First: Thanks to everyone who left a comment on my ‘who are you?’ post – Most of you I already know and enjoy your blogs, but I did discover some new friends and new blogs. One day soon I’ll actually get my blog roll sorted out, and add everyone. And thanks to everyone who wanted to be my friend on stitchin fingers – I’m hangin’ around the back of the bike shed smoking cigarettes and giggling with the cool girls now.
Second:
For the past…I don’t know how long…I have been finishing WIPs, some of which, in all honesty, should have been UFO’s. Nothing dulls your creativity quicker than finishing a project which you lost interest in early on and pressed on regardless.
A pit of creative despondency
I have bound ugly quilts, finished kits I lost interest in, re-purposed some half finished items, and made some bog standard gifts. And all the while I was sinking into a pit of creative despondency. I feel honour-bound to finish everything I start, and unfortunately, some of the things I started should have found themselves in the ‘things that didn’t work’ graveyard. Trouble is these things that didn’t work aren’t small. An unfinished postcard or ATC I could cope with…a boring king size quilt on the other hand is a different story. The batting alone cost more than I care to mention to Matt – to leave it unfinished is unconscionable ….and yet it sits there unfinished, because the thought of layering, basting, and then quilting it is just too overwhelming to contemplate.
Bored, bored, bored
And in the meantime, I’m not starting anything new, except perhaps an ATC here or a stump work eggplant there. Because I wanted to finish everything I’ve started and start again with a clean slate. So how’s it going? Well it isn’t. I’m bored, bored, bored. I have lots of things I want to try and I’m not doing any of it. So I’ve decided no more WIPs for a while. They have been Packed Away. The 30 + Dear Jane squares, the un-quilted quilt, the inherited pansy doorstop, the crazy quilt of vintage doileys (a disaster just waiting to happen – I could cry when I think of the mess I’ve made of these treasures), the 1930s calico garden, the hundertwasser embroidery, the snowball blocks.
The only thing to fear…..
The other creative stumbling block I have is fear. Fear that what I’ll make will be crap, that I’ll waste good fabric and threads making boring or, average, or ugly or mediocre things (solely based on my personal experiences to date)**. I see the work others do and it looks so impressive, so effortless. I’m sure that even the best of you make the occasional dud, and it probably takes a lot of effort to make something appear effortless, and because I have had my fair share of duds I’m always impressed by what others do. I have almost the exact amount of skill in most areas to know exactly how difficult something is to do, without actually having the ability to do it myself. J It’s a gift….what can I say.
And every time I see what someone else has done I wish I’d made it, or thought of it. I worry that anything I do is a pastiche of other people’s ideas. I feel everything has been done, and I’ll never develop a style of my own, because I’m so busy with my busyness that I’m not doing anything much at all. And I’m hopeless at getting things right. I was going to approach TIF by making a journal sized quilt each month – that was my only, self imposed, rule. So far I’ve made a postcard, a 3D object, a quilt that was twice the size of a journal quilt because I forgot I was going to trim it, an embroidery that is square rather than the postcard size I intended because I didn’t measure it properly, and for May – another journal quilt which is not quite the right size. So does it matter? Of course not – I don’t care and my 3D quilt sandwich got more praise than any journal quilt I could have made… it just stuns me that almost halfway through the challenge and I haven’t made one of them in the style I originally intended.
(**I know I have made some nice stuff too, I’m not fishing for compliments here, truly.)
Who to blame/thank?
So you have read this far and you’re thinking….why? why?
why is she dribbling on again? You can thank Tanguera and Juanita Sim. Thank goodness for other people’s blogs and the good advice one gleans. I was reading Tango Musings and she mentioned that she thought her recent quilts were boring (they aren’t), and asked for constructive criticism. I wasn’t going to go there (as they are way better than I can do, I’m hardly going to criticise) but I read with interest Juanita’s comment which included: ‘One of the women, a professional quilt artist named Alexandra Von Berg, said this: “Artist’s definitely make good pieces, excellent pieces, incredible pieces, and then a lot of bad pieces and a lot of mediocre pieces. The important thing is to make art and to worry about success or failure later.”(Her website is http://www.twocraftywomen.com).’ This got me thinking. I realised not everything I do has to be good. Lucky really 
Embracing Mediocrity.
So what will I do instead? I am going to embrace mediocrity. I am going to make stuff. I am going to make them ATC sized, postcard sized, journal quilt sized….or close enough. No more bed sized disasters. Grin. I am going to try new things. I am going to do lame-arse stuff that more hip textile artists did years ago. I’m going to do all the things I’ve been wanting to do, and meaning to do, and thinking about doing, but haven’t done because I’m scared of failing. I’m just going to do it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. If it looks like crap, too bad…maybe the next one wont. If it works maybe I’ll do more. Maybe I won’t. I figure though if I start to just do something, without the fear of failing, or looking like a loser, or worrying about wasting money, time, materials then I’ll probably be better off. I am going to aim for mediocrity…and maybe one day I’ll overstep the mark. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Dinner before we destroyed it.
