Posts tagged ‘Ricky Tims’
The Rest of My Classes at QwM 2011
"That's a great lake, all right!"
Continuing my story…
Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were devoted to my two hands-on domestic sewing machine quilting classes. I feel almost honor-bound to take as many of these as the powers that be at QwM will offer, as I want to do my part to make sure they keep offering them. It also gives me the opportunity to meet, and therefore evangelize to, my fellow DSM quilters who may not know that any of the design-type classes are equally applicable to them as to the more numerous longarm quilters in attendance. We may have to sit through some minor references to canvas leaders and advancing the machine and so forth, but I use that time to meditate about how I can quilt in any direction I choose, for as long a distance as my quilt requires, and how my dining room still has a table in it. Kidding, of course, but Leah Day had an excellent post recently on Seven Reasons Why I Don’t Want or Need a Longarm, which was exactly what I needed to galvanize me pre-QwM against feelings of machine inadequacy. She reinforced the fact that quality machine quilting is possible on a DSM even if you’re not Ricky Tims/ Diane Gaudynski/ Lee Cleland/ Patsy Thompson/ Barbara Shapel/ Karen Kay Buckley/ Caryl Bryer Fallert/ Hollis Chatelain. Don’t get me wrong; if I walked downstairs tomorrow morning to discover that my house had magically grown an extra room with a longarm quilting machine in it, I wouldn’t turn up my nose. But in the real, non-magical world, that’s a huge investment for a huge machine that I’d only use for my own quilts, and buying one wouldn’t automatically turn me into a better quilter, just one with no dining room and a big payment to make every month. The learning curve is still paramount, and the big machine isn’t a shortcut around practicing.
OK, off the soapbox and on to what I did in class. The first was “Freehand Feathers” with Beth Schillig, who has had quilts at Houston and Paducah and used to be a Bernina dealer near Columbus. She was a kind, patient, generous teacher who showed us several feather styles I hadn’t tried before, and I was very happy to have produced these doodle cloths in a four-hour class:
(Click on the pictures to zoom in if you need to, photographing wholecloths is hard.)
The next morning I had “Becoming a Domestic Diva Part 2″ with Penny Roberts, who is primarily a longarm quilter and inventor of longarm gadgets, but keeps her hand in with DSM quilting and was an excellent teacher with a well-thought-out lesson plan. She provided us with a pre-”stitched in the ditch” sample so we could concentrate on the free-motion fun stuff. When she started with continuous curve, I was concerned I had taken too beginner-y a class, but I quickly came to realize that my current lifestyle doesn’t really allow me much time to just play and experiment with my quilting; I always feel like I have to make every minute count so I have to accomplish! Taking these classes was like the “spontaneous activity in a prepared environment” concept from Montessori school: it gave me permission to just goof off with my machine, and I definitely feel the value of the experience. As you see:
Not to mention, through all that in-class quilting, I did not have a single problem with my machine! Not one! I certainly hope this augurs well for the future.
Saturday afternoon, feeling more than a little fried, I finished up with “But How Should I Quilt This?” with Debby Brown. While the class was excellent, the most valuable thing I took from it was finding Debby! She was not someone whose reputation I knew before taking her class, and I’ve greatly enjoyed perusing her blog and checking out her free online videos and tutorials. She was an entertaining lecturer, and really synthesized a great deal of disparate information into a fairly coherent system for helping the quilter focus on a few complementary designs to successfully quilt each top.
Debby's quilt that she quilted in 2 days to hang behind her on QNN
This spoke very centrally to my recurrent problem of Analysis Paralysis when it comes to quilting my own quilts: I fall for the fallacy that there is only one way to “correctly” quilt the quilt, and if I don’t find it, the quilt will be a failure. Debby rationally and rightly pointed out that the first step to quilting a top is to simply make a decision. Her next words stopped me in my mental tracks and made me write them down: ”Sometimes it’ll be just good enough, but sometimes it’ll be perfect.” I think the reason I found that simple statement to be so profound (aside from sheer mental and physical exhaustion) is what she didn’t say, but I’ve apparently believed to be true, that there is no acceptable alternative to perfection. And the secret, of course, is that there is. There’s good enough. There’s quite nice. There’s really special. What there is not, is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE OH MY GOSH YOU RUINED YOUR QUILT. Because even crappy quilting results in…A QUILT! Not a top sitting in a box, waiting to be sold in (hopefully) many decades in my estate sale, but a quilt, that gets used and loved. That keeps the baby warm. That gives the cat a place to sleep. That lets me see that fabric I absolutely had to have. That goes to show and tell and hangs in the guild show and maybe gets given as a gift to wrap the people I love in the longest-lasting hug I know how to give. A top can’t do any of that, and it’s not a quilt until it’s quilted.
So I’m going to go quilt those tops. I’ll keep perfection on the horizon, but I’ll try to keep perfectionism at bay. Let’s go make some good enough quilts.
The Final Word on QFNJ: The Judges’ Comments
I got home from work Tuesday to find two big boxes had arrived from UPS: my quilts are safely home. I can finally exhale that little breath I’ve been holding since I shipped them off nearly a month ago. Even though I saw them, safe and sound and hanging in the quilt show Sunday, it’s still a relief to have them home. Of course, the suspense of whether or not my quilts would return to me unscathed was immediately replaced with the suspense as to what the judges had said about them.
Now, I don’t have a very long history with judges’ comments; this is only the fourth judged show I’ve had quilts in. However, I believe in getting quilts judged, because I really want to get feedback from people who are trained to look at quilts differently and more dispassionately than I do. Having said that, I also know why quilters don’t get their quilts judged. Not quite two years ago, I got a judge’s comment that makes my blood boil to this day. I’m actually impressed that I ever entered a quilt for judging again after that experience. Here’s the quilt:
"Quilting Bee," 2008 (with feline embellishment)
It’s nothing special, just something fun I did with a stack of nine-patches from a guild block exchange. I’ve always liked the honeybee block, and it was an entertaining challenge to pick fabrics out of my stash for the machine applique that coordinated with the nine-patches made by other guild members. There was a preponderance of blue and yellow in the blocks, so I chose a dilute blue batik with traces of yellow in it as the background.
Detail, "Quilting Bee"
That, apparently, was my mistake. Because the judge said:
"Appears that marking pen has bled into some of the fabrics."
I recognize that part of this is my problem. This was never going to be a ribbon-winning quilt; I mainly wanted some feedback on my machine applique and machine quilting. As someone who recognizes and appreciates life’s little absurdities, I should have laughed at this. Instead, nearly two years later, it still infuriates me. Because how could someone who is trained and paid to know about quilts mistake a commercial fabric for blue washout marker? Besides, I never even touched a blue washout marker to this quilt! Anywhere!! Part of why I was proud of the machine quilting on this quilt was that it was completely no-mark!!!
Breathe… breathe…
OK, I’m back. But that’s the history I have when I read judges’ comments, so I thought you should know before I react to the current batch.
Detail, "Blue Butterfly Day"
What I thought they’d say: I expected to hear about the fact that I didn’t quilt inside the applique, which was a deliberate choice; I wanted the quilting to help create motion but not to blur the graphic strength of the butterflies. I also thought they might criticize my decision to use a narrow zigzag rather than a blind hem stitch in my turned-edge machine applique. There was also some slight show-through of seam allowances in some of the pieced blocks.
What they actually said:
"Great movement across the surface of the quilt. Blue is a good contrast with the black & white fabric. Amazing collection of black & white fabric. Try for a more consistent stitch length when quilting. Hand stitched binding adds refinement to the quilt."
I can’t really argue with any of that, other than the comment about the binding. Libby Lehman says that having judges pick on your binding is good, because it means there weren’t more egregious errors to call you out on. But I also like Ricky Tims‘ perspective on it (he teaches machine binding on his Grand Finale DVD) that they should judge you on how well you executed the technique you chose, rather than criticizing you for choosing that technique. For the record, I used the machine binding technique taught by Suzanne Michelle Hyland, on her DVD “Sew Precise, Sew Fast Machine Binding.” And I think I did a nice job.
Detail, "Kyoto Ink"
What I thought they’d say: I didn’t quilt the two purple sashing borders sufficiently. I quilted a spine in each of them, planning on doing a feather variation or something out of Megan Best’s “Spinal Twist,” and I ran out of time before delivering it to Quilter’s Palette. Then, since it was done in my mind, I never went back to it. I also expected a comment about thread tension in the quilting, and possibly some criticism of my accuracy in quilting in the ditch.
What they actually said:
"Graphically pleasing quilt. Interesting choice of colors reflecting the oriental theme. A difficult binding technique well handled. Take care to get stitch length consistent when quilting."
Again, not much I can dispute here. I know that quilting stitch length consistency remains a challenge for me (after all, they mentioned that twice!) But I also know that I’ve gotten significantly more consistent in recent years, so hopefully I will either continue to improve, or break down and buy a BSR (probably not.) I definitely appreciated their mentioning, for both quilts, my fabric selections; I think that is one of my greatest strengths as a quilter. I also really appreciated their highlighting the binding on this one, because that was a chore, and I obsessed over it.
Additionally, I like when quilt show judges balance their critiques. I’m glad that the QFNJ judges, Gloria Loughman and Lois Smith, both amazing quilters in their own right, made the effort to give positive comments as well as emphasizing the areas that need improvement, and that they gave the criticism constructively. I’m not a delicate flower who can’t be leveled with, but it’s unhelpful for a judge to say, “bad machine quilting,” without clarifying what about it was bad or how the quilter should go about improving it.
So apparently, the judges agree that I’m a promising quilter with room to improve. That’s an assessment I can live with.
But I’m still going to put some of my bindings on by machine. And I can live with that, too.
My Shop Hop in Review
My Shop Hop haul
I managed four shops yesterday afternoon, starting as planned with The Quilter’s Palette. Short work was made of my gift certificate, as they indeed had, as hoped, the queen size Dream Wool batting I wanted for “Ruby Wedding.” I also picked up some gorgeous batiks in green, purple, and blue for a future curved piecing project I’ve been mulling over for a while, a spool of Aurifil for piecing, and a yard and a half of that crazy huge brightly-colored bird print from (who else?) Alexander Henry. No, I do not know what I’m going to do with it, but I knew for certain I’d regret it if I didn’t buy it, since fabrics like that don’t get very wide distribution, and the selvedge says 2007. As I commented to my mom, how do those designers know exactly how to push my buttons?
From there, we went to Ladyfingers, where I found a Lonni Rossi fabric from several years ago in the bargain corner for $3.95/yd. That’s a great price under any circumstances; it’s a fantastic price when you’re going to need nine yards to make a back for “Taupe Winding Ways.” I did the math in the shop: that particular sweetheart is going to be 96″ x 108″ with that darn border, which makes it officially the biggest quilt I’ve ever made. Good thing I’ll be warming up with “Ruby Wedding” before I get to that one. But now it has a back, at least. I also picked up the “craft size” of Dream Wool so I can play with it before committing “Ruby Wedding” to it.
After a lovely lunch, I dropped my mom back off at her car and continued home, making a slight detour to Denver, PA to Burkholder’s. Considering it’s long been a favorite shop of mine, it had been several months since I’d been there; I’d heard rumblings that the business was changing hands and that inventory was low during the transition. I am pleased to announce that Burkholder’s is well on its way back, with a wide selection of gorgeous fabric, batting, books, patterns, and notions. Classes are being offered again as well. I bought a yard of a very unusual fabric that didn’t make it into the picture, as it had apparently fallen out of the bag in my trunk; I’ll have to show it later.
I almost didn’t go to Sauder’s, because it was already 4:25 when I left Burkholder’s and they close at 5 on Wednesdays. I never want to be the customer keeping everyone late unless I know I’ll be making a significant investment there, but I was looking for the blue chalk pounce powder to use with stencils (recommended by Pam Clarke in her Quilting with Machines classes) and everyone else either didn’t carry it or was out of it. As it happened, when I blew in the door at 4:52 (!), Sauder’s doesn’t carry it either, so I got out relatively cheaply with a discounted copy of American Patchwork & Quilting and some dark-chocolate-covered cranberries — an excellent reason to patronize a quilt fabric shop that also stocks bulk foods. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for the pounce chalk at Quilt Fest of New Jersey next weekend.
All told, I bought 15.5 yards of top-quality quilting cotton, 2 wool batts, a magazine, a big spool of thread, and some chocolate, and only spent $71 out of pocket (thanks to the gift certificate.) Nothing bad about that.
And when I got home, guess what the nice UPS man had brought me?
Superior Threads shipment: like Christmas!
I only placed this order Sunday night; Superior Threads is in Utah, and I got this Wednesday! Talk about service. Not that I expect anything less from Superior; ever since I heard Bob Purcell give his “Threadology” talk at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar in 2007, I have had a new respect for their products and been a very loyal customer. They are a very service-based company, constantly soliciting comments and making improvements to be as responsive to quilters’ needs as possible. Their site is a treasure trove of (free!) information, tutorials, tips, and ideas; their email newsletter is excellent, and Bob, his wife Heather (AKA “Mother Superior”) and the rest of the staff run a wonderful, helpful, ethical business that I can feel proud to support while buying their unparalleled threads. Superior is currently running a shipping sale ($3.95 flat rate!) for the month of February, so my plan to order one single cone of thread kind of mushroomed. I got two cones of Bottom Line, the light blue I needed to finish “Window on Whimsy” and a taupe to use in the bobbin of both “Ruby Wedding” and “Taupe Winding Ways.” I also got a spool of dark gray-blue King Tut to use in the blue areas of “Ruby Wedding” and some purple glow-in-the-dark thread (!!!) for quilting a Halloween Attic Windows wall hanging my mom made, and color cards for King Tut and Brytes. As if that wasn’t enough, Superior has a “Try Me!” feature for most of their threads; you get a half-price spool of top-quality thread, but they pick the color. I’m trying Perfect Quilter, MasterPiece, SunBurst, and three colors of Brytes — and they’re all colors I’d use! I definitely see some quilting fun in my immediate future.
Considering I’ve been talking about stash reduction, yesterday’s exploits can certainly seem like “The Lost Weekend.” However, I mainly bought batting, thread, and fabric with a purpose: not so much expanding the stash, but procuring items I need to complete projects I’m currently or soon-to-be working on. Plus, I hadn’t set foot in a quilt shop in absolute ages — possibly since before Christmas! I need to meditate on that, but I believe that’s accurate. And no mail-order, either. I have been very restrained and well-behaved in 2010, so I earned this. I just need to make sure it’s not the thin edge of the wedge as we enter quilt show season.
After work: to the studio!!!
UFOs Part II: Convergence
In July 2006, I helped the guests at my niece’s birthday party to tie-dye T-shirts. This represented my first foray into working with Procion dyes; more on that in later posts. Naturally, it seemed a waste to only dye shirts; I had to dye some fabric as well. One piece looked like a good candidate with which to try Ricky Tims’ convergence technique:
Tie-dye Convergence
The technique starts with an oversized four-patch, either from one extremely varied fabric, or from two, three, or four different ones. The four-patch is then sliced, diced, resewn, resliced, and ultimately transformed, as you see. To two squares of my tie-dyed fabric I added a purple mottled print and a yellow batik that picked up the fuchsia/purple and yellow accents in the predominantly green-dyed fabric. Unfortunately, I didn’t buy much of either one. Generally, I see it as a good thing that I very rarely buy any more than a half yard of a given fabric, unless I know I’m using it for a border. However, in this case, my fabric-buying sobriety backfired. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This project really was more about the process than it was about the end product; I had bought Ricky’s Convergence Quilts book, ate up the pictures and the description of the technique, but wanted to try it for myself, and this tie-dyed fabric offered the perfect opportunity. If it hadn’t worked, I would have just put it aside. But it did work. In fact, my husband, who is normally very supportive of, but pleasantly detached from, my quiltmaking, was quite taken with this one while it was in pieces on the design wall.
But here’s where we get into the obstacles again. The first obstacle was just logistical, a fabric emergency: I wanted to put a border on it, and as I didn’t have enough of the fabrics I had converged, I needed to choose something else. In general, I see that as more of an opportunity than a roadblock; to quote Paula Nadelstern again, “when it comes to fabric, ‘more is more.’” In this situation, though, I had an extremely difficult-to-match fuchsia/purple color AND an extremely difficult-to-match green. Suffice to say, I am unlikely to find a batik or a large-scale print that contains both. I did drag the top to a couple of quilt shows, but I never found anything I particularly liked, and by that point I had lost momentum.
Lost momentum is a majorly recurring theme in my UFOs. I definitely have some personality traits of obsessive-compulsive disorder, albeit fortunately not ones that negatively impact my life in any significant way (although I have been known to put the toilet paper roll on the holder the right way in bathrooms not my own.) In many ways these personality traits have been assets: I can become extremely focused on a task until it’s complete, I am a scrupulously thorough researcher with a Boy Scout-like conviction to be prepared, and I always have clean hands. The downside is that once a particular obsession has run its course, it’s difficult to kindle up enthusiasm for it again. I can eat, sleep, and breathe a project for a while, but if I get distracted (ooh, shiny!) or derailed (no border fabric!) the project loses its Most Favored status, and if there’s no deadline for it, off to the UFO cabinet it goes.
This project also reeks of Quilt Guilt. I’d had pretensions of finishing this quilt to take to the Ricky Tims Super Seminar last May to have Ricky himself autograph the label. Didn’t happen. I even feel guilty about the fact that this was one of the few quilt projects my husband really took an unsolicited interest in the mechanics of, and I didn’t get it finished so he could enjoy it. This is something I need to work through and just get over; once again, this seems like a “Hoarders” impulse, attaching unwarranted emotional weight to an object. It’s not the quilt’s fault I didn’t get it finished; I shouldn’t wrap all those negative emotions up in it.
I just read a New Yorker article about a form of nightmare therapy in which sufferers of recurrent nightmares are encouraged to spend daytime hours visualizing the upsetting scenes from their nightmares and reimagining them to be less upsetting; one example given was of a woman reimagining the sharks circling above her as she tried to swim to the surface of the ocean to breathe, as a circle of friendly dolphins. Perhaps I can visualize making all the negatives, all the “should-haves”, into tangible, squishy objects. I can visualize myself placing them into the Convergence quilt top center, then gathering up the corners like a hobo sack. I can visualize myself carrying that sack full of gelatinous, drippy, toxic emotions down the upstairs hall to the back bedroom and out the door to the balcony. It’s a bright sunny day, and I can just let the edges of the Convergence quilt top fly, waving like a beautiful, colorful flag in the breeze while those lumpen blobs of guilt tumble forth — and are gone.
I’ll report back when I get that border on.
Inspiration Interlude: TQS #508, Paula Nadelstern
I just watched Episode #508 of The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, which featured Paula Nadelstern and the exhibit of her kaleidoscope quilts at the American Folk Art Museum. Not only are her quilts absolutely breathtaking, but I really felt a kinship with her philosophy about quilting and fabric.
Detail of "More is More," copyright Paula Nadelstern, 1996
The episode was wonderfully inspirational and gorgeous, and made me bitterly regret not making it up to New York City while the exhibit was still hanging. However, the show did a wonderful job of being the next best thing to attending in person, and the insights that Paula and the curators provided into her work in particular and the place of quilting in the American art world in general were compelling and well thought out.
If you have a subscription to The Quilt Show, I strongly recommend this episode. (If you don’t have a subscription, I strongly recommend one!) Here are some highlight quotes from Paula Nadelstern that I found resonant enough to want to transcribe for my own study:
On design:
“I have a concept but I don’t actually know what it’s going to look like till the very end. I always think that if I knew what it’s going to look like, why do it? For me, I want to be the one who makes the magic and the one who is surprised. I want that magic, to the very last seam, not to exactly know what it’s going to look like. If I don’t like it at that point, I’ll just cut off and add more.”
On fabric:
“It could just be one single piece of fabric that takes me someplace and off and exploring, a new background fabric, but no matter what, each quilt I don’t exactly know where it’s going to go. I definitely think of it always as a collaboration between me and the fabric, and if the fabric takes me off in a new idea and a new direction, I’m willing to go that way. I don’t think I’m smarter if I come to the table knowing exactly what I’m doing.”
“I always say that phrase, that when it comes to fabric ‘more is more.’”
On quilting as an art medium:
“I have this idea about what I call a ‘viable quilt’ and that’s what I aspire to, to make viable quilts. To me, a viable quilt is one where the audience wants to see it from far away and to see it as a piece of art. Yet because it’s a quilt they’re seduced to come up close and see the stitches and see the seams. If someone is content just to see my work from up close, or they’re content just to see the work from far away, that to me doesn’t create the viable quilt. If they like to see it from far away but they don’t want to see how I’ve made it, then I could have painted it (well, someone could have painted it, I’m not a painter.) But I like that, I think that’s what so wonderful about a quilt is that it really is made up of seams and stitches and fabric, and the fabricness, the materiality of it, is a very important component for me.”
On the quilting community:
“We came here to have fun in the first place, and there really aren’t rules to this. Find what fits your personality. That’s why there’s 20 million quilters in the United States alone, it’s the fact that each one of us gets to find what it is that we like. Anything you do in quilting — there is nothing you could do in quilting that is cheating. I mean, who are we cheating, pioneer women? Who set up the rules in the first place? There aren’t any, really, and so find what fits your personality. Never say that to each other in quilting that, ‘oh, look what you’re doing, that’s cheating’ because it’s not. It’s just one more step in the fact that we are all stretching this incredible craft that sometimes becomes art for all of us.”
Watching this episode made me happy for numerous reasons. I’m happy that a creative, self-taught quilter has had her amazing work recognized with an exhibit in a major museum. I’m happy that TQS exists to bring me a virtual tour from my living room. And I’m happy that I’m a part of “this incredible craft.”
Please visit Paula’s online quilt gallery to view images of her astonishing kaleidoscope quilts.
Meet the UFOs! Part I: Lemoyne Star
I can’t put all my UFOs up at once, or this would be the longest post in blog history, but I have to start somewhere, and I may as well start with one that I never dreamed would end up unfinished. As with so many dysfunctional relationships, it all started so well…
Complementary Color Lemoyne Star
My friend Diane and I took a class from Barbara Lenox in 2003 (or so) on Lemoyne stars. I definitely needed a class, because my first attempt at sewing together 45-degree diamonds resulted in bra cups rather than blocks. Now, Barbara has a reputation for being a tough teacher because she insists that you do things her way. But her way works, and what did you come to class for if you just wanted to do things the same old nonworking way?
As part of this, she had us make our class blocks using red and green diamonds. She didn’t want to have to talk about light and dark, or fabric A and fabric B, she wanted to be able to say, “Put the red diamond on top of the green diamond” and have everyone on the same page. It was very effective, but at the end of class I had red and green stars on a pink background, as I hadn’t wanted to make Christmas blocks. They were beautiful and flat — not even a training bra.
At this point in my quilt life, I believed myself to be a finisher. I was not comfortable with the idea of putting these blocks in a drawer for some mythical future project; I wanted to make a quilt. A big, bed-size quilt. And I had just bought my mom a book about two-block secondary designs. So I made a total of 12 Lemoyne star blocks, using complementary colors from the color wheel as the star points with pastels of the three primary colors as the backgrounds. (No one was going to accuse me of not thinking this through.) Then I used one of the block layouts from my mom’s book to make the alternate blocks and join them together.
Then I was possessed by demons. At least, that’s the only logical conclusion to be reached if you look closely at the border fabric I used on this quilt top. I wanted a black background, and I wanted all the bright colors from the top to appear in it to tie it all together. However, I apparently didn’t want to spend any time or effort finding the RIGHT fabric to meet these criteria, so I bought the first one I found:
"We wish to welcome you to Munchkin Land!"
I won’t sport with your intelligence discussing WHY this is a bad border fabric (for anyone who doesn’t happen to be a 6-year-old playing Pretty Pretty Princess, that is) but I will say that I have no intention of ripping it all out. Since it is actually pieced into the alternate blocks, ripping it out and replacing it would be an exercise in futility and a way to make sure that this UFO stayed unfinished forever. But I do plan to cut the Bad Border down to a less objectionable width and add a pieced border, which I actually made the blocks for within the last 4 years, the last time I tried to finish this quilt.
I don't exactly remember what I was trying to accomplish here.
So what’s the holdup? First off, there’s fear of failure. I have to calculate the right size to cut the Bad Border down to so the pieced border fits properly, and then I have to actually cut it down correctly and accurately. Both these obstacles seem much harder than doing it right the first time would have been, and undoubtedly seem harder than they will be once I muster up to do it.
This quilt also represents another barrier to finishing, the learning curve. In a (wonderful, game-changing) machine quilting class I took in 2004 from Karen Kay Buckley, she told us that people frequently ask her how long it took to make her latest (gorgeous, award-winning) quilt. She said she always wants to answer, “My entire life up until now.” This makes perfect sense to me. Every quilt I make is a learning experience, and I’d like to think that each one gets a little better in some way or another. When I have to “go back in time” to finish a UFO, all the things that I would now do differently jump out at me, and they get demoralizing. In some ways, it seems easier to just move on to a new project that doesn’t have these problems than to try to fix this one.
Some good advice to remind myself of at this point:
“Nothing in life is a failure if you learn anything from it — even if all you learn is, I’m never going to do that again!” – Ricky Tims, speaking at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar, Richmond, VA, July 2007
“There are many tragedies in life — a mistake made in fabric is not one of them.” — Libby Lehman, speaking at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar, Frederick, MD, May 2009
“Just play. If it goes wrong, fix it. The best things happen from that. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t done anything right, either.” — Sieglinde Schoen Smith, speaking at York Quilters’ Guild, July 2009
Amen to all that.
