Stitchy Freedom

I’m a regular reader of Seth Godin’s blog. Seth offers daily, pithy words of wisdom. (I frequently want to print and post them to the wall in my sewing room) This post talks about the fear of freedom. The following is from his post:

What will you do next?
What can you learn tomorrow?
…
Are questions better than answers? Maybe it’s easier to get a dummies book, a tweet or a checklist than it is to think hard about what’s next….
…..
We have more choices, more options and more resources than any generation, ever.

A long time ago Debby Brown started sharing Seth Godin’s words of wisdom with me. Seth, like Debby, get’s this pondering woman thinking: how do I teach better, how do I quilt better, how do I learn more about my machine so I can teach other quilters how to better use their machines, how do I learn more about other brands so that when I teach on them I can problem solve with the quilters…so many questions whirling around in my head. There are even more questions whirling around in my head too: how do I take what’s in my brain and how I teach and write that down in a way that is cohesive and relevant and will invite quilters to take that next step along their quilt making journey? How do I invite quilters to shift the normal thinking, “I can’t do that” to “at least let me try”

I have all kinds of learn-y things running through my head: the quilter who realized she could learn one more thing; the quilter who reminded me that sometimes the quilt has taught me everything it needed to and it’s time to pass it on; the quilter who reminds me that quilting is relational – with others and most importantly with ourselves; the quilter who reminds me that kindness is paramount and working towards that is a good thing; the quilter who teaches me that being human means that mistakes happen and while some remorse is necessary – dwelling in that remorse and living there is not a good thing, for anyone. Learning how to move on is good. The quilter who reminded me that de-stashing is sometimes a very good thing indeed. Holding onto the fabrics I will use, that speak to my heart, that inspire me is good. (My students will benefit from de-stashing!)

A while back my really nice camera started acting goofy. The knob that is used to zoom started sticking making it nearly impossible to take pictures. After some research (for me with it means saying, “hey sweetie…”) I am the happy owner of a Canon PowerShot SX520 HS as with my other camera I can hardly wait to see what I can do with it.

When I sit at my dining room table I get this amazing view of my sweeties Angel Wing Begonia. This plant is old and by old I mean it was old when we got it and we’ve been married over 22 years. It’s been through a couple of moves and every once in a while a piece will break off. My sweetie will carefully root it once again. They’ve been given to various friends over the years. The most recent to a coworker who named hers after my sweetie. This particular view has captured my attention for weeks. Now I get to share it with you.

So the title of this blog is Stitchy Freedom. Quilters go stitch to your hearts content in 2015. Write yourself reminders to post on your studio wall that will encourage you to keep going, to explore and enjoy the process. Learn, grow and enjoy. In all reality we’re not going to stop comparing ourselves to others, really. But we can halt the negative effects of that by looking at how we’ve improved, by not judging our earlier attempts and by recognizing how we’re growing.

Happy 2015!!!

Teri

PS I’ll be at Hartsdale Fabrics from 10 to 3 today