…monday making…

Around here, we are knee deep in birthday season. Two birthdays down, with another this week, and my creative adventures are pretty much limited to cake decorating and present wrapping, with a smattering of essential sewing for a small girl who is rapidly becoming not so small, and is growing out of her wardrobe almost faster than I can sew it. I’m planning this to be our last week of school before a break next week, so I’ve decided to set some mini goals for this week. The lack of crafting is bugging me, so I’m trying to make more time this week to carve out some moments to create even when it’s busy. My monthly goal setting has been so helpful, I’ve decided to break it down even further for this week.

September goal one was to start spring sewing. I did manage to prep a couple of patterns last week, and have pulled the fabric for one of them – an oversize plantain tee, plus fabric for a different top. This week, I’m planning to get both those t-shirts sewn up, starting with cutting them out today. I also plan to pull out a dress fail from summer I want to upcycle, and plan to get that cut out to make shorts. I don’t know I will get to the sewing part of the shorts, but progress is better than nothing, when life is busy like it is at the minute.

Goal two was new/old collaborations. This one, this is a project I am super excited about. The main idea had been kicking around for over 12 months, and this past couple of weeks has brought it all back to the surface. Like many projects, timing is as important a part of the process as inspiration and motivation. For me, at least. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to get the Ministry of Crafty Shenanigans to a place we can start sharing more about this new project. My part has been lots of fun things like designing banners and graphic templates, and over the weekend I managed to tick off one of the major items on my list. It is one of those projects that builds its own momentum, and I am feeling super inspired just from sinking into the process. It probably helps that the whole thing is a delight of neatly ordered lists and systematically labelled folders and chat threads and laughs and building this amazing creative bubble around the whole project. I have lots of procedures and details to tick off, so my goal for this week is to tidy up the bottom half of my to-do list, and hopefully be able to share more with you all next week.

The third item on my September list is another that is building it’s own momentum. I wanted to finish a WIP, specifically, my pastel rainbow Ice cream Waffle blanket. I started the month at the end of the eighth repeat, of ten colours. My original plan was to add just one colour a night, similar to my 100 Days Project last year. And just like that project, once I get going, I don’t alway stop at one colour. Gotta love that magical “making begets making” stage. My creative process is very much a classic demonstration of Newton’s first law. “A body at rest will remain at rest” – when I’m not making, I don’t feel motivated to make. “And a body in motion will remain in motion” – once I get going on a project, and especially once that project reaches ‘critical mass’, so to speak, I tend to keep going. “Unless acted upon by an external force” – this is where my goal setting and also my crafty accountability partners come into it. I’m not always great at pushing myself to get started, even on projects I enjoy. Put it out into the world in a blog post, or drop a message in the chat, and it’s like a big old hit of motivating dopamine direct to the creative part of my brain.