2025 Habits: March Update

Click on the image above or HERE for the video!

My 2025 Quilting Goals/ Habits

How It Begun:

I decided in December 2023 and the beginning of January to change some things in my quilting life that just weren’t working for me. After evaluating the good, bad, and ugly, I came up with my top five habits I wanted to implement in 2024. If you want to check out those videos, here’s the 2024 Quilting Habit Goals playlist.

Since 2024 was so successful, I am continuing this series in 2025! Each month I will update you on my progress. If you would like to follow along and create your own goals, I have a worksheet to help you. You can download this free worksheet HERE.

I will also offer a worksheet for each month, too. You can find March’s habit worksheet HERE. These videos and blogs have helped keep my accountable. After all, I know I will be reporting to all of YOU on this, and I don’t want to let you down. I highly recommend having someone to keep you accountable, if not in a public way like I am doing, then in a group of friends. It helps me so much!

Here are this year’s goals:

March Happenings!

Oh, what a month! I am still struggling with Shingles. Sigh. Yes, still. I am on another round of antivirals, and I have good days and bad days. Needless to say, I am still not where I want to be, but I am better than I was, so that’s good. It has definitely taught me about patience and made me slow down some. Maybe that is what I needed to do anyway, right?

March Update: How Did I Do?

Now that it is March , I am going to evaluate how I did in the past month by giving myself a score and where I did well and where I need to improve. Since I am a former teacher, I am going to stick with what I know, using the terms Glow (where I did well) and Grow (where I need improvement).

Goal 1: No Home Zone

Score: 5/5

What a better way to overhaul my No Home Zone than to mostly repurpose the area, right? Loooook how pretty it looks! All those books and magazines! And I moved the brown piece of furniture to another part of the room. I am hopefully that this will help me tame this area some. The real question is whether another area will pop up to be the No Home Zone, which is totally possible knowing how I operate. :)

Glow: YESSS! Patting myself on my back for this one! I think it looks great! Could I have mastered this area already? Hmmmm. Time will tell!

Grow: Making sure I don’t start piling stuff in this corner or worse yet—start piling stuff in a different area. How about growing by putting stuff away instead of piling it? That’s an idea! :)

Goal 2: Being Intentional with Quilting-Related Purchases

Score: 4/5

Because now I can actually SEE all of the fabric I own in each color (shameless video plug: to see my organization video, click HERE), I know I have some gaps in my black and white fabric collection. I have a project that I am working on where I need a variety of black backgrounds, I decided to buy dead stock fabric from A Thrifty Notion instead of buying new. As you can see, I purchased a nice selection, however, while browsing their fabrics, I found this adorable owl print. I just had to have it! This is why I am only getting a 4/5 instead of a 5/5. HA! I certainly didn’t NEED those owls, but come on! How could I resist?

Glow: One step, albeit small, towards upcycling. Go me!

Grow: Even with buying from places like A Thifty Notion, I have to watch out for impulse items, like adorable owls.

Goal 3: Paring Down My Scraps

Score: 3/5

I made small steps to use scraps this month. While organizing everything, I started going through my WIP (Works In Progress) containers. I revisited a hexigon project I started three years ago and decided to rework it. This led to another hexigon project and, well, you know how that goes! Hexigons, however, aren’t very big, and although I am using scraps, I am not using much. Going forward, I really want to work at this more, plan a full scrap quilt or two (or more?) for this year, and donate more of my scrap fabrics to worthy causes.

Glow: Since I am now organized and have all of the fabrics together, I can see what I have. This makes it so much easier to use what I have.

Grow: Plan more scrap projects and gather and donate scraps—that’s the plan!

Goal 4: Getting Out of My Quilting Comfort Zone

Score: 4/5

Admittedly, this is a somewhat small accomplishment, but I hate pressing seams open. I am working with a company and had to for the project. I can’t show you the entire project YET, but I need you to know that I had to press 496 (yes, 496 for real) seams open for this project. That really pushed me out of my comfort zone! Yikes! I also can’t say I would like to do it again anytime soon. I am still not sold completely on this idea, but I do understand and see the purpose.

Glow: Instead of trying to find a way around it, I stepped up and embraced it.

Grow: I still haven’t used those speciality rulers I mentioned last month.

Goal 5: Better Health/More Movement Breaks

Score: 3/5

Finding my new normal with health issues has been tricky for me to balance. At the beginning of the month, I really pushed myself a lot more than I probably should have. Instead, I worked at organizing and spun my wheels a lot this month, unfortunately. Around the last week of February I started taking a closer look at how I can recover. Although it is still a work in progress, I am listening to my body more, moving more in a healthy way (light exercise), and taking time to do other things that I love, like reading. It is a balance, I suppose. I know I will get there!

Glow: Recognizing when I was doing too much and pivoting to a better approach.

Grow: Continuing to notice when I am overdoing it and continue to keep that balance.

I would love to know how you are doing with your goals! Let me know in the comments.

Happy Quilting,

Kris