Halfway serious question here: do quilt alongs ever give you anxiety? They do for me, sometimes.
It’s not that they’re difficult, necessarily. It’s more like I have trouble relaxing into them, especially if I know what’s going to come next. My husband says it’s because I’m always thinking about “the next.” In other words, I stew.
Constantly Stewing
My little monkey brain just won’t let me sit and enjoy things. I’m always thinking about what comes next, what I need to do next, how much time will I need to spend on this task and the next, how can I squeeze more tasks into my day…
This conversation came about when we were discussing our Sundays. This is a total aside, and has nothing to do with quilting, but helped me to get an insight into myself. Either way… we were talking about Sundays and how I sometimes feel stressed about them because we spend so much of the day at the gym. It’s not the gym time, necessarily. It’s more like we leave our house at 11:30 to make it to the gym at 12. While my husband has his training session with our friend, Noah, I’m walking on the treadmill. Then my session with Noah begins at 1. After that we stretch, and it takes another 30 minutes to get home. Then we get cleaned up and it’s time for errands and somewhere in there we need to eat…
My day would be so much more efficient if we could work out in the morning, which would leave the rest of the day for everything else that needs to happen.
Daniel (my husband) said: I noticed that this is an issue for you on other things too. Your problem is that you’re always thinking about the next thing. You just sit there and stew, becoming more impatient until you burst.
Stewing About Quilt Alongs
OK, so here’s how this all fits in with Quilt Alongs:
- If I know what block we’re supposed to do next, I get impatient with waiting for permission to work on that block.
- If I have a list of projects that I want to complete, but the quilt along is like “make one a month”, I feel anxious while I watch those projects just sit there.
I could be working on them and getting things done, darn it!
I saw this with the 100 Days 100 Blocks (Kinship Fusion) quilt along. I saw it again with several of Pat Sloan’s quilt alongs. And, I’m seeing it yet again with the All People Quilt UFO project.
Here’s the thing: I always want to do things the right way. I know how much work these quilt designers and other professionals put into these kinds of projects. I want to respect their time and work – and the work that others who are following along are putting in. And yet… I have “stuff” to do. It’s this see saw of competing values that’s causing the anxiety, and it’s something I have to figure out.
What's an Average Quilter to do?
Surely I can’t be alone in this. Do any of you Average Quilters experience this? If so, what do you do?
For sure, I’m tempted to just zoom ahead at my own pace. Part of the fun for me is seeing how much I can complete, and placing an unnecessary boundary on my abilities is really frustrating. Hmmm… decisions decisions. Something I’ll just have to stew about some more.