The Perfect Quilt

Here's my piece for the show!

“Practice” is a reminder to myself that the process of creating is more important than the result. It was inspired by a Hindu mantra that I try to remember while quilting:

This is perfect, that is perfect

Perfect comes from perfect

Subtract the perfect from the perfect

And only the perfect remains.

One thing I love about modern quilting is that it’s impossible to make a mistake. Flawlessness is not the measure of beauty; the energy and movement of a design is more important than precision piecing.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy! Sure, you don’t have to worry about perfect points, but making a quilt without any rules can be intimidating. I spent months thinking about how to make this perfectionism mantra into a quilt, trying out several ideas on paper and on fabric before I settled on this approach. Even so, I didn’t know what the quilt would look like until it was done. As a newcomer to quilting, I found this a little intimidating—what if it turned out ugly?—but I think that by trusting my instincts and letting the quilt evolve it ended up being more dynamic and interesting than if I had planned the whole thing out from the beginning.