Perfection is a goal, not a destination.
October 4, 2008
My friend Alice, and I, bought all the blocks for the summer patchwork party. We've cut them out and then put them away. Our intention was/is to sew them at about the same time and get them done together. Well, this weekend is it! Alice plans to sew all day today. And while I only have the morning; I'm not the perfectionist that she is, so I expect we'll have something to share with one another on Monday.
Perfection is a lovely goal, but I fall short of it in so much that I would go insane redoing to the point where things are perfect. I wish I could be perfect, but I've reached a point in my life where I like the philosophy "Finished is better than perfect." I said that the the art teacher at the high school the other day and she was shocked, she said, "Why can't you have both?" I had no answer then. Upon reflection, I think this is just her youth showing (she's 23 years old).
My husbnd loves to point out the imperfections in my quilitng, so I rarely make an effort to display my work for him. I made the mistake of giving him the first two quilts I ever made. Mistake in that, he thinks of them as just convenient blankets. I poured my heart in these quilts. I was just beginning to be a quilter so they were machine pieced and hand quilted. I was really proud of my work, and while I knew I'd be making more quilts, I wanted him to have the first ones! I went into his study one day to pick them up, thinking I would share them at the local guild's show-and-tell. One, a flannel, made with squares of plaids imported from Scotland, was covered in peanut shells, the other, a wool with some more imported plaids, was in the floor. When I picked it up it had dog puke on it! What a perfect mess.