In Week 4 of my 2026 author-illustrator journey vlog, I’m needle-felting “Stella” while talking about time management for creatives—especially the overachievers. I’m changing my morning routine to protect creative flow, and I’m moving my self-imposed illustration deadline to a more realistic timeline so I can keep enjoying the process (and stay healthy). Plus: I’m building out Patreon with extra content, felting lessons, and more behind-the-scenes.
If you’re behind, don’t “grind harder”—re-scope the schedule so the work stays sustainable.
Key takeaways:
Protect your best creative block: choose one focus per session (admin or art).
I moved my illustration deadline—and I feel lighter already. Realistic deadlines = better books.
I had a self-imposed goal to finish my illustrations by the end of March… and I moved it. I’m giving myself 20 weeks (hello, mid-June) so I can enjoy the process and do my best work—especially now that I’m in the detail-heavy fish illustrations where the designs matter. If you’re creating a book too, protect your creative flow and build deadlines that support you.
“My best work happens when I commit to a longer session—flow changes everything.”
Prefer the transcription? Here you go!
January 24, 2026
Hello, my name is Hillary Dow, the author, illustrator, and owner of Binding Tales. And I believe this is week four. I am capturing the author-illustrator journey and bringing you along as I illustrate my children’s books through needle felting.
So for this video, I’m going to do two cameras of capturing what I’m felting from my camera above and also giving you a window into my face so that you can get to know me. And even if I’m not looking at you as I speak, I just wanted to start to incorporate a bit more personalization in my videos.
So I am going to felt as I chat and I am adding the black lines to the stripes on my fish here. This is Stella and she’s very sad. So when I put the fin right here, which will be in another video, it’s going to droop down instead of being nice and straight and kind of fanning back over her body so that it helps to kind of carry this line of her frown and her sad face.
But for now, I’m going to finish adding the black lines and show you how I do that. So one of the things that I think you may be able to tell is that I am coming down with yet again some sort of cold or something that’s kind of settling in my chest again.
It’s been a long week, so am I horribly surprised that I’m a little under the weather? Not entirely. So one of the challenges with being an overachiever, to be honest with you, is that I set all sorts of goals for myself and I don’t always give myself the leeway of taking it easy.
And one of the things that causes is kind of getting a little bit of burnout and getting sick more often than I would like. So between that recognition and having a bit of a reality check this past week as I was working on preparing content for the upcoming wholesale show that I’m doing.
More to come on that in a future video. I was splitting time in the morning between coming upstairs and working on Stella and working on computer work for my business. And splitting that morning time meant that I wasn’t really getting into the flow with my felting.
I was felting for about an hour before the morning started and then stopping. And so I wasn’t really getting in a flow, which creative flow for me really opens up the doorway to working faster and more creatively at that faster pace.
And without being in the flow, it’s just more difficult for me to get lost in my felting. So what I decided is that instead I’m going to two things. I’m going to only do computer business work in the morning before my workday starts and I take a shower and get the kids ready and split all the responsibilities with Adam to get everyone ready and out the door and then ourselves get our workday started.
So we have that time in the morning and I’m either going to do binding tails computer work or I’m going to come upstairs and felt. I’m not going to split that time and try to do both every day and see what sort of an impact that makes on my ability to really get into the flow in the morning in that two hours because I find that when I’m going for a longer period of time with my felting I just I like the outcome and the experience more.
So I made that decision this week. I’m going to change my morning routine a little bit and at the same time as I was thinking about the progress I made this week all the different irons I have in the fire for Binding Tales between doing the wholesale show in March working on the illustrations for this book doing the necessary correspondence with clients that I have author visits and so on and so forth with.
I also decided I’m going to move the goalpost on when my self-imposed goal deadline is for finishing my illustrations. I had set a goal of the end of March and I am pushing that back. So I’m giving myself 20 weeks, so mid-June is my goal for having these illustrations completed so that I can move on to the next part of the process which is photography and designing the page layouts of the book.
And I was finding too that as I got into Stella here and I am working on different types of more exact detail. The coral reef has in the octopus in the last few illustrations. The octopus while the characters expressions have changed.
The octopus is eight tentacles, the body, the face, that’s repetitive. And the coral reef is, while some of the types of coral are repetitive, which is also creates time efficiency, it’s very organic and non-defined.
So I could go as fast or as slow making those components as I wanted to. Versus a type of fish, there’s very specific designs and details that I really do want to take my time and capture the best I can.
So I want to enjoy this process versus feeling like I need to rush through it just to meet that self-imposed deadline. So that’s what I’m going to do. And mid-June means that I will still have plenty of time to photograph the illustrations and get the book design layout put together with enough time to get the book to my printer and have the books produced before the Common Ground Fair this fall.
Assuming I am accepted again, I did submit my application for the 26 fair. So if that all is positive as it was this year, then I know that I’ll have my books ready for the upcoming fair season. So that’s my gay plan.
And I just wanted to share with you a little bit about the process of time management and changing my own timeline, completion goals, expectations and pressure that I put on myself. I often get the raised eyebrows of, wow, how are you achieving all of this?
And discipline for one thing, but I enjoy it too. I enjoy all the steps very much. And I just want to make sure that I continue to be able to say that. So yeah. So I’m going to continue to felt Stella here for you.
I’m going to capture a few little journey videos and share. And another thing I’ve been doing just to close out this video is I have been building out the structure of my Patreon, which will have different support tiers for those who are following along, learning from me, and or want to support this author, illustrator, indie publisher journey.
So I encourage you to check that out. I will be adding more content to my Patreon memberships that I do not post here on YouTube or my blog. It also now I’m adding all of my past Felting lesson content.
So it’s a really robust and diverse group of content in my Patreon. So if you’re a Felting enthusiast, an author, an illustrator, any of those paths, I also am going to be adding more content about marketing.
So there’s all sorts of stuff over there. And it’s growing, and I’m kind of filling it in with stuff from the past, and now I’ll have that one-stop shop place for additional content, too, so that it builds that little community in a way that is separate from the shopping and event-focused experience on my website.
So I am very happy with the way this is coming out, and thanks for joining me, and I look forward to my next update.
In Week 4 of my 2026 author-illustrator journey vlog, I’m needle-felting “Stella” while talking about time management for creatives—especially the overachievers. I’m changing my morning routine to protect creative flow, and I’m moving my self-imposed illustration deadline to a more realistic timeline so I can keep enjoying the process (and stay healthy). Plus: I’m building out Patreon with extra content, felting lessons, and more behind-the-scenes. If you’re behind, don’t “grind harder”—re-scope the schedule so the work stays sustainable.
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