The Power of the List

Lists have great power.  I notice that truly busy people keep lists of what to do when and do their best to follow them, get to meetings on time, finish projects on time, and so forth.  I have been keeping an daily online to-do list at 1-3-5.com for several months now and it has done wonders to help me stay on track with projects.  I highly recommend some method of keeping a to-do list - virtual, on paper, whatever works for you.

Today was a sleepy day - I woke up, took the dog to the dog park, and came home to crash on the sofa.  I slept through about 3 episodes of Law & Order, waking from time to time, only to fall back asleep again.  Husband woke me up about noon to go to the grocery store with him... I shopped, came home, ate lunch and dozed off again... Why couldn't I keep my eyes open all day?

Finally, about 4pm, I woke up enough to do a little sewing.  I sewed down about half the appliques on my Pumpkin Patch Lane block of the month.  Then I came back to the computer and ran Dungeons and Dragons for some friends for a couple of hours.  Then it was dinner, and back to the sewing machine to finish that block.

Pumpkin Patch Lane block 1, in progress

 Saturday, I traced all the shapes of the animal block #4 from Yoko Saito's Past and Present book, onto WonderUnder and set them aside.  After sewing my bom, I chose fabrics for the Animal quilt and pressed the WonderUnder onto the back sides of the fabric... Tomorrow perhaps I'll cut them all out and begin planning block 4 of the quilt - placing the appliques where they belong and pressing them permanently onto the background.  Of course, I'll still have to sew them down, but if they are pressed, they won't be going anywhere.

This is a little preview of what a part of this quilt will look like - The original is all made from homespuns, flannels and wool... SO very much, NOT my personal aesthetic.

Still, I had to make it, because I love all the little animals on it... I will try to get some pictures of the blocks I've done in the near future.  Maybe a pic of the whole quilt if I can find one 'out there' on the web.

I've really discovered the true benefits of 'to-do' lists in the past few months - I get much more done, and I'm more motivated to finish tasks when I have a list and endeavor to follow it.  While I didn't finish everything quilty on my list yesterday, I did finish 2 tasks, which I wouldn't have even started without my list!  I feel semi-accomplished at least.