Quilt Bujo 2018 - January

Alright guys, time to have a little peek into my life! No judgements! I wanted to give you all a little tour of my new Quilt Bujo for 2018. We are nearing the end of January and already my pages are mostly filled! My Bujo is a little less traditional than most people. I use mine as not only a task manager, but also as a sketchbook. Most of my pages I've set aside for the month are used for new ideas and sketches. I've also made some general information pages that I can go back and reference. Not everything in these pages is specifically for January, I just happened to start working on it in January.

Behold! My January cover page. I took inspiration from a fabric design by Joel Dewberry. I really love the geometry of this. I added a pop of gray, because January evokes within me a feeling of "everything is awful, why is it so cold and dark and gray and awful". You will also notice some washi tape on the edges of some of the pages. I added washi tape to every major section of the journal. The intro page for each month and the Quilt Project Directory have taped edges so I can flip to them easily. Some people like to washi tape all the edges of their pages but then the notebook tends to get a little too bulky.

My January monthly spread is pretty simple and has a space for goals (I hate giving myself goals lol), current projects, and notes. I also did a little doodle of a block from one of my current projects. Its just for fun. I am the essence of fun. Look out world! The fun is just exploding off this page! 

Maybe I should use some color? 

These are probably my most used and most helpful parts of my bujo. TRACKERS. Trackers are my friend. I have two giant monthly trackers that I try to keep updated everyday. Sometimes I forget to mark stuff down, but it isn't a big deal. Sometimes I just can't remember which day I did something so I just don't put it down.

I like to have a cleaning tracker separate from my habit tracker because the chore list is MASSIVE. I never accomplish everything I want/need to, but this is a good way to keep me in a rhythm.

No color here. Only sadness and blackness.

Try as I might, I just cannot get behind a weekly spread. I can never fill it with enough stuff no matter how hard I try. The weekly spreads always end up looking beautiful, but then I never use them! Instead, I do a similar style to a weekly spread, but I block each week of the month out instead of each day of the week. Between the trackers and monthly spread, I only have some short task lists that I need to put somewhere. For my Quilt Bujo, I broke my weekly task lists up into personal and quilting related tasks. I'm lucky if I can cross like 2 things off my list a week. What am I doing with my life??

Oh! Here are some fun pages that I still haven't finished yet! These are my quilting cheat sheets. I might have taken a little inspiration from The Quilters Planner. The only reason I didn't just buy a planner from them is because I like more freedom, and I hate weeklys, as you might have noticed. 

Oh good lord! Is that color?? Why yes it is! These Midliner Highlighters are the bomb. They come in beautiful colors and aren't too saturated. I love the pale pastels! 

You know what would be good to add to this spread, backing yardage requirements for all of those quilt sizes. Maybe I will add that in. That's the nice thing about having your own custom planner/bujo, you can customize it and tweak it to fit how you operate. You don't have to work within the confines of someone else's idea of what works. 

Look! Some quilt planning! If you read my previous post you would have noticed that I recently got a Kotatsu! So it only makes sense that I start planning a Kotatsu specific quilt. I really want to write a pattern for this quilt so I am taking my time and calculating fabric requirements. I haven't figured out exactly how this quilt will look so I just threw a bunch of ideas on the page and we will see what sticks. I really want to use some indigo Japanese fabrics for the quilt top, but I am not sure if I will be able to get my hands on some. I also want to hand quilt it, but that might be too ambitious. 

Every so often I like to draw a floor plan of my apartment and make a house task list. These are chores that don't necessarily fall on the master chore tracker, but are rather single time tasks. Organizing, throwing things away, re-arranging, a super deep clean, etc. I also have a background in Architecture so doing plans like this is pretty fun for me. This also makes my apartment look way cleaner and neater than it actually is. You saw my cleaning and task list. It's a disaster!

Oh yeah. Now we are getting to where the fun begins. This is my Project Directory. A massive list of all of my current quilt projects. I didn't put any of my past projects in there because obviously I am going to have at least 50 quilting projects this year so this will be full! Yeah right! I just didn't feel like putting my previous finishes on there.

And here is an example of a Quilt Project in progress! I really like including swatches of all the fabrics and pairings so I have a master plan I can go back and reference. Plus, it looks fucking cool. And it feels nice.


Alright so there you have it! It looks like fun, doesn't it? You should probably start a bullet journal. They are a ton of fun! So, what are you waiting for? All of the cool kids are doing it! Peer pressure!