Project organising journal

My journal making class is still ongoing and this week I have been concentrating on making a journal specifically for organising my UFO's and Want to Do list. It starts with pages containing a tag for each work in progress.

First decision: How many pages to allow for UFO's?! Well I had 16 pages of green card and that seemed plenty. I am pleased to say that I am not actually using all of them at the moment but I thought it sensible to prepare for those starting frenzies that strike from time to time.

Each tag has a removable piece of paper listing the project and on the back will be a pocket. The pocket will contain first a check list of steps to be taken but also ( when I get in the swing of things, notes from other sections.

So, there is a pocket for snippets of paper reminding me of those ideas you get for themes and series ( 'scarecrow quilts' was the latest one)


and another for research ideas (e.g. japanese suits of armour as design inspiration... guess who went to a London museum recently?)As you can see I am not so good with those letter stamps yet!

There is a section so I can check off as I work though the sections of DVDs and technique books I have bought, one for the Birthday Block swap I just joined and a section for exhibition themes and deadlines, each with colour coded pages.
Then, a section where I can list, on slips attatched by brads, the techniques or products I want to try out, noted with the location of articles or internet instructions that relate, and then a similarsection ( in different colours) for ideas I have for quilts. The brads mean they are easy to reprioritise and to add to the journal when I take one out.

My ideas is that, say I want to make new quilt, I can look through and select a combination of things I want to learn. E.g. a reverse appliqued quilt based on scarecrows using angelina fibres and quilted using a technique on a Patty Thomson DVD. I can gather all those slips and lists and put them together behind the new project tag.

Of course, none of this actually gets the quilts done - it is what is known as Displacement Activity but it has made my organization favouring brain much happier than when I had a random scatter of lists, some in old notebooks and some still in deep dark recesses of my brain. And it made the creative part of me happy to make it.

The cover still needs work. Tomorrow I go shopping for a really good embellishment closure