Ebb and Sew

 This Week

I am officially starting a new project! I have decided that I will be making a quilted pillow cover/case! I found some resources and a tutorial/pattern online, (Williams, n.d.), and my aunt is still patiently putting up with me when I ask for her help. I found a quilt block online that I liked called a “Corner Star”, and decided to use that with just a little bit of modification to make it look how I wanted. My aunt told me about an app that she sometimes uses (Quiltler 2) to design quilts or blocks, so I downloaded it and worked out how I wanted the front of my pillow cover to look. Here’s the plan:

The pattern I designed to be the front of my pillow cover.

To start my pillow cover project, I need to make a quilted square panel. This is similar to what I did with my last projects, piecing together squares, backing them, and then quilting through all my layers. I went to the store and picked out my material, and then got to cutting. This part of the project involved A LOT of cutting, because in this quilt block pattern, there are triangles, which is not something I have done before in my quilting piecing yet. The easiest way to make these shapes is by making what is called half-square triangle (HST) blocks, where two equal triangles make up one square. My aunt explained that there are some tricks to make the process of making HSTs faster, by making multiple (specifically four) at a time. Essentially, you take a larger square of both of the fabrics in the block, put them together and sew around all of the edges, and then make cuts to turn them into four separate blocks! It is hard to explain in writing, but here’s an image that I feel describes the process better! 

Visual description of the Four at a Time method for making half-square triangles (Ronne, n.d.)

I made a list of all of the different types of squares I would need, (white/blue, and then my middle dark blue/light blue HST blocks), and how many of each, and then got to cutting. I needed a total of 64 blocks, with 52 of them being HSTs, (20 dark blue/light blue patterned HST blocks, and 32 white/blue HST blocks), so I spent so much time cutting and looking at this fabric, just trying to get the pieces ready for the next parts of the project.

First I cut all of my larger squares out and clipped them together to get them ready for sewing, then I stitched them together around the edges.

Cutting the squares out!

All of my blocks clipped and ready to sew!

Once I had finished those steps with all of my squares, I took each one and cut it into four pieces, to make them the right size for the blocks I needed. After this, I had a huge pile of HST blocks that needed to be pressed open, and then trimmed. My aunt sent me a fancy square ruler when I first told her I was going to be trying to quilt, and this tool was helpful in trimming the squares to the correct size and making sure they were even. 

All of my half-square triangle blocks (cut from the larger squares) with their seams pressed

Trimming the squares with my new fancy ruler

I managed to get all of the pieces finished this week, so I am ready to start sewing/piecing them together next week! I was able to set up all of the blocks so I could see what they will look like as the finished top, so here is a sneak peak of what that will look like!

All of the pieces laid out to visualize the whole panel!

Flow and Occupation 

The concept of experiencing a flow state is something that I feel is unique to each person. I personally feel that I have experienced flow at times in my life, and it is often when I am pursuing activities that I enjoy. These things include being outdoors (including activities like hiking or rafting/rowing), crocheting, listening to music, cooking/baking, and more. I would not say that I experience a state of flow every time that I engage in one of these activities, but that I am able to experience it fairly often. I think one of the most important things for me in experiencing flow is that characteristic of a balance between skills and challenge, because if something is too difficult for me, I can get frustrated or confused. 

For example, a recipe with a new skill that I have not tried is hard for me to achieve flow while making because I am still trying to learn the process, and it is hard for me to then have focus and concentrate on the task (another one of the characteristics of flow). (Tse et al., 2022) Or if I were rafting and came up on a class V rapid, a class higher than anything I’ve personally rowed before, I think I would probably not be able to enter a flow state because I might feel a bit worried about my line and it would take me a lot more effort to think about my course of action. This would be in comparison to doing something like rafting the Main Salmon, a river I have run many times, which has mostly class III and some IV rapids. While the river flow changes and provides new technical challenges, it still feels familiar, and I am able to be aware of my surroundings while tackling those challenges and still feeling like I am in control.

Within my new occupation of sewing/quilting, I feel that this is an occupation in which I have the potential to create flow experiences. I actually think that I may have encountered some brief flow states already as I have gained more skills. I do feel that at times, this occupation can be challenging for me. However, there are also a lot of opportunities for me to practice and overcome these challenging aspects that outweigh my skills, because a lot of what I have been doing has been repetitive. For example, cutting out the same blocks, sewing them together with equal seams in rows, ironing all of the seams, etc. This week in particular, the way I structured my participation in this occupation was that I would complete one step for all of my pieces before moving onto the next step.

I feel that this structure helped me to achieve a flow state this week because I got really focused on completing that step in its entirety, and the more I repeated that task, the less effort, (specifically mental effort), it seemed to take because I had already done it several times. When I finished that task, that state was somewhat broken, but I also feel like I cycled through this process several times as I repeated for each block the individual steps of cutting, sewing, ironing, and repeating. I also chose to listen to music while doing this, something that I love doing, and I feel that this definitely had an effect on my experience. I feel I was able to experience that flow state of being absorbed in and concentrated on my task while also enjoying it, (Tse et al., 2022) and the active listening of music during the task probably affected that. I have seen that in other aspects of my life like while I clean vs. clean and listen to music, or when I listen to certain music while studying or completing homework. However, I still feel that there were other aspects of my participation in this occupation that contributed to experiencing flow. I am excited to continue to learn more skills and meet more challenges within my new occupation!

The Extra Yard

Just wanted to provide an update on last week’s second bag that did not get finished because I needed to order the strap and clips– they arrived and I was able to finish everything up! I think it looks great and I am really happy with how it turned out!

Finished bag with handle

References

Ronne, M. (n.d.). The only half square triangle chart you will ever need. Stitch

    Obsessed. https://stitchobsessed.com/half-square-triangle-chart/

Tse, D.C.K., Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2022 March 03). Flow experiences

    across adulthood: Preliminary findings on the continuity hypothesis. Journal of

    Happiness Studies, 23, 2517-2540.   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00514-5

Williams, S. (n.d.). Easy tutorial: Envelope pillow cover with binding. SuzyQuilts.

    https://suzyquilts.com/easy-tutorial-envelope-pillow-cover-with-binding/?

    srsltid=AfmBOooupiAKu3fVODKQSdTXjVrxKb-EMsa2u5TZ2WxU8dqnGC79jBg5