{"id":9567,"date":"2011-07-14T06:07:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T13:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/?p=9567"},"modified":"2016-11-29T17:56:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T00:56:28","slug":"everything-a-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/everything-a-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything a Masterpiece?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/creative-mojo-06-29-2011\/id394504858?i=95294543\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Lipinski&#8217;s Creative Mojo episode from 6\/29\/2011<\/a> the other day. He was interviewing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesleyriley.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lesley Riley<\/a>, who I thought was really good. She is the creative force behind TAP and a creative mentor\/coach. She said that people often don&#8217;t do anything creative, because they have forgotten how (we are all born with the ability to be creative, according to Leslie), or we feel like we don&#8217;t have time or we feel like everything we do has to be a masterpiece, because we don&#8217;t have time to screw up.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9559\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9559\" style=\"width: 291px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/FabricYear.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9559\" title=\"Fabric of the Year 2010 Professional\" src=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/FabricYear-291x300.jpg\" alt=\"Fabric of the Year 2010 Professional\" width=\"291\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/FabricYear-291x300.jpg 291w, https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/FabricYear.jpg 864w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 291px) 85vw, 291px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9559\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fabric of the Year 2010 Professional<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The masterpiece comment really struck a chord with me.<\/p>\n<p>It made me think about the quilts I have made where I feel like I have really struck gold. I have had <em><a title=\"FOTY 2010 Again\" href=\"..\/2011\/07\/foty-2010-again\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fabric of the Year 2010<\/a><\/em> on my mind lately, because I really feel like I struck gold with this quilt. This conversation, further, made me think that there is no predicting whether a quilt that will have the <em>it<\/em> factor.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3392\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3392\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/PICT4857cropped.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3392\" title=\"Spiky Stars\" src=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/PICT4857cropped-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"Spiky Stars\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/PICT4857cropped-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/PICT4857cropped-1024x822.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/PICT4857cropped.jpg 1449w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3392\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Spiky Stars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I feel like I have two or three quilts that are truly excellent quilts. This is many fewer than the number of quilts that I have made. I asked myself if I was ok with that and I am. I am because the other quilts are not horrible, ugly or hideous. Most of them are good work and make me happy. They are nice quilts, but just don&#8217;t have the &#8220;it&#8221; factor.<\/p>\n<p>I am going to keep making quilts and I&#8217;ll nail another one sometime. I don&#8217;t know when, but if I stop working, because each quilt isn&#8217;t a masterpiece I will never find that quilt with the &#8216;it&#8217; factor, but more importantly, I won&#8217;t progress. I believe that my truly great quilts are great, because I keep making quilts.<\/p>\n<p>I make blocks to try out color schemes before I commit to a whole quilt, sometimes. I make bags and other small objects to try fabrics and techniques that may not be suitable for quilts. I go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aworkofheart.com\" target=\"_blank\">A Work of Heart<\/a> and play with paint and ink, paper and gesso under the watchful eye of Andrea, a creative genius if there ever was one. It feels good not to be making all the decisions all the time.<\/p>\n<p>I also look at my quilts, once finished, and think about what I could have done better. I worked hard on FOTY 2010 based on what I had seen in <a href=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/finished-done-complete\/\" target=\"_blank\">FOTY 2008<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/foty-2009-finished\/\" target=\"_blank\">FOTY 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And I just keep making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to Mark Lipinski&#8217;s Creative Mojo episode from 6\/29\/2011 the other day. He was interviewing Lesley Riley, who I thought was really good. She is the creative force behind TAP and a creative mentor\/coach. She said that people often don&#8217;t do anything creative, because they have forgotten how (we are all born with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/everything-a-masterpiece\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Everything a Masterpiece?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[400],"tags":[353],"class_list":["post-9567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-400","tag-process"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}