How to Make Fiber Art Projects in 5 Minutes – Quilting Daily

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How do you find time to work on your fabric art? It’s a question I hear often (sometimes in my own head).

Turn painted fabric into fabric art in 5 minutes.

We’d all love hours to spend in our studios–but that’s not realistic for most who aren’t full-time artists. So how do you find time to create?

Fiber artist and frequent Quilting Arts contributor Lynn Krawczyk–who has a full-time, non-art day job–republished a blog post last week about how she makes time for art and she gave me permission to share some of her thoughts with you:

“I’m like everyone else – I’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it in.

Extra time is not the issue. Effectively using my time is. There are a lot of little blocks of time that go unused in the day. Ten minutes here, five minutes there. They hardly seem like they are worth anything but if you worked on a project for 10 minutes every day, you’d have nearly an hour’s worth of work in on it by the end of the work week.

Those ten minute time blocks keep me moving. They keep me producing and when I feel productive, I feel happy.”

So, how can you put 5-10 minute time blocks to work for you?

  • Break a project into stages and do a little at a time.
  • Have a repertoire of small projects you can make quickly when you need a gift or just want to feel a sense of accomplishment in between longer projects.
  • Keep a “staging area” for stitching or surface design works-in-progress.
  • Keep your supplies out and at the ready for: Gelli printing, brayer printing, stamping, or other painting on fabric.
  • Sort fabric scraps.
  • Spend 5-10 minutes fabric fusing.
  • Audition pieces for a fabric collage or fabric postcard.
  • Improv piece a block.
  • Add hand stitches to a project.

Lynn’s Make it Quick Button Kit is a perfect example. Paint or stamp fabric a little at a time, cut small squares (another 5-minute task) and use the button maker to create a decorative fiber art pin, embellishment, or magnet.

Even if you just sketch a bit in an art journal, 5-10 minutes of art-making a day can boost your skills and help you get closer to finished textile art.

P.S. What can you accomplish in 5-10 minutes a day? Leave a comment below.

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