Reflections...and Goals

In the book of James in the New Testament, it says

“13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15

If the year 2021 didn’t teach me this, then I don’t know what will. I have always been aware when I make goals, that they could be sidelined by health issues, legal issues, an accident, or whatever. I’ve learned to say from early in life, “If God wills it - then this is what I want to do.”

Well, the year 2021 was full of not-very-nice surprises.

I know that instead of looking back on them, and sorrowing over lost loved ones or changed lives, I’d like to look forward this year to hopefully better things on this earth.

(I know things will be better in heaven - but we’re not there yet!)

A few of the quilts finished for QT and made into kits.

So…while I did manage to finish up as many quilts as I’ve ever done - it is not a complete picture since the quilts I finished while in FL were not quilted by me - they were quilted by long-armers and some of them even bound by one of them. And they were small. But I’m still counting them as finished. Plus, the charity quilts I finished, many of the tops I didn’t make. So, my inflated numbers are not at all the same as back in 2014, for example, when I finished only about 25 quilts.

Anyway, my goals in 2022 include:

  • finishing 120 charity quilts

  • finishing up my UP greens series of tops and quilts

  • making at least 1 quilt top every month from 2.5” strips primarily. Two would be a bonus!

  • and hopefully getting a long arm (the residency permit is in the works still)

  • clean up my sewing room (15 min/day until I’m caught up - it’s not terrible, but not where I want it to be right now)

The rest of my goals are less specific and more “on the home front” pertaining to getting my sewing room better organized and compiling all my strips that I’ve been cutting up into fewer bags and getting them in all one place. Right now I have some upstairs and some downstairs.

And those are all my ‘official goals’. There are others pertaining to getting caught up on pattern writing/designing, but I’ll keep those to myself.

Oh - and officially I did finish up 193 quilts - but honestly - that really isn’t the whole picture since about 50 of those were not quilted by me and 120 of those were charity quilts of which many of the tops were not made by me. I guess it is no wonder it feels like I didn’t finish that much of my own work in 2021. Nope. No wonder at all.

You will be seeing many of those this year which I plan on writing up for Quilted Twins as Rachael wants to offer most of them as kits.

My husband has offered to build me a cabinet in my sewing room upstairs - and of course, we still need to finish up my long arm ‘studio’ - really - we’ve got to get going on that.

But otherwise…I’m pressing forward - not assuming anything and definitely trying not to presume anything about the future. One day at a time. One foot forward.

Thanks all for coming along with me!

Becky Petersen4 Comments