I think another trade off from my childhood was the false thinking that if I was ‘perfect’ things would work out, people would be happy with me, I wouldn’t get into trouble…you know “how to win (influence) people 101”. I thought my life would be better and I would be happier.
I could turn this post into a ‘letter to my younger self’ but I wont.
For today I will share how my love of quilting helped me start to break free from trying to be a perfectionist
When I first started quilting in 2009 I had never even used a sewing machine before. I think my sister in law bought me a $99 sewing machine from Spotlight as my secret santa gift and my husband bought me a horn sewing machine cabinet (which I still use!)
That first machine is long gone but my love of quilting has grown and grown.
I remember that in 2009 I joined Tupperware and was doing parties and going to team meetings. My manager at the time was a former art teacher who unbewknosnt to me also loved quilting. She invited me to a quilting bee. We were given the colour pallette (green and purple) and the design requirements and we would have to make a block for ourselves and one for each member of the group. We would then meet monthly and exchange the blocks. In the end we would have enough blocks to make a quilt.
So here I was trying to work out how to load a bobbin, cutting my fabric with scissors and boy was that a steep learning curve! Fast forward to the first get together…..I brought along my little squares which I had spent hours and hours making and…..I had done them wrong! I had made the seams too big so the whole thing ended up being too small!
Everyone there laughed at me (in a having fun way) and I felt horrible. No one knew my secret.
I was a perfectionist. I had made a link between my acceptabilty as a person with the things I did/made. Thankfully I never gave up on quilting because I have improved a lot since then!
If you ever delve into the world of sewing and quilting it wouldn’t take you long to see how many styles of quilting are out there! Some people are very ‘modern’ and have amazing precision, others are more free forming and abstract and there is all in between! When I first started quilting I wanted precision but my lack of skill and know ho meant mistakes were made. Many, many mistakes. I often joke that I have a degree in unpicking!
Now that I am over 10 years down the track I can see the improvement in my skill and know how. I have gone through the process of making mistakes and not giving up. I have learnt that chasing perfectionism can just stop me from achieving anything.
Letting go of this actually helped me improve and be better. Minus the emotional attachment that if what I produced what was seemingly ‘perfect’ then I would be more acceptable (accepted) as a person.
It is funny how we can look back at times in our lives and wish that we knew then what we know now.
So I think I will always have a tendency to want to have things perfect or just so but I think I have really come such a long way from my faulty thinking that ‘perfect’ = acceptable/wanted as a person!
Letting go and creating helped me to just go with the flow more, chill out, slow down and enjoy the ride.
Learning to sew was my first step away from the love of busy and into the enjoyment of slow and single tasking.
