Author: jennifer

Here it is, the last Monday of January and I feel both urgency and relief at the thought.  Urgency because in spite of everything the month has gone much faster than I expected.  Relief because it has also been a dreary, heavy feeling month and I’m happy it’s almost gone.  Either way, it’s the last Monday which means I’m here with my 20 in 20 January Report.


Twenty minutes of sewing, six days a week, in 2020!  You can read more about my goal here , but what I’m really seeking is a journey.  I’m not after crossing 20 minutes off my list as much as I seek a creative process that is both exhilarating and effective.  THAT’S my real goal.  And my way there is to invest some time, every day, in figuring it out.


So let’s talk about January!  Part of the 20 in 20 monthly report is visual.  I started a half rectangle triangle (HRT) quilt to document my sewing time.  Every HRT represents both time spent sewing and what type of project I worked on.  The yellows are the Sabbath when I don’t sew, and any other neutral rectangle is a day when I didn’t sew a stitch.  My January blocks are above, placed calendar style beginning with January 1st.  You can see that I’ve missed only one day – the day that was my official kickoff!  (I’m still laughing about that one.)

I’m succeeding at spending a few minutes sewing every day.  That’s a victory, and I’m glad I’ve made it happen.  But truthfully, many of those days don’t represent a routine or a creative process at all.  They were more like, “oh no, I haven’t sewn yet today.  What can I work on for 20 minutes before I go to bed?”  It felt like the late nights when I’ve joined a sew along that requires posting a block daily, and I’m frantically making mine at 10:30 p.m.  Some of it is inevitable, especially on crazy days (like Wednesday, for me), but part of it was just lack of routine.  Seeing my HRT blocks like this gives me perspective.

So the biggest lesson I’ve learned in January is that I want a consistent routine more than I want to check it off the list.  I want to redesign my days and create a consistent time for creativity.


The second lesson I learned is that not all sewing time is equal.  I knew I’d run into this, and part of my 20 in 20 goal is to figure it out.  Two things happened:  1.  I wasn’t always clear on what I would work on, so I wasted energy waffling between projects.  2.  Cutting fabric for blocks feels very different than sewing and seeing blocks come together.

Regarding clarity, as new opportunities came my way, I needed to shuffle projects so I can complete the most important ones.  Sometimes putting first things first is tricky.  First according to what?  According to whom?  For about a week I just wanted to sew ALL the things!  The full swing of family life quickly knocked sense into me, but not before I bounced around with little to show for my efforts.  And what about my heart?  What about the ideas bubbling up inside that matter to no one but me, ideas that might be a flop but thinking about them gives me hope?  What about those?  Where do they fit on the project list?  They will never come to life if I don’t make space and time for them.

I’m learning that making my process effective and fulfilling will require making important decisions about what I do and don’t work on, and why.

As for the reward of sewing compared to the tedium of prep work, I didn’t make a category for prep time.  In a perfect world, that would happen in an extra block outside of my 20 minute challenge.  But it’s not a perfect world and sometimes you need to just stand there and cut fabric.  Like when I cut tiny diamond strips for 11 little lone stars.  It wasn’t technically sewing, but it needed to be done, and I counted it.  I’ve decided to let that time count as sewing time for the purpose of my challenge/experiment.

In summary, these are my three big takeaways in January:  I want routine, not a checklist.  I want clarity and purpose in my sewing.  And I am happiest when I’m actually sewing.  I’ll be pondering these things as I work on routines and effectiveness in February.

Overall, I’ve sewn on 22 of the first 27 days of the year!  That makes me happy.  I may not have tons to show for it yet, but it’s a solid start.  And that solid start wraps up my 20 in 20 January Report.

Have a great week!
– Jennifer

Way back in 2012, I made a cute pillow for my sister with Summersville fabric.  It’s a fabric collection I regretted not buying more of, so when my friend offered me some leftover blocks from her quilt to play with, I snapped them up.  The result is this Summersville quilt top.


The blocks came to me in triangles, with a solid center triangle and the dark gray on one side.  I played with layout and decided to pair them into diamonds, then sewed them into one much larger diamond. I added a thin border using a yellow/white stripe.


And then I felt stuck.  It went into the closet for a while, then came back out to get a dark gray border.  I was tempted to finish it in a diamond shape, but in the end I decided to turn it into a rectangle.  After trying dozens of ideas, I still didn’t like anything or didn’t have enough fabric to do it.  I finally pulled out a layer cake that looked good with the blocks.


The angles on this quilt made design tricky.  In the end, simple won the day.  I chose to sew the layer cake squares together into borders, and trimmed them before adding a second dark gray border.  At that point I was out of fabric and a charm pack of the same collection came to my rescue!  I did the same thing with the smaller squares.  One more gray border and some green in the corners allowed me to square up the quilt.


This Summersville quilt top is really simple, but colorful.  It was an interesting design challenge because I was working only from my stash. I also had a long, narrow diamond to build around.  Way back when I first pieced the triangles together, they were wonky and I didn’t square them up. When I quilt this, I’ll be dealing with a quilt center that doesn’t lay flat.  A good challenge, right?

.Here it is, the first full week of 2020, and I’m officially starting my big sewing goal for the year.  I want to see how much I can accomplish if I sew for 20 minutes every day in 2020.  I’m calling it my 20 in 20 Challenge.


I’ve been brainstorming about this for a while, and I hope to learn a lot from this challenge.  First of all, I’m excited to work on being consistent all year long, especially in the really busy times when I typically don’t touch my sewing machine.  I believe time constraints are the biggest obstacle to lots of goals, especially creative ones that are more optional than necessary.  Sometimes I’m inclined to discount what I can do with small pieces of time.  I don’t even start because I don’t have a window large enough to accomplish what I want.  So I’m really curious to see how effective I can be in just 20 minutes.

I also hope to develop good transition practices.  I want to sit down at my machine and go for it, not waste any time.  Are there things I can do to get in a groove more quickly?  I’m researching and will be paying careful attention to my creative habits and transitions.

I am sure there will be days when I can sew for more than 20 minutes, and days when I don’t reach my goal.  My plan is to do it Monday – Saturday.  For me, Sunday is the Sabbath and I reserve it for worship, time with my family, and spiritual development.  So if I can sew for twenty minutes, six days a week, that’s 120 minutes of sewing every week!  Two hours a week, means 8 hours each month, and you can see how it will add up.  Especially if I am effective.

Just for fun, I picked up a simple timer that I’ll set every day to keep track of my minutes.


I also decided to add a project as part of my accountability.  I’m going to sew a half rectangle triangle block every day.  It will be my last seam of the sewing session, and the colors I use will depend on what I did with my time.  One color in the block will represent greater than (aqua), less than (green), or exactly 20 minutes of sewing (blue).  The other color will represent if I was sewing from a pattern (red), or creating my own designs (pink), hand sewing because I couldn’t get to my machine (orange), or working on an old unfinished project (purple).  Sundays will be yellow rectangles.  If I don’t sew at all Monday-Saturday I’ll add a neutral rectangle to represent that day.  These are my blocks for January 1-5, below:


The key to this will be keeping myself stocked on pre-cut solid rectangles to choose from, but I do think it will be a lot of fun to have a running record of how I’m doing with my goal.  I hope it helps me use up solid scraps as well!

Finally, I’m going to report back on what I’m learning through the year.  The last Monday of every month will feature a 20 in 20 Monthly Report, where I’ll share what I’m learning about my creative process and sewing for just a few minutes every day.  Don’t worry, every post won’t be about my 20 in 20 challenge.  I have quilts and quilt tops I finished last year that I haven’t yet shared.  It’s going to be a great year!