Take a Risk

It’s good for you.

My mother is a quilter. She makes her quilts to be timeless expressions of a person. She rarely buys what one would classify as risky fabric – modern, batiks, kaffe fassetts, etc.

When I first started quilting, I followed in her footsteps, because that’s all I knew. Like hers, my projects were never dated by fabric prints. I only chose fabric that was unclassified by date. Everything in my early days of sewing would be difficult to link to a certain year or season just by looking at the fabric. Of course, being the risky sewer that I am (I don’t use a scant ¼” in quilting!! Gasp!), this was all bound to change.

I promised my dear boyfriend, Scott, a quilt. I believe I told him that I would make him anything he wanted. He mulled it over for weeks before finally settling on the most challenging project I had undertaken at that time in my life as a sewer: my first quilt pattern, a mariner’s compass. There were no patterns out there to satisfy his request – a sailing-themed quilt with a 50” centered mariner’s compass surrounded by yacht club burgees and nautical blocks. It seemed impossible, but I carried on. My mother gave me a rough lesson on paper-piecing. I sketched out a compass myself (it requires far more math than I had prepared myself for). I used poster board to draw templates for the compass and the burgee blocks (both were paper-pieced). I used a lightweight tracing paper to trace the templates for sewing. Then I bought fabric. I bought the fabric with Scott, because it was his quilt after all.

You should know that I pre-wash everything. It’s a gift, and a curse. While I was gathering the fabric to pre-wash, I noticed that Scott and I had accidentally purchased a batik for part of the two-toned blue star. I was devastated. I called my mom and she told me to throw it out and buy something else! I decided to wash it, look at it some more and then make a decision. The more I looked at it, the more I loved it. It remained as a beautiful compliment to the quilt that broke me out of my comfort zone.

Since then, I’ve taken fabric risks. I buy kaffe. I could live in the batik section of my favorite quilt shop. I collect modern. I love to be the first cut off the bolt. For me, quilting is an artistic expression of a moment. I want that moment to be dated. I want you to look at your quilt and remember the summer of 2011 when Terrain made its debut. Because that was the year you got married, or had your first child, became a grandparent, got accepted into a Master’s program. That was the year you did something so remarkable, you wanted it sewn into memory. And that’s what I want you to remember: your birthday, our friendship, your life-changing event.

So, do something risky. It makes a difference.