So, I had a baby two and a half months ago and I have decided to challenge myself to sew every single day. Am I crazy? Probably. I’m realizing that committing to keep sewing is going to save my sanity while on leave, and I can’t lose myself for hours in a project on a Sunday afternoon anymore.

This challenge isn’t that out of the blue and is really just the next step in my quest to be a more effective and efficient sewist. Last summer, read everything I could on productivity and a lot of it changed how I sew. 

I was also inspired by a post by a sewing blogger I follow and swung over to my library to grab 10, 20, 30 Minutes to Sew by Nancy Zieman. Having a newborn has forced me to totally give up on the idea of sewing, uninterrupted, for hours on end, but I refuse to give up on sewing. Instead, I’m going to try to sew a little bit each day. I figure, if I average 30 mins a day, that equals the 3.5-hour Saturday evening I would have spent sewing before and I can keep pace with my pre-baby sewing production.

I plan to keep track of how much time I spend on sewing-related tasks each day and chronicle what I accomplish. This way, I can figure out exactly how I spend my time so that, in the future, I know what I can realistically get done in a 10-minute chunk and also figure out where I can make things run more smoothly. So, here goes week 1:

Date: Saturday, July 8

Time sewing: 1 hour

What I did: altered and graded a pattern; pinned and cut out muslin

Date: Sunday, July 9

Time sewing: 1 hour

What I did: assembled the muslin

Date: Monday, July 10

Time sewing: 15 minutes

What I did: fit and marked the muslin

Date: Tuesday, July 11

Time sewing: 30 minutes

What I did: transfer alteration markings to pattern

Date: Wednesday, July 12

Time sewing: 0 minutes

What I did: I’d like to say I was busy doing other things, but really, I was just procrastinating pinning and cutting out my fabric because it seemed that once started, I couldn’t easily abandon it and it would take way longer than baby would likely sleep.

Date: Thursday, July 13

Time sewing: 0 minutes

What I did: ditto Wednesday

Date: Friday, July 14

Time sewing: 15 minutes pinning; 15 minutes cutting out fabric

What I did: I separated this one into two chunks of 15 minutes, because I only expected to get the pinning done and that it would take waaaay longer than 15 minutes. After procrastinating this step Wednesday and Thursday, I was shocked at how little time this took!

Date: Saturday, July 15

Time sewing: 1 hour

What I did: worked on my blog as we were away for the weekend

Date: Sunday, June 16

Time sewing: 2 hours

What I did: worked on my blog

Total time sewing this week: 6 hours 15 minutes

What I learned:

• It’s true that a task will take as long as you give yourself to do it. I am amazed at how much I got done in 15 minute chunks.
• Pinning and cutting out fabric doesn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. I need to remember this and stop putting off starting projects for this reason.
• I’m much more effective when I plan out what I’m going to do next and only take out exactly what I need for that task. There is no time wasted in set up or take down!
• Sewing > hygiene. After the baby was fed, I sewed – before showering or eating. Sewing feeds my soul – who needs food!
• Smart phones are amazing. Most of this post was written while nursing my daughter. Multitasking for the win!

I want to know your productivity hacks for sewing! How do you deal with sewing while taking care of tiny humans? How do you squeeze a couple minutes of sewing in to an otherwise packed day? What blogs/books/articles do you recommend for better/faster sewing?