I have had a small art quilt on my
shelf for about five years—only partially completed. I started it when I began
to learn appliqué, and then added beads, embroidery, and made the top just the
way I wanted. Of course, I had a lot of mistakes, but it was exciting to have
made something so different from the media I usually used. But then I
needed to quilt and bind it. I read books, asked quilters, watched some videos,
but I still felt like a roadblock stood in my way. I just couldn’t figure out
how to get started on that phase of the project, and I was afraid of ruining everything
I had just worked so many hours to finish. I had also made some mistakes in
preparing the top and back, so I would end up folding the binding toward the
front, rather than the back, which just seemed to confuse the whole process in
my mind.
But I finally decided just to go
for it, to take it off the shelf and finish it. It took about four days of
work, and then it was done. Yes, my hands and arms were sore, and there are
some mistakes. The hand quilting isn’t perfect, and the binding is a little awkward
in places, but it actually looks pretty good overall, and now I have a quilt I
can hang on my wall—a finished project. I learned so much from the process, not
only in finding solutions and finishing it, but also in the mistakes that I
made. I know the next time I make an art quilt, I won’t feel as lost or confused.
And I learned that it’s better to
move forward than to be afraid to make mistakes. We learn by trying, not by
having our project sitting on a shelf.
