A Look Inside My Project Journal

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

Now that we are moving into the first week of March, I am hoping for some warmer weather. The cold always makes me feel sluggish and unproductive. Hopefully as the weather gets warmer, I'll have some finished projects and more enthusiasm for whatever is coming next!

This week, I wanted to talk about my project journal. If I had to list the most important reasons for using a project journal, my top two would be inspiration and preparation. Inspiration comes through in the doodles, diagrams, and full colour drawings, while the preparation is reflected in the calculations, research, and notes to self.

It is equally important to acknowledge the fun, pretty, and inspirational parts as well as the technical and mathematical parts. Without both motivation and understanding, a project is much harder to make progress on.

VA's Project Journal

Let's start with some of those colourful and inspirational pages. Here is one where I was testing a colour scheme for a quilt called Love-in-the-Mist, which was the BoM project for my guild during the 2019-2020 year.

I wanted to use yellow and violet; they're complimentary colours and work really well together. For the background, you can see I considered using both black and white, but I was more interested by the intensity of the peripheral areas without any white. I decided to try the quilt using just the dark background. For anyone who hasn't seen Love-in-the-Mist before, here's how the top turned out:

The exposure in this photo isn't great and washes out the yellows, it looks a lot better in person. If you're interested in this pattern, check out Persimmon Quilts for the Love-in-the-Mist instructions!

Sometimes I'll make one of these full colour drawings just for fun. It can be really great to play around and add as many different colours as you can, or to try to use only a few specific colours. You can also use a variety of different blocks and see what secondary patterns you can make when they're placed together in a group.

This is one of those drawings that I made for fun a few years ago, but I really fell in love with the colours and the way the different blocks interacted. So I calculated cutting and piecing instructions for each block.

I haven't moved beyond the drafting phase of this design, but once I've finished some of my current projects, I would love to revisit it.

Drafting a pattern in this way isn't exclusive to quilts. Here's a formal dress I designed back in 2013, before I ever started quilting. The notations on the side indicate measurements and the uncoloured diagram shows seam placement for the variety of different panels.

You can use a project journal for any creative hobby or art form. Knitting, carpentry, jewellery design, all creative projects, regardless of what they're created from need both inspiration and organization. I just happen to be interested in sewing and quilting, so those are the things featured in my journal.

Beyond the bright and colourful sketches, uncoloured diagrams are also really helpful. While they may not be as eye catching as the full colour diagrams, they can still be beautiful. And by keeping the diagram limited to just line work, you can include a lot of important information about construction and technique.

Here's a diagram I made while working on Pleasantville.

I added a few extra blocks to each row, and a few additional rows, which resulted in a larger quilt than the pattern originally called for. As a result, I needed to recalculate the border fabric requirements. There's a notation on this page that says my quilt will be 10" wider and 13" longer, but even knowing that, I needed the diagram to visualize what that meant.

And it did work out! Here's the finished quilt top with my size adjustments. If you're interested this quilt, check out Kimberly Enmo's Pleasantville pattern!

Sometimes, you want to make a block without doing much math, this LeMoyne star block is a great example. I drew this as a piecing diagram to figure out where all of my seams should be placed, the picture is the same size as the finished block, 4"square. Rather than doing the calculations to determine cutting information, I just transferred the pattern to light cardboard and made a traceable template.

The blocks made from this diagram have lived in a bag (unfinished) for a little over a year at this point and it has only just occurred to me as I'm writing this that the method I was unknowingly replicating was English paper piecing.

The problem I was having while assembling them was that I was trying to construct it flat using Y seams. The small size of the pieces combined with my over complicating the process resulted in me setting these blocks aside. When I get back to working on them, I'll definitely remember to try treating it like English paper piecing and see if that speeds up the process.

That's actually a great tip! Never be afraid to revisit a project and try it a new way. Approaching it with the knowledge you've gained since the last time you worked on it might make it a lot easier to make progress on in the future. So thank you friends, for helping me figure out why I was struggling with that block!

Back to the project journal, another thing I like to sketch are quilting diagrams. Here, you can see my plan for quilting Simply Woven, and a picture of the quilt top for comparison.

I want to follow the lines of piecing in a few places to accent it, and create a sort of broken frame around the edges of the quilt, then fill the rest with an all over, organic wavy pattern. I didn't draw every line of quilting, just enough to get the idea and remember my plan. If you're interested in making Simply Woven, check out Jess Kelly's instructions, available through Moda.

As much as I would love to tell you my project journal is always a fun place full of colourful doodles and helpful diagrams, there are some pages that are kind of a mess.

Here's a quilting diagram I did in preparation for quilting Rainbow Railfence.

It was just a really fast way for me to record my idea for quilting diamonds to contrast the bar design in the piecing. Unfortunately, I tried to draw several different design options on the same diagram and it got too busy and confusing, so I had to made a whole new diagram on the other page.

While most pages feature helpful diagrams and sketches, some advice is better given in words. A few pages in my journal focus on research notes answering some of my questions as a beginner. Some of my recent research topics have included how to classify a modern quilt, advice for photographing quilts, and what needs to be included in a quilt pattern. If you'd like me to make a post on any of these topics, let me know in the comments.

Because my research notes don't usually include sketches, I like to make those pages fun and exciting by using different coloured pens and markers. Changing up the colours you write with can also break up a block of text and make it easier to read.

The last part of my project journal that I want to talk about might be the most useful thing about it, my project list. The project list is pretty self explanatory, it is a list of the current projects I'm working on, upcoming projects, and projects I'd like to try in the future.

I try to only include projects I will realistically finish. Currently included are; UFOs waiting to be quilted, any challenges or BoM programs I'm participating in, any quilt that has a deadline, such as something being made for someone's birthday, and projects I've collected coordinating fabric for, like the bird quilt I mentioned in my last project update.

It can be really tempting to add every beautiful pattern you see to this list, but it's better to keep them in a separate place for inspiration. You can save pictures or links in an inspiration folder or keep a list somewhere in your journal. This way, if you buy fabric without a project in mind, you already have a reference library of inspirational patterns on hand.

This list helps me to organize my time as well. If I know I have a quilt on my list with a deadline, I can get started on it well in advance, and prioritize it as the deadline approaches. This is especially helpful for those of us who work on multiple projects at a time!

I start my list on the last page of my journal and work backwards through the book as I add onto it. This keeps the list separate from the other content in the journal and feels more organized. You can dedicate a few blank pages at the front of your journal for this if you prefer. Just remember to leave space to add more as you complete old projects and start new ones!

Choosing the Right Journal

Now that you know a little more about how I use my project journal, you might consider starting one for yourself. Everyone will have different preferences for size, paper weight, and page, if you opt for a physical book that is.

If most of your inspiration comes from online sources, it could make more sense to have a virtual project journal. You can use the notes app on your phone, a Google Drive folder, or a personal blog to save links, photos, artist’s names, or notes to yourself. There are even programs you can buy for designing your own quilt patterns!

Personally, having the tactile experience of physically writing in a book is really important to my process and helps me to remember things more clearly.

For my own journal, I prefer a fairly small book, currently, the one I’m using is around 5”x7½”. This size is great for me; it’s small enough to easily fit in a bag so I can take it everywhere, it isn’t so small that it makes drawing uncomfortable, but isn’t large enough to be cumbersome.

As for paper, I love using grid paper! The lines help when doodling quilt patterns that use squares, rectangles, and half square triangles. The grid can also be used to indicate scale so blocks for quilts and pattern pieces for garments can easily be drawn proportionally to each other. Having grid lines also helps to keep my writing organized if I’m making lists, notes, or calculations.

I also have an art paper book. It uses thicker paper, like watercolour paper, to prevent inks from soaking through to the back of the page. I only use this book for really colour intensive sketches, like for colour testing or doodles I'm doing just for fun.

Because I am so specific about my preferences for my projects journal, I bind most of my own notebooks. The method I use is called coptic binding, it involves sewing together the components of a book without the use of glue. If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, Sea Lemon has a great coptic binding tutorial, as well as some for several other types of book binding.

If you intend to travel with a coptic bound journal, I recommend covering the spine with book binding tape. The exposed binding threads are susceptible to wear from sliding in and out of bags. If your threads break, the book won't fall apart immediately. You can see the binding thread at the bottom of my sketching book has broken, but the book is holding together.

If you are not interested in binding your own notebooks, the most commonly sold notebooks available would be lined paper, grid paper, and blank sketching paper. Each of these can be bought at discount or office supply stores. If you want thicker, better quality paper, you can shop at an art supply store, but be prepared for the cost to be a little higher.

Friends, it has been a lot of fun to look back through my project journal, thank you for coming along with me! It has given me insight into finishing old blocks, reminded me of some really interesting patterns I've drafted, and given me the chance to review and update my project list.

If you use a project journal, let me know what you like to keep in it. I would love to see your favourite entry or a particular sketch you're really proud of!

For anyone who has never used a journal to organize their creative projects, let me know if you do give it a try. And please send me a picture if you end up binding it yourself!

Until next time friends, keep creating!

VA