SylaQuiltArtist

Holydays and New Year’s celebrations are behind us, time for new challenges.

This year I will document any projects that I will start in my new Quilters Journal.

This is not going to be a quilters memoir, which is something I wrote about on my blog before and that you can read here. It will be something between a diary and a planner.

When I was working on my quilter’s memoir, I would wait until I was finished with the project to begin writing about it. Because of this I often missed pretty important information concerning my projects. I also faced situations where I recalled an important tidbit of information a few months later. Then it turned out that I had no more space to add what I had just remembered because all the pages in my memoir were full. I was reluctant to glue in extra pages.

I wanted to have the ability to closely follow all my projects, including the ones I have already started and finished, the ones that I started but have not finished yet, and projects that I haven’t started yet and are still in the planning stage.

I wanted to create a book, I could fully adapt to my needs and that I could constantly develop.

Therefore, this time I created my journal to be more comprehensive. I created templates that could be printed (depending on your needs) and put into a binder. Everything will depend on me.

All the pages are black & white. I was thinking that it would be fun to color them as you like.

The second page that you can see below is the page of my future project, which I will complete as soon as I start working on it. If I am going to work on a patchwork designed by someone else, I will print out a small photo of the design and stick it on the needle with fabric. Thanks to this, even if I put that project off for a while, I will know what I was working on when I decide to come back to it. I will not have to search for that picture on my computer.

It only takes a minute to fill in the fields, but this information will be crucial if this project becomes a UFO (unfinished object) and I finally decide to come back to it at a later time.

If a project is going to consist of many blocks and each block will be sewn separately, I prepared a different kind of template.

Next, I will have to get ready to work on a specific patchwork or block. I will have to consider what I will need to work. Do I have all the tools and fabrics.

Shopping is done, the list is checked. I will cut some fabric scraps and stick them into my journal.

Thanks to this page, I will always know what kind of fabrics I used and where I can buy them in case I will run out while creating my patchwork. It also will be a nice memory while browsing and a big help as well in finishing any UFOs or even while planning my next project.

This page allows me to take control of the threads. I can write down the numbers or even stick a few strands. Very often I take out more threads for quilting than I really need. I quilt with them and then, in the heat of battle, set them aside, mixing them with other threads. If I don’t take notes about what kind of thread I was using, and I want to use them again, it is a time-consuming process looking for them and comparing them so see if this is the one.

The progress page is used to keep a record of the work performed on a specific project. Thanks to this I can analyze if everything was done and if I did not forget about something. When wrapping up a project, it will be a treasure trove of knowledge.

While creating a new project, I sometimes face a dilemma about how to do something. I experiment with new ideas and methods that do not always turn out to be right. After I am done, I reach a conclusion that I should have done certain things differently. Because of this I wanted to be able to make notes regarding my methods and then print them out and put them into the binder with the appropriate project.

I also made a page that I will use to keep track of the date when I clean up and oil my sewing machine. I always forget about when the last time I serviced my machine was.

The most important page. Finishing the project. I think this is going to be an awesome memento of the past that I will always want fill.

Additionally, I made sewing week planner. I am not sure yet if I am going to start from Monday or Sunday, so I have two versions.

There is also a calendar page where I can jot down the dates of future exhibitions or deadlines for competitions. The calendar is very flexible, I can use it for many more years to come.