Year's End: Answering the Call

Cyndi Souder waxed rhetorical in her latest blog (http://www.moonlightingquilts.com/): why do we feel the need to count our accomplishments as well as account for our actions over the past year? Most of us don't have to deal with the breast-beating that can go on during Yom Kippur, and I, having only 1.75 breasts left, am neither going in for the beating nor for the fasting on New Year's Day. However, there's been history made and we need to learn from it lest we repeat our mistakes, right? Talk about pain!

My biggest quilt-related mistake and resulting emotional pain was answering a colleague when she confronted and accused me of selfishly making a cancer victim on our faculty a get-well quilt. Not only did I have the temerity to make the quilt, I also had nerve to ask faculty members help make blocks and then sign the quilt with their wishes for our friend's recovery. To this day I don't understand what that colleague's point was, especially since she had been included in the process, and I know I should have walked on. There will be other quilts if needed, but there will never be another reply to such a bizarre "accusation." I hereby resolve to smile, nod, walk on.

On-going mistakes: I cannot leave an interesting craft book in the store. I have books on all the varieties of quilts and the skills needed to make them (of course), collage, journals, altered books, book making (not gambling, the actual making of books), art dolls, surface design, embellishment, jewelry making, machine embroidery. I pulled enough books yesterday to donate to my quilt guilds so that I have only 260 left and now they fit on my shelves. Cool. A library is a wonderful thing.

Not necessarily. I actually memorize these books. I can't remember my sister's birthday (born on my 10th), but I can remember many trivial techniques so well that I'm often in the middle of using one before I realize what I'm doing. Ask me the best way to do something and I'll reply with a title and/or an author that will help you.

What's so bad about this? It's expensive. On the oft chance that I may ever want to use a particular technique, I scour the universe for all the supplies that might be needed. I spent three weeks last spring finding 1" acrylic disks and solvent ink to make 3-D embellishments for a fabric journal I may make someday. (Fabric Art Journals by Pam Sussman, page 47--took me all of 30 seconds to get my hands on the right book and find the page I needed for that piece of documentation.) I have cabinets, closets, shelves, boxes full of art "supplies" for any number of projects that have caught my eye. My kitchen should be so well stocked! I hereby resolve to use more stuff than I buy. What do I do with the finished projects?

NO PROBLEM! I never finish anything. Mistake Number Three. Why is closure so difficult for me? Fear of failure or fear of losing a good friend? It's like this: I never finished reading All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren because the man is a poet. I never, ever want to stop reading that kind of prose. Also, I don't want the protagonist to lose the girl. If I finish the book, he loses the girl and I lose a friend. If I finish a project, I no longer have that which has given me so much angst/pleasure and I lose a friend. After a LONG time, I just this week finished Ghosts of Jerusalem (see below). Sewing that label was very difficult because now the quilt is no longer my baby. It belongs to the world.

So, what have I accomplished this year? I've amassed volumes of knowledge, learned a bunch of skills, produced a few decent quilts, and entered two in a show. What do I resolve? Use the knowledge (and the supplies), work harder on the production end, finish that which is worth finishing, and finally get my work "out there."

Oh, and SMILE, NOD AND WALK ON.