The Quilt Skipper

quilting makes me skip for joy

Jenny K Lyon

Quilting makes me skip for joy

UFO’s – I’m not so sure they all need to be finished

 

I have a  few UFO’s (Unfinished Objects) hanging around that are talking to me. I am project-oriented. I like to finish what I start and I don’t usually have a high head count of UFO’s. But I’m thinking differently these days. Do all those UFO’s really need to be finished? I’m kinda thinking not.

I went through my photos and have a few less-than-stellar quilts that I finished because I felt like I should. In all fairness, sometimes you don’t realize it’s good until you finish. And, I have a few UFO’s that I don’t think are worth the finish. But before I get to the details, I must share this:

“The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars….even the failed pieces are essential“.
Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland.

My words for this:

“You have to make a bunch of mediocre (or lousy) work to make great work”.

So these failed or less-than pieces are still an important part of my process. But I am beginning to ask myself, how far do I have to take the failure to learn from it? Do I really need to complete it to learn the most from that failure?

Let me show you what I mean. Sometimes you take a workshop from a great teacher, but your results are not-so-great:

Jane Sassaman, 5 day seminar, 2006-ish:

This was not worth finishing and I put it on the donation table at my guild. I don’t know if someone picked it up or it got tossed. A discussion about scale might have helped to rescue this piece. Maybe.

Irene Roderick, 2022?

Good grief I am not gonna piece itty bitty teeny pieces to make this a good composition. Another great teacher. Sometimes you have to take a class to learn that it’s not your thing.

Elizabeth Barton, 1 year online class, long before online was a thing, maybe 2007?

This was my final project for the year. Uninspired. I did learn a lot from her, but I think I just wasn’t ready for real progress.

Pat Pauley, fabulous teacher, class was Take Two, maybe 2019. Take just two fabrics and create a composition. She teaches surface design and printing and most students had fabulous printed fabric of their own. Since I didn’t, I spent a zillion $ and bought yardage of her fabulous fabric.

Wow, I took fabulous fabric and made….. I don’t even know what you want to call this! I know I do not want to quilt it up.

I took a similar class from Joe Cunningham, 2023-ish and got this:

Sigh. This one will not be finished either. There were many successes in this class, but I was not one! I loved that colorful Denise Burkitt fabric and it kills me that I tortured it.

I took Betty Busby in 2020, as the shadow of the lockdown loomed. She is a great teacher. I had this silk piece that I had to do something with. I also was interested in working with screen material. This was the result of that combination:

Clearly, the influence of Covid is showing up here. This is just a butt-ugly finished piece. No more to say.

I destroyed this beautiful hand dyed fabric. I had this idea of putting sheers atop a typical quilt sandwich and seeing what happened:

Just like above, I tried to combine two things I wanted to play with, but it just didn’t work. Okay, I finished this, but not sure it was worth it.

One of my class samples for my “Start With a Square” class:

I should burn this piece: color, overwrought quilting, motifs lined up in a row. I use this as a “don’t do this” piece for class.

Thought I’d try Modern, maybe 2016? I loved the work of Gwen Marston and sought to use that influence on a simple Modern piece:

I subsequently learned that that red is a prolific bleeder, so this could never get wet. Beyond that, the design just floats in the middle. I kinda saw that as I was making it; I have no clue why I just didn’t at least add a red binding. But at this point, it’s not worth my time.

I make garments too and this was a doozy:

It’s annoying when the pattern has ridiculous sizing. This was not my fault except that I should have done a toile before committing to real fabric. Let’s make Jenny look 10 lbs heavier and shapeless. What a waste of time and fabric.

I feel ambivalent about this piece, “She Could Not Contain It”. I actually like it, but it has not gotten good reviews with the little bit of travel it’s done. Fair enough.

This piece was the result of failures related to another piece that was successful. The tortured story of how this quilt evolved is here. Sometimes you pivot so many times that you lose sight of where you were going. Again, I still like this piece even though others may not. Should I have spent soooooo much time on this piece? Debatable.

I think I will be more mindful about whether I should complete my UFO’s as I go forward. I have a few right now that I’m on the fence about. It’s reeeeally hard when the piece has a bunch of silk in it! I also know that I am not interested in cutting them up and trying to make a piece with the remains.

I’ll be linking up:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday

 

Comments

  1. I love that you also take classes and decide finishing the project isn’t for you. I’ve got a couple that have been sitting around for 20 years. Even cut one up into little pieces and it still didn’t work. The guild free table and the trash sometimes win.

  2. Great article !
    I learned this about myself also I took a clave once and was so uninterested after I learned the part I wanted to know how to do. I also had a grab bag quilt with such bad colors I made in and remade it several time. Do not finish it and get it out of the house was a great decision If felt so good. Thanks for the reminder. I am not alone

  3. I use to teach a variety of beginner quilt classes. I had a bunch of samples, some complete, some not. I recently went through the collection, finished those that were suitable for donation and passed on the other UFOS. Same with UFOS from workshops I’ve taken through the years. I freed up a lot of space!

    • I pass on some UFO’s to my guild free table. It’s the ones that weigh on my mind (should I finish or not?) that are the problem for me. I tend to toss or give away if in doubt because those things can weigh on me. Good for you – more space!

  5. “Product is for the ego; process is for the soul.”
    I found this in some notes so can’t give credit, but it’s my wisdom from years of art. BTW, I love your beautiful dog!

  6. Wow Jenny,
    I can see how these pieces were a precursor to done if your gorgeous quilts. Thanks for sharing and inspiring me to be brave about letting Go of what no longer serves me ❤️. Love your newsletters.

  7. Amen sister! Total truth! And now I’ll go and do some more Pitching ‘n Ditching! My forever boyfriend (of 55 years) always tells me, “If you love it, keep it. If you don’t, get rid of it.” ……but all those hours…..but all that $$$…..Let it go and move on. You learned….you progressed….Choose Joy everyday!

  8. I love this! Sometimes the skills used to build a UFO is enough, and you just have to let the piece go and free yourself. Thanks for giving us permission to be free!

  9. Taking inventory & stalk of my UFO collection is a merry-go-round experience. Some I look at and think, ‘… oh, I really need to get to that’. Others, it’s more ‘… what was I thinking’. Yet they hang out in a closet, until they don’t.

  10. I think that a piece I’m not happy with gives me a project where I have nothing to lose. I get experimental and try new ideas and techniques. I don’t care about the outcome since I didn’t like it anyway. Good practice time and sometimes surprising results.

  11. YES to all of this! I hate feeling obligated to finish workshop projects. Often I enroll to meet a teacher whose work I admire and to learn a technique or just try something outside my usual lane. Forcing myself to finish the class project is just robbing myself of time spent working on things I am excited about.

  12. I just noticed a typo in the Bayles quote: you have “art that sours” and it should be “art that soars”. Autocorrect strikes again!

    I love this post, and feel less guilt about my many UFOs. The Yarn Harlot has talked about suffering from “Startitis” with her knitting – it’s always more fun to play with new yarn and a new idea. It’s something I’m susceptible to as well.