I'm Sari Mittnick, and this is Seamwork Radio, where we tell stories about the surprising

ways that sewing impacts our lives.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode number 30 of Seamwork Radio.

So today we're talking about how you can use some specific practices to celebrate your

sewing progress and remember to give yourself the pat on the back that you so richly deserve.

So today we're going to be talking about some specific ideas, some specific practices that you can use.

If you find that celebrating your progress and really giving yourself that recognition is something that's difficult for you.

So this month in Seamwork, our theme is mindset.

So that's why we're talking about some of these kind of ideas that you can use to cultivate a positive mindset around sewing all month.

So I think it's really easy to focus on the immediate and focus on what's going well or what's not going well in whatever you're working on right now rather than recognizing your progress over time. I think that's something that's

true just in life, not just for sewing. I mean, for any creative practice, I think that's true.

But I think just in life in general, we tend to discount how far we've come. Don't you think,

Haley? Yeah, definitely. I can get stuck in that mindset

often. Yeah. And I think if you're not really, if you're not intentional about recognizing your

progress, then you don't realize how far you've already come and what you've done, what you've

accomplished. And I think that can be kind of demotivating

for a lot of us. Definitely. I think it can be particularly hard when you are someone who's had a

sewing practice for a long time. So it can be really hard to remember exactly how far you've come because that was

quite a while ago. For me, the longer I've sewn, I find that it becomes harder and harder

for me to celebrate progress. Do you feel like progress becomes harder to see? Because I think in the beginning of any new hobby or sport or anything, you make a lot of progress real fast. And then over time, it tends to slow down. And it's more about very tiny incremental progress or it's more about polishing your existing skills.

Definitely.

And I think that when you get to that point, it's really easy to fall into the trap of looking

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