Saturday, June 12, 2021

Tracking your WIPs

 As previously promised, here are some insights on tracking your Works in Progress, courtesy of me and my pARTner, Sarah. This is from our In Tandem Art conversation last week (which ended up being a phone call since thunder boomers kept knocking out my power and my wifi that day. ugh).

Sarah and I have come to realize over the last few months that when it comes to works in progress, we have very different situations! Sarah tends to have dozens of projects at a  time at various stages of completion, while I am more of the "see it through to the finish" kind  of gal. I typically only have a small handful of projects in the works. Nonetheless, most of the solutions we came up with for tracking these projects work for both of us, and would work for anyone anywhere on the WIP spectrum (is that even a thing? it is now).

Some methods that we currently use, or have used in the past include:

A chalkboard on the sewing room wall (I confess this is mine. I need that list IN MY FACE at all times!) Please note that in my world at lease, the chalkboard must be whimsical and cute. I guess a white board would be equally effective.

Both Sarah and I have participated in the bloggers Finish Along in the past. You can check out some of my finish along posts here and here. Basically, at the start of each quarter you list the things you want to finish and then at the end of the quarter you report in as to how you did, keeping you accountable and earning you the opportunity to win prizes. My understanding is that this has since moved from blogs to Instagram. 

Another way to use Instagram is to set a daily goal for yourself and document it with a hashtag as you go along. Sarah is currently doing #99DaysOfWIPs where she is working on completing projects that she started in quilt classes. 

Something I have never tried but I know is popular with many quilters is tracking in a Quilter's Planner.

American Patchwork and Quilting does a 12 month challenge every year to encourage finishes. I know my local quilt store does something very similar.

Sarah educated me on the Trello App, basically a digital bulletin board. I imagine and old fashioned cork board and 3x5 cards would work too (although it would be much more difficult to carry around in your pocket!)

Do you have other ways to track your WIPs? Please share them in the comments so we can all learn more.

3 comments:

Debbie said...

I use the OneNote app on my phone... just a simple list that I refer to now and then.

Lisa C said...

I don't have very many WIPs at a time. All of my WIPs have a box (plastic with a lid). Inside the box is the pattern, cut fabric, leftover fabric, and progress to date. These are stacked in my sewing room. I am usually a see it through person but sometimes it's easy to take "construction of blocks" to a sew day than "needing a design wall" project. So while I am a see it through gal, I do have several projects in different phases of completion. Yesterday I put the binding on two quilts so now I have two empty containers!

R's Rue said...

Thank you for sharing this information. So helpful.
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