sneak peeks | Night Quilter

July came in with a literal bang, and here we are already a week into it! I’m squeaking by with my July goal setting post for A Lovely Year of Finishes (ALYoF) just in the nick of time. This month I have a super fun but secret project to finish. I have a pattern coming out in the September issue of Make Modern eMagazine, and my goal for July is to finish it all up! I need to trim, bind, and photograph the quilt, and need to finish proofreading the pattern write up.

I can only show you tiny peeks until the issue comes out, but you can count on a full reveal come September.

alison glass ex libris — I plan to bind the quilt with this Alison Glass Geometry print from her Ex Libris line. The fabric designer aficionados among you probably noticed that the quilt includes the 2015 Sun Prints by Alison Glass… surprised? 🙂

I’m confident that I’ll meet this goal, since, well, I have to! The deadline is a week away. For this reason, I considered choosing a different project as my July goal, but ultimately opted not to. ALYoF emphasizes the selection of ONE goal per month, which really helps me prioritize my project progress. Finishing this quilt submission is my biggest goal, so it is a perfect choice for ALYoF.

As a mom of a newborn, and newly a mom of three, my progress is made in very small bits. I have learned that if I set lofty, time consuming goals, I set myself up for failure or at the very least, a stressful anxious push to complete the goals in time. On the other hand, when I set small, attainable goals, I’m motivated to complete them without stress, and then feel good that I’ve actually accomplished something, which then motivates me to create more. Just because I complete my ALYoF goal before the end of the month doesn’t mean I can’t then work on other projects. It’s a win-win of positive, fun quilty progress without stress.

I’m linking up to A Lovely Year of Finishes July Goal Setting party with Fiber of All Sorts and Sew BitterSweet Designs. When I complete this month’s goal, you’ll get another sneak peek or two to hold you over until September!

This is a tough time of year for me in terms of blogging. I mostly like to share photographs of my progress and projects, but this time of year I’m spending every free second frantically trying to get projects done (and not very many free seconds blogging). On top of that, I’m currently working on two secret projects and three Christmas gifts, so there’s not a whole lot I can really share in full. I’m considering taking an official “Christmas vacation” from my blog, but also don’t want to miss all of you too much.

For now, I decided to take some crazy close-up photographs of some of my works in progress to share with you in an aura of mystery. Here are some of the things I’ve been working on. Go ahead and guess what they are, if you want! It reminds me of the backs of Ranger Rick magazines I read as a child, where they had a grid of super macro photographs of everyday objects and you had to guess the object. Have fun!

I also have to include this process shot, completely unedited. This was my first time using my new Massdropped pink clover clips, and this one glows in the dying light. I think it’s such a cool photo!

If you’re a quilter-blogger who also has a lot of holiday and family obligations this time of year, what do you do to ease your stress levels? Take a break from blogging? Let go of obligations or personal expectations? I’d love to know!