Settings Your Sights Somewhere

Setting your sights on something, somewhere, ensures accomplishments happen. Over the last 11 years in business, I’ve really realised that if you don’t know what it is you’re wanting to head for, how will you ever know if you’ve got there?

Back in February this year, you may remember a blog that I wrote called ‘Making Time To Make‘. It was all about how important it was for me to carve out the time during my business every day to stay creative. And how making promises to myself, was one sure way I could keep myself on track with achieving my goals.

One of these promises for me this year was to do with taking some pleasure in making that was not business related.

I had started a project over three years ago, reupholstering a 1970’s vintage Danish armchair. At the time I booked a 4 week evening course. At the end of the course, I had completed a footstool and unpicked all the fabric from my chair. But the chair remained unfinished. It’s sat in my workshop making me feel like a failure, ever since. So my promise to myself was that this year I would complete the chair and have it in my home.

In February, I booked a full day upholstery workshop to utilise the knowledge of an expert to help with the next stage of the chair. I left the course making another promise: to ‘allow’ myself more time on the chair in the proceeding weeks. I was determined to accomplish the piece and be able to finally sit on it in my home.

I kept my promise but as soon as I got busy again, my commitment to the chair dwindled. Fast forward to October and with a baby on the way, I now feel like I have a definite deadline! Whether the chair ends up in the nursery or not, I feel like my hands are going to be the most free they’ll be for some time now. This is the time when setting my sights on finishing is needed!

So, in the last few weeks I have actually taken the time to get my beloved chair made. Though I’ve always had an interest in textiles, I can’t say it’s anything I’ve been trained in. So much of what I’ve been doing, I’ve done through instinct and from small things picked up from watching far too many interior programmes over the years!

Learning a little bit more at each stage was a real joy and it was a pleasure to feel some real accomplishment when I had completed. Putting the chair back together, felt like the end of quite the journey and I was proud to have seen it through! It reminded me that whether it’s personal or business endeavours that you are taking on, setting your sights on something and giving it an end point, is a way to make things happen!

In a previous life this chair, though was well loved, had become threadbare and used by a family’s dog to sit on. Then it was bought by me on eBay three and a half years ago and transported on an 8 hour round journey to Shropshire in a white van by me. I’m so excited that it’s finally found it’s new home. I would love to know what you think in the comments below, it was worth the slog, right?…