Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Perfection


I belong to a couple of different Facebook groups where members share ideas, provide support and show photos of their finished or in progress quilts.  It is amazing how many - a majority - of the posters preface their message with disclaimers of imperfection.  I cringe when I read "I know this isn't perfect but..." or "try not to look at the mistakes" when sharing a picture of one of their creations.  I am guilty of this as well.  When I think of where we are, the tools we now have in terms of quilt designs such as rotary cutters and computer-aided design in comparison to the cardboard templates, pencils and scissors, I've no doubt where this need for perfection comes.  Which is sad because a person's creation is a work of perfection in itself.  I saw something on TV that showed a new technology that allows a person to draw on paper and have that design appear on a computer screen which allows the design to be manipulated in such a way that it is perfect.  That would be awesome for me considering every attempt i make to draw a person more resembles a chicken.  And that is not an exaggeration.  Let's face it - not everyone is the same type of artist.  If my chicken-people could be computer-adjusted to look like a human, then that unique part of my "style" is gone.  My art is no longer my own - it is just another computer generated design that can be copied by hundreds of other quilters.
I make mistakes.  I piece things together wrong and don't notice until the whole thing is quilted.  But that is the beauty and the uniqueness of my quilts.  For the sake of art, I hope that in the pursuit of perfection - we don't lose our art.

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