I read an interesting little book over the weekend, “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon. In the book, Kleon lists ten items to help you on the road to being more creative in your life. Now, you need creativity in your life no matter who you are or what you do—whether you are artistic in any way or not. At the very least, all of us need some creative problem-solving from time to time. And thinking creatively can help us out in countless ways. One of my favorites of Kleon’s ten items is “Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.” I had actually already started applying this rule before I read the book, but reading his explanation just gave me a bigger push. My delay has not been “waiting until I know who I am,” but “waiting until I am good enough.” Now, you may recognize this as being a stupid way to look at things. How are you ever supposed to be good enough if you don’t practice? My whole life I have been fighting some sort of perfectionism that stops me from even attempting anything if I think I cannot do it perfectly the first time. For the past couple of months I have been applying the “don’t wait” principle to my sewing and quilting. I attended my first quilt retreat late in June and started on a quilt while I was there. Right away I made a major mistake. But I worked around the mistake and kept plowing ahead. Finally I decided to machine quilt this project. I have been trying to get the hang of free-motion machine quilting and it has not been going well. I did some safer, easier quilting over the majority of the quilt and decided to free-motion the borders. Meanwhile my daughter came home from college and immediately put dibs on the quilt. Much to my surprise, the free-motion quilting turned out great this time!! I think it was because I finally got over trying so hard and just let it flow. When I finished it, I wrote a little story on the back of the quilt. I named it the “Get Over Yourself” because that is exactly what I did. The quilt is far from perfect. The Quilt Police would definitely have a long list of mistakes that were made, but it is beautiful and functional to my daughter. Now I have stocked up on quilt battings and thread and am doing a lot of sorting through my fabric stash. I have quilt cottons that are older than my children!!! All have been waiting for me to be “good enough” to cut them up and make something. How silly is that? I think I need to get out some of the quilts made by my ancestors and remind myself that functional has its own kind of beauty. You may never see one of my quilts on display in a contest or a museum, but my family will be warm and cozy wrapped up in my imperfect productions!! springcreekartsguild@gmail.com