A New Perspective on Time

 How many times have you heard people say, "There's never enough time"? Or thought it yourself? I've been thinking a lot lately about this concept of time and how consumed our world seems to be with it.  With the recent and dreaded arrival of daylight savings time, everyone, myself included, has been complaining about how we "lost" an hour...how terrible to "lose" an hour when we are already thinking we don't have enough time in the day, or week, or even year to do all the things we want or "need" to do.  I find myself feeling this way more often than I would like.  I don't have enough time to read all the books I want to read, to quilt all the projects I want to quilt, to watch all of the Netflix shows all my friends are talking about.  

I was talking to a co-worker recently about my quilting projects and in conversation she made the comment that she didn't know how I found the time to do all the quilting I do.  And my immediate response was, "I make time."  I didn't even have to think about this response...it was just the first thing that came to me.  And it wasn't until later that I started thinking...how is it even possible to "make" time?  Is that really what I do?  The more I thought about my relationship with time, the more I realized that I've been thinking about it all wrong. 

This is what my sewing table looks like when I'm in the flow! 😆

When I quilt, it feels like I'm making time because I become lost in time.  And I think that's one of the reasons why I love quilting so much.  It's one of the few things I do in which time disappears for awhile.  When it's just me, some fabric and thread, and my machine, I'm not thinking about time.  I'm enjoying what I'm doing in the present moment and so consumed with the task before me that hours fly by without me even realizing it.  This is what people mean when they say they are in the flow...time disappears.  If only our whole lives could be like this.  

We obviously can't give up all of our responsibilities (like remembering to feed the children 😆) and only do things that make us feel in the flow all the time, but maybe we can make little changes in our daily lives to help us achieve this flow state more often. 

It's important to give yourself permission to be in the flow, because sometimes you might surprise yourself and do something you wouldn't normally do.  For example, recently I tried a new quilting technique, the quilt as you go method.  I saw this mini quilt project in a recent issue of Love Quilting and Patchwork magazine and was really drawn to it for some reason, so I gave it a try!  To be honest, I didn't love this method, but I definitely enjoyed learning something new and having a reason to use up some fabric scraps is always a bonus. 

The quilt as you go method is just what it sounds like...you quilt your blocks as you go.  You start with a piece of batting that is about an inch or two bigger than your finished block size, you add one piece of the block to your batting at a time, and then quilt that piece on your batting before adding the next piece.  Once all your blocks are quilted, you sew the blocks together, just like you would with the usual quilting method. 

One thing I liked about quilt as you go is that you can have multiple lines of quilting going in different directions and not have to worry about what it will look like on the back since you won't see the quilt lines once you add your backing.  However, it seemed kind of tedious because after you sew all your blocks together, you still have to do more quilting to sandwich all your layers together.  I just chose to echo quilt each letter in my blocks, so it wasn't a ton of extra quilting, but it still seemed redundant.  I don't think I would use this method on a larger quilt.  In my opinion it's best suited for a mini quilt or wall hanging. 

To conclude this rather lengthy blog post, I challenge you today (or in the next week) to do something that causes you to get lost in time for a bit. Put your cell phone aside, turn off the tv, shut out the noise, and just fully enjoy whatever you are doing.  It doesn't have to be something creative or even exciting...although I find it easiest to achieve flow state when I'm doing something creative. But it can also be something simple, like sitting down and enjoying a cup of tea, or going for a walk outside, writing in a journal, or meditating for ten minutes...as long as you are fully in the moment and not thinking about something else.  I believe if we can create little moments like this every single day, we'll be much less worried about not having enough time and slowly our mindset will shift to the point where "losing" an hour won't seem like such a bad thing after all.