When I started this blog series about the changes in my quilting practice because of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order, I didn’t realize that it would last more than a month, much less more than two. I’m sure many of us were blindsided by the length of this quarantine time. I also didn’t foresee what a great impact it would have on my quilting life. In some ways, it’s been really beneficial. My daily commuting time has now become my daily quilting time. But, my guild is about to host its second meeting on Zoom and that’s something I really didn’t imagine happening.
Quilting is such a tactile medium that the idea of holding entirely virtual guild meetings just seems so odd. Whenever I or any of the other quilting teachers goes to a guild meeting in-person to give a talk, we drag huge suitcases full of quilts because guild members want to see the quilts in-person and up-close. Quilt guild meetings just don’t seem like the kind of thing that would work over Zoom, but I’m beginning to recognize that they may have to until a vaccine is widely available and that could be a while. So, I’ve considered which of may talks would work well over Zoom. (The good news is that most of them will. My trunk show wouldn’t be the same though.) I’m also experimenting with some new ideas, trying them out on my guild in my role as Program Co-Chair.
At tomorrow’s meeting, we’ll be having a virtual UFO Workshop. Over the years, I have found working with UFOs to be great creative exercises IF I can get past the idea of what the UFO was supposed to be and begin to reimagine it. That’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow night. We’re going to step through a series of questions to allow us to evaluate our UFOs and to think about them differently. Then, we’re going to consider various different setting options or different projects that we can make to move a UFO to an FO and get it out of the closet or drawer(s). We’ll end talking through some member UFOs to give them ideas for getting their projects finished. I’m hopeful that it will be a timely topic and one that helps us all come up with plans for tackling the projects that have been hanging over our heads. We have enough dark clouds right now without adding UFO guilt!
