.

I have appreciated this member challenge. The "assignment" to work each day on something "quilty" was really permission to create on a regular basis, even when this required an effort to fit quilting in between other obligations and daily duties. The time element helped to keep projects moving along.

And with each person setting their own goals, it was just open ended enough to stay self-motivated. The challenge to create comes from within; the satisfaction is in meeting your own expectations for yourself. 

When all is said and done, perhaps my biggest lessons from this experience are to keep my goals realistic, and not to be too harsh on myself if everything doesn't get done. That definitely drains the joy out of the creative process!

I would definitely use this approach for future goal setting.