A Quilt a Day
When I started quilting as my job, I would arrange the
quilts that were brought to me in cubby holes on the back wall of the
studio. Each week I would do the last
quilt I needed to get done and painstakingly move all the quilts still in
cubbies to the left row of holes so I could have my order. I need order!
This worked fine for a while. I usually had enough cubbyholes for the
quilts on hand. One day they started
lining up along the wall because there were not enough cubby holes and I could
no longer realistically look at the wall of cubbies and guess how long this
customer’s quilt would be waiting for its turn on the machine. I needed a plan and I needed it NOW.
I loaded a calendar program onto my computer during my
Christmas break in my second full year of quilting and I took each quilt from
its cubby in the order they were going to be quilted and I estimated how long I
thought it would take me to do that quilt according to what my worksheet said I
was to do on it. This took me several days, but by the end of that time I had
my order! I had 5 week of quilts waiting
for me to do my magic.
4 quilts in waiting
This freed me from a huge burden. I no longer sounded stupid when someone
wanted to know when I would have their quilt would be ready for pick up. It also opened up many options for my
customers. They could now schedule a
quilt DATE. What a novel idea!
The best part was I got rid of the guilt I felt about
wanting to quilt one of my own quilts.
What is the use of having a quilting machine if I can’t quilt one for
myself every now and again.
It took me another full year to realize I needed to schedule
time for me to take a break once in a while.
Having done some very simple quilting of my own (and I'm a real newbie) I can see how quilting as a business is a very time consuming one. You definitely need to schedule your breaks.
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