Finding fun and challenging ways to relax and connect with myself and people in my world

This is how it began…

Hello! Jill Greenbaum here from Airmont, NY. I’ll be making quilted postcards. I have a fabulous stash and love to write—and receive—postcards and letters from folks. Super excited to make a practice of sitting down at the sewing machine every day!

In fact, I started doing the 100 Day Project back in 2017. This is going to be my fourth year participating and I am jazzed!

Do you know about this event? It is super cool AND a real challenge!

The key for me is to engage in my project every day—it’s about consistent participation rather than the amount of time I devote each day.

In the past, I’ve chosen to burnish my Zentangle skills, and by the third week of the challenge, I am UNHAPPY with my decision. I always push myself to try a new pattern every day—and it takes more than 10-15 minutes to do good work so I feel overextended because I want to do well not just dabble… and not spend my entire evening tangling. I need conscious and consistent practice in bigger blocks of time to explore more complex designs…  I have learned that it is NOT a task for me to do for 100 days.

As I noodled around the 100 day project site, I found an interesting idea, quilted postcards! I love making art quilts and have a serious stash of fabric. This seemed like the perfect choice—a small, very do-able project, playing with my beautiful fabrics, and reducing my stash!

Long story short, I have learned a few things in just the four days since this year’s project started.

Having:

• fabulous materials is a start—though organizing them in some way is critical to avoid being pulled into the vortex of colors
• a plan for the design each is critical—it is easy to become overwhelmed with possibilities
• a flexible idea as to the desired outcome enables adjustments without upset—while I, conceptually, love a paper backing for writing to folks easily,  I don’t like the feel of it against the quilting.

So, if we move beyond the obvious learning from the actual work with fabric, batting, interfacing, pens for writing on fabric, etc. there are bigger lessons here…

I have learned again that I love…

• engaging in a challenge that stretches me yet does not overwhelm me
• having a clear focus
• consistency/doing a task that has elements of fun and “new-ness” every day
• getting into a pattern (hahaha) of working so that I feel I am using my time effectively and efficiently
• being part of something larger (#100dayproject/posting my work to instagram)
• to learn more about how I learn best
• that I can walk away from something I don’t (yet) love and say to myself, “I’ll look at this again tomorrow… I might just feel differently about it then!”

Truth be told, I have only completed one quilted postcard so far. I have two more quilt tops sewn and a third in the design stage. I feel good about starting off my 100 days strong. I can’t wait until I have more cards done so I can begin to send them out to people. Who doesn’t love receiving a handwritten, and in this case, also hand-sewn postcard?

I imagine that I’ll make close to 40 of these darlings over the 100 days. Let me know if you’d like to receive one, I’d be happy to send one your way, just be sure to email me with your land address!