When I set out to make quilting my life, I couldn’t just drop everything and quilt. Daily demands don’t simply fall into line just because you decide to change career paths. As much as I’d love to spend my days fondling fabric and churning out fabulously original designs that sell for thousands…I had to figure out how to fit quilting around freelance work, household chores, and motherhood in crazy, suburban 2017.

Balance is always good.

There’s old advice for writers that says something about leaving your work with a sentence unfinished. This way, when you sit down again and start to write, you can pick right up where you left off. There’s no searching for the next flow of words. The words will flow. It’s actually relatively transferable.

I used to look at quilting as project to be done in big blocks of time. But in order to make it a sustainable part of my life I needed to reframe it to fit into little pockets here and there. And perhaps the occasional large chunk of time, seized after bedtime. Enter #30minutesaday.

Just like exercise, brushing teeth, and eating your vegetables, building a creative practice is a fundamental part of a healthy life. Not that I do all of those things every day. But I know that I should.

In thirty minutes, an active daily practice, I can try new techniques and play with new ideas that may not be ready for a full-blown project. I work on multiple projects simultaneously, brewing several while moving one forward, moving on another one the next day. I get to appreciate short, immediate results and the challenge of new parameters – an immediate gratification that’s motivating, even intoxicating. It’s changed the way I create and made me a better, stronger quilter.

Try it. Just a few minutes of daily practice leads to growth, change, forward momentum.