Seasonal Goal Update: Summer 2024

Hello Friends and Welcome Summer!

The first day of the new season arrived last week while I was away helping my sister move. At home, humidity had it feeling over 40°C, but where we were, it was a much more pleasant 22°C, so I was happy to be away!

Since I've been back, all that humidity built up into a rainy weekend, followed by a warm, but not so stifling start to the week. And though it's still a little too hot for running my iron, I have been able to get a little bit of sewing done since I've been back!

However, I've felt that I've been somewhat lacking in direction recently. I don't think I've been keeping up with my goals very well throughout the Spring, so the changing season couldn't have come at a better time! A look back at my goals, accomplishments, and shortcomings is exactly what I need right about now to regain some of my focus!

Let's get to it!

Spring Goals

Going into the Spring of 2024, I had some fairly ambitious—and somewhat ambiguous—goals. I had hoped to work on eleven different projects, which is definitely a lot, but wasn't necessarily focused on finishing all of them, so I'd thought at the time that number seemed manageable!

Since I already know I didn't finish any projects this past season, there will definitely be a few goals that went uncompleted, but I'm excited to see what I was able to accomplish, whether a goal was reached or not!

Starting off with my handful of digital projects, I succeeded in keeping up with the blog until mid May when I hurt my hand and wasn't able to sew. I'm calling this one a success because I do think it's very important to give oneself time to heal from sickness and injury.

The next project goal was to finish making my digital font templates for my quilt labels, which I once again did not complete. This is a little frustrating to me because I know once this is done, I won't have to do it again, but I also know that I get much more enjoyment from working on physical sewing than digital creations, so I know why I'm not doing it. If anyone has advice for this, I would love to hear your thoughts!

The final digital project I'd hoped to work on is the instructions for next year's quilt along. The goal for this one was simply to get started, and I have been working on some of the calculations, but I haven't gotten started on digitizing any part of it. So I'll call this one a partial success!

Moving along to actual stitching, I had planned to continue piecing Six Pointed Star block for the Generations Quilt at a rate of one completed block per month. I exceeded this by making a total of seven blocks last season, bringing me to 26 completed blocks out of the total 30 I plan to make!

The next project is another hand piecing one, Ice Cream Soda! I set myself a different pace than the original quilt along, hoping to make four blocks a week, but also specified that I shouldn't get so wrapped up in this project that I didn't work on anything else, so I planned to take a week off from it once every month.

I didn't manage to keep up with the pace I had planned, but I was good at giving myself breaks from this to work on other things, so I'll call this one a partial success!

Ice Cream Soda was designed by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.

Moving away from hand work, the next project I'd planned to work on was Indigo Way, which I wanted to finish piecing all the blocks and units for! However, I didn't work on this project at all last season, so this one is definitely an incomplete goal.

Indigo Way was designed by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

That same goal was to be applied to my Stars of the Lily Pond quilt, with an additional goal of finishing it before the final pattern release in May. And while I didn't meet that deadline, I did get quite a bit of the quilt assembled and had a sample of the April block ready to share before those instructions were released, so I'll call this a partial success!

As for the original version of the Stars of the City quilt, I was hoping to finish the hand quilting and maybe even have it bound by the end of the season. I did make some progress on this, but I'm still nowhere close to finishing the quilting, so this goal went uncompleted.

Moving away from quilting, I also had a few garment projects I had planned to work on, including two formal waistcoats that need alterations, and drafting a custom pants pattern for myself. I didn't end up doing much work on any of these, so that's three more incomplete goals, however the urgency on the pants has continued to grow.

After planning to work on so many different projects, I had one final goal of not starting anything new until I had finished at least two of the projects already in progress. While I didn't start any new projects, I did work on a star block to gift to a friend and some simple blocks to donate to my guild.

Neither of these were particularly time consuming to make and didn't require the planning or purchase of new materials, but they did fall outside of the original list of seasonal goals, so I'll call this another partial success!

All together, that's two goals achieved, four partial successes, and six goals that were unmet. Before looking closely at each of these goals, I had honestly thought I wouldn't have more than partial success on any of them, so I'm thrilled with what I managed to achieve!

As for those six unmet goals, I think the biggest reason for not being able to complete everything was because I tried to work on too many different projects at once. I'll have to keep that in mind moving into the new season!

Summer Goals

After seeing how much I was able to achieve last season and taking some time to think about what I didn't, I've decided what I want to focus on this Summer!

As usual, I hope to continue my weekly posting here on the blog! I really enjoy sharing my projects, processes, and thoughts with all of you and miss being here whenever I need to be away.

Since I'm planning another quilt along to start this September, I'll need to do more work on the pattern instructions. Since I want the design to be a surprise, I won't be sharing much real-time progress on this one, but I hope you'll love it when I do finally share this new pattern!

And though I don't seem to be motivated to work on many digital projects, I really do believe being able to make labels I'm happy with will help me when it comes to actually finishing more of my quilts. So I'd really like to draft my custom font this Summer.

As for the actual, physical stitching projects, I'm definitely going to downsize my expectations this season!

The two most urgent projects are ones I'll be starting new this season.

The first is a sample of my next quilt along project. I want to piece my blocks as a test of my instructions this time, rather than making the sample first and typing the instructions later. This should make it easier for me to catch errors, and hopefully, the anticipation of piecing my blocks should make drafting the instructions go a little quicker!

The other is a sewing project rather than a quilting one; I still need pants and shorts that fit me, so I need to draft myself a pattern. Since this was a goal from last season, I have done a little research already, but I haven't made much on paper or stitched progress. So the goal for this one is both to draft a pattern and to actually have some finished garments!

In addition to those, I have a few projects that are less urgent, but which I'm looking forward to continuing to work on!

The first is my Generations Quilt blocks. I'm so close to finishing my blocks, so I want to complete the remaining blocks this Summer!

Next is Ice Cream Soda. Even though the quilt along has already come to an end, I'm still having a lot of fun making these blocks, so I'm aiming for an ambiguous goal of some progress each month throughout the Summer!

Beyond those projects listed above, I'm not planning to set any goals for any of my other ongoing projects. Yes, I would love to finish quilting Stars of the City or Meadow Mystery, and I'm still waiting to see how Indigo Way and Stars of the Lily Pond will look when fully pieced, but last season I piled too many projects on myself and I don't want to do that again.

I do still want to have the option of working on some of those ongoing projects though, so I won't prohibit myself from working on projects outside of my goals list this season!

That gives me three digital projects and four stitching projects for this Summer, all of which I'm very much looking forward to! I can't wait to see how successful I am in achieving my goals next time!

Looking back this week has been really insightful for me, so Friends, if you haven't already done so, I would highly recommend taking some time to set some goals for yourself for the coming season, or at least decide which projects you'd like to work on so you don't get too overwhelmed!

And, of course, I would love to hear what your plans are for the Summer months! Please share your goals and the projects you plan to work on in the comments below! And if you've already gotten started on your Summer projects, I would love to be tagged in your posts over on Instagram so I can see what you've been up to!

For now, I'm looking forward to getting started on some of my newly set goals so I can start this season off on my best foot!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA