Perfect is the enemy of Good

 The saying "Perfect is the enemy of Good" is something that comes into play with my quilting.  

I took a moment to look up the origin of that saying, which is attributed to Voltaire.  I've also found references like, Robert Watson-Watt talking about a "cult of the imperfect", in which he stated, "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes".  Even Shakespeare had a thought on this, with King Lear's Duke of Albany, warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103:

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

This weekend, I was in a virtual Sew-Day with the Quilt Guild I am a member of and I realized I was sitting there agonizing over a border for a mystery quilt that did not have perfect points.  Should I rip it all apart?  Would I be any better off if I did?  How much time would that consume?  I decided to ask for a little perspective from my quilting family.  

It was they who said that unless I was seeking a competition-level quilt, leave the borders and send the quilt on its way to be quilted.  Take the lessons I learned from piecing it together and recall the memories of working through the clues and change it from an object of frustration to a piece of imperfect art that someone in my life would thoroughly appreciate.

What do you think? PS - this was also my triad colour quilt - Green, Orange and Purple.  Using a triad is supposed to allow the quilt to look extra vibrant. 

I give this one piece of advice freely - if in doubt, seek a second opinion from your quilting family!

Just keep quilting, just keep quilting

Do you ever find life so busy that you actually have dust accumulating on your quilting projects?  Sadly, that is the state I am in.  I work full-time and I volunteer for multiple organizations and I found myself lacking the time to do the thing that always makes me feel in tune with my creative self.

So, starting today, I'm planning on a few things to help me prioritize my quilting time.  One of those is my 20 minutes per blog post.  This blog is something that has suffered from lack of attention too.  No quilting = no content to write about.  

I have found that my Blogger app is great to use on my phone.  It is easy to snap a picture of what I'm going to be working on and add it right in.  

That's one of the ways to build habits that add value to your life.  Take something you struggle to do and allow a few minutes to focus in on it, in this case, today's blog post.  Reward yourself with something you love to do, in my situation that would be time with my quilting projects.  Finally, add a time limit to the whole thing so it doesn't overwhelm you.  I'm shooting for 30 minutes.  If after 30 minutes I'm having fun and nothing else is pressing, then keep on quilting.  At least this way, if all you do is 30 minutes, that starts to build forward momentum.  I don't want to look back at the end of a week and say I just let dust accumulate on my quilting projects.  With multiple 30 minutes blocks, there is no doubt great progress will be made.

So what will I spend the rest of my 30 minutes today on?  A dancing date with my longarm, trying to practice my feathers.  

How about you?  How do you find time and motivation for your quilting?