Writing & Design in Life

One of my favorite hobbies is quilting, which has a surprising amount of overlapping skills with professional writing and design. 

Importance of Visual Appeal: Most obviously, quilting and professional writing and design both have a strong visual component. When designing a quilt pattern or selecting fabrics to use, it's important to consider how all the elements will appear together. Similarly, in professional writing and design, it's important to not only have good content, but to ensure that the content is easily accessible for your audience.

Precision and Attention to Detail: When creating a quilt, one mistake in cutting pieces or sewing them together can have a snowball effect. If your seams aren't consistent from one row to the next, your columns will not end up aligned as you planned. Each step requires careful consideration and strong attention to detail, just as writing and design require strong editing skills and an eye for precision. 

Planning and Organizational Skills: If you are looking for efficiency, quilting requires strong planning and organizational skills. Especially in a smaller space where there is not room to simultanesouly have individual stations for cutting, ironing, and sewing (all of which are necessary in multiple steps throughout the process), it's important to plan ahead so that you can cut, iron, and sew many pieces at once. Additionally, especially for more complex quilts, it is helpful to keep pieces organized so that you can quilt according to your plan. In writing and design, developing a thorough plan and staying organized throughout the process not only helps you stay on track and complete deliverables efficiently, but it allows your collaborators to better understand both how and why you made your specific decisions. 

Flexibility and Problem Solving: No matter how well something is planned, there's always room for something to go wrong. For instance, the quilt pictured here was originally intended to be 8 rows by 8 columns (64 blocks total), however, I only had enough pieces cut for 63 total blocks. Instead of cutting more fabric, I pivoted my plan. I knew mathematically that this meant I could have a quilt that was 9 rows by 7 columns instead. In writing and design, it's important to keep similar flexibility and problem solving skills as there is always something that can be improved.

Reliance on Creativity Without Constantly Reinventing the Wheel: Frankly, there are only so many ways to sew pieces of fabric together to make a quilt. Quilters know this, which is why so many quilts are made out of the same blocks. However, this does not mean that every quilt is the same; quilters use different fabrics and organize their blocks differently. For instance, if you were to search "log cabin quilt" (log cabin being one of the standard quilt blocks), you would see hundereds of quilts, all built from this same pattern, used to achieve different results. They look like diamonds, spirals, sunbeams, stars, scales, or any other of the countless final designs. Just like in quilting, in writing and design it is important to use the tools that are at your disposal to your benefit, but still rely on your own creative and critical thinking to achieve an end result that is beneficial to the user, yet still unique.