On "Perfection"

How I love my readers!

I get the best questions. In the comments on yesterday's post about the template, Gail asked if, when you are cutting the template out, should you cut the cutting line away? I would tell you to cut ON the cutting line. Then I would say to make a sample block and adjust accordingly.

This is the goal.

Frankly, I'm probably not the best person to ask. So-called "precision piecing" is not my thing. I make quilts because I enjoy making them. My bird tutorial is written without many specific dimensions because it really doesn't matter (much) and I would rather my students have success than be paranoid about the width of their seam. My free pieced birds are very forgiving, but then, there are no matching seams on the bird.

Oh look! This isn't perfect!

  I am the first person to tell you that I am not a robot. Many years ago I was given this piece of advice:

"Always leave the evidence of your hand in your work. You do not want your work to look like it was made by a machine."

I hate a lot of the "show quilts" because they are too "perfect perfect." They are so rigid and mechanical, and so precise I feel they have had the life quilted right out of them. I also remember that I make quilts because I love to do it, and I'm not going to make it stressful. Sure, I love getting it perfect, but if it isn't perfect, I'm not going to freak out about it.

Now look, I am NOT interested in being a "Show Quilter" or winning those kind of awards. I believe that the emotional impact of a work of art is FAR more important than any kind of technical perfection. This is quiltmaking. It isn't even like a piece of clothing that has to fit properly. Frankly, most people (and I mean MOST) will never notice the small imperfections I have shown above. When the quilt is finished even I will have a hard time finding them.

Check out the top of this triangle. Oops!

 But here's the important thing, and it's really important to keep this in mind:  When you give the gift of a quilt, the recipient does not care if it is an original design or if it came from a pattern or a kit. They don't care if you bought your fabric from eQuilter, or online or Jo-Ann's. They don't care if the quilt is square or slightly off. They don't care if the corners of the triangles are pointy or chopped off. They don't care if the quilting stitches are even. They don't care if the quilt was quilted by a CAD driven long arm quilter or hand guided free motion quilted. They don't care if you sewed the binding on by hand or machine, or on the front or the back.

WHAT MATTERS is that it came from YOU. It came from YOUR HANDS and YOUR HEART and has YOUR TOUCH all over it, and YOUR LOVE is deeply embedded in every square inch.

So Gail, cut the template in a way that makes sense to you, do your best to sew everything nice and straight, keep as close to a 1/4" seam allowance as you can, try to avoid stretching the long bias edges, but most of all, relax, keep calm and sew on.

It isn't brain surgery. It's not life or death.

There's the mechanical, soul-less "precision perfection", and then there's this kind of perfection:

 I know which one is more important to me.