Does Perfectionism Stop You from Quilting?
This little graphic expresses one of my most important rules for quilting: “If it looks good from twenty feet away, while you drive by at 20 miles an hour, it’s perfect! Don’t change a thing.”
Silly as it is, this quilter’s saying still expresses something important about how to approach quilting (or any creative endeavor) so you can find joy in doing it, instead of dissatisfaction.
It’s easy to feel dissatisfied with aspects of your quilting: your color choices, your cutting, the accuracy of your piecing, the stitch length of your machine quilting — the list goes on and on! If you find yourself hesitating to quilt because your quilting doesn’t seem good enough to you, may I suggest a liberal application of the 20/20 rule?
Perfection doesn’t stop me from quilting…just makes the actual quilting portion take a bit longer! I do want my quilting to be perfect, which is weird because I don’t worry about headless geese and pointless stars!!!
I might be more of a quilting perfectionist if I hadn’t noticed over the years that the only one who agonizes over — or even really notices — the flaws in my quilts is me. The people who have received them as gifts or bought them all seem to love them, warts and all. Realizing that has freed me to loosen up and quilt purely for fun.