Sewing in the slow lane or enjoying the ride? Stuart is all for both!
Stuart Hillard
It’s the new year which brings with it the usual resolutions to eat better, exercise more, and learn a new skill. The desire to improve is a good thing of course, but the pressure to do so, especially during the cold, dark winter, is often doomed to failure. Instead, I’ve ditched the resolutions and now have a journal in which I write my aspirations and future plans. I find this a kinder, more positive, and successful way of making changes in my life.
One thing I have written down in the past is to ‘slow down’, in large letters and encircled with a big fluffy cloud. This was something I’d been told to do quite often by those around me. However, I knew that this journal entry didn’t sit right with who I am and that it wasn’t what I wanted. Finally, I added an arrow down to another box and then wrote ‘enjoy the ride’ inside it, which made me smile and finally I closed the book.
Enjoying the ride is a goal I can apply to every aspect of my life, particularly my career and my crafting endeavours. We can all feel under pressure sometimes to make our projects bigger and better, to craft like the demonstrators on TV, or to work faster because we just want to get on with the next project. Because of this, we can forget why we are even doing it in the first place, so I think it’s worth getting that journal back out and writing down all the reasons why crafting brings us joy.
I started sewing as an adult to make lovely soft furnishings, tableware, and quilts for my new home. Once that was done, I remade almost everything because my skills had improved so much that the first attempts looked cobbled together and unsophisticated. I ne
