I am delighted with the wonderful news I received today. Meditation II - in the Forest has been accepted into the PAQA South 2009 Spring Exhibit- ARTQUILTStransitions! The exhibit runs April 17 - June 7, 2009 at the Durham Arts Council in Durham, NC and June 25 - August 2, 2009 at the Page-Walker Arts & History Center in Cary, NC. I am so excited!!!
You can see a photo of the quilts in my earlier post: http://www.quiltrobin.com/blog/2009/01/meditation-ii-in-the-forest-is-done.html
I have been working on the next - third - quilt in my Meditation series. This one is on daffodils. Spring cannot come soon enough for me. It has been unusually cold in Atlanta this year (read spoiled southerner) and I am so tired of dark, damp outside, bone-dry indoors, muddy paw prints all over my floors and cold.
I'm very pleased with the way this quilt is coming along. I want to enter it in a show with a due date later this month, and I'm starting to get a little concerned that I will create that last minute panicky rush for myself again. I really want to change that. The rush, the tension, adds nothing positive to my life or my art. So, as I so often do when trying to sort something out, I made a list of all the steps that still needed to be completed. I was stunned when I got to the end of this list. No wonder it takes me so long to make a quilt! No wonder I am always rushed and panicked at the end. No wonder FedEx and I are getting to be such close friends!
I decided to take the list backwards to the beginning of this piece to see if looking at the whole process will help me improve my time estimates and management. It certainly will. Here's the list:
Concept, research, design work in sketchbook, design work with decorated papers (photo above), color study/fabric selection and design, dyeing, transfer printing, design & cut stamp(s), surface design, fusing sheer overlays, starch & iron fabrics, cut and sort fabrics, piecing and assembly, layer and baste, quilting research & design, thread selection, stitch samples, quilting, square and trim, apply facings, block, make sleeve, photography, make label. As I'm writing, I thought of a few more - cut slat(s), prepare storage/shipping container, complete and mail show application. Ouch!!!
That is a lot of steps, 27 in all, but I wouldn't eliminate any. What I am going to do with this list is create a work schedule and set some milestones, leaving myself some breathing room at the end. And of course, change my time management and goal setting going forward. I see this as another rung on the ladder of my work process, all of which will, I'm positive, lead to more satisfying work for me, and more control over the results. To synthesize what I've learned about myself: hit-or-miss approach = hit-or-miss results!
I'm curious, how do you work towards deadlines? Do you plan or fly free, or are you somewhere in the middle? Striving for something different?
I finally finished, at the last minute as usual. I am very pleased with it. I am happy, too, that I found such rich and personally meaningful subject matter from which to develop this series. I am pleased with the process too. I worked in my sketchbook first, then with my decorated papers, then with transparencies to work out the quilting desings, and finally on the design wall, and back through this loop again as needed. Of course there were some stumbling blocks along the way, but I learned from every one. The most important lesson is to plan better for deadlines. There is no point in purposefully adding stressors to my life, or to turning my beloved creative life into something stressful.
The painted fusible in the center square was interesting, and the results were not at all what I had imaginged. I love the effect and will definitely use it again. Overlapping the leaves was a little tricky, but in my view, well worth the effort.
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