I’m sure everyone has heard of athletes using visualization as part of their training tools. You go through your event in your mind, training your brain to know the moves that are needed. I find this fascinating, that we can teach our brains to do something by thinking about it.

I have come to realize that I use visualization in my garment sewing and I didn’t even know it. I’ve had a couple of big projects the last few years, and both of them took me a long time to actually get to the sewing machine. It was on the second project that I realized I was sewing the entire garment in my head, and until I could see all the steps needed, I wasn’t ready to sit down at the machine. I was visualizing the whole process, start to finish, and what was needed at each step along the way.

Previously, I would cut things out and just leap in, only to find myself really stumped in the middle of the project. I know for sure there have been multiple garments that either got finished badly or not finished at all because I got stuck and couldn’t figure it out. I have no idea when I started visualizing the actual construction of the garment – I’m sure it was an organic process that grew slowly over time, but now, if I can’t ‘sew’ the entire garment in my head, I’m not ready to cut it out and start handling fabric.

The most recent dress I made went together very fast. Zero rework, and the only ripping out was because I had to make an adjustment in the side seams for fitting purposes, not because I had made a mistake. I went into this dress knowing that I needed to visualize the whole build and I made a conscious effort to do so before cutting out the dress.

For me, this process works. I know it’s not the same for everybody but now I’m casting a critical eye towards my quilting projects to see if those would benefit from more visualization before actually starting the project. If I thought I used a “throw-myself-into-the-deep-end” approach on my garment sewing, my quilting uses a “ready-fire-aim” approach. I do some planning, like figuring the number of blocks I’ll need and a ballpark of the fabric requirement for the quilt but other than that, it’s pretty much just grab the rotary cutter and yell “tally ho!!”. I would be curious to see what would happen to my quilting both in terms of quality and construction if I spent some time visualizing the piecing before I jump right in.