Essays

UFO's in Your Sewing Room!

Every quilter, everyone who has ever tried quilting, has come to this moment of truth.; The way you deal with that moment of truth determines whether you will go on and become a real quilter, or whether you will give the whole business up and turn to some more congenial recreation.

I refer, of course, to the moment when you are first confronted by an Unfinished Object (or, as we quilters like to call them, a UFO). It could happen in any one of a number of different ways. You could have just finished attempting to put together a block you found in a magazine, and discovered that all the pieces are the wrong size and the block will not go together any way you look at it, and then you realize that you just cut 60 other pieces from that pattern, and they're all the wrong size, too. Or you could happen on a set of six blocks you made some time ago, and dimly remember that you were going to make 36, and sashes, and some really cool pieced borders, and make a quilt out of them, but somewhere you lost steam. Or you could get back from a quilting class with a dozen half-made blocks, full of fire and energy, and then look at them and realize that you don't remember what the finished blocks were supposed to look like, let alone how you were supposed to finish them. Or you could be looking for something else (you're always looking for something else when this happens), and you find some strips of fabric inexplicably sewn together, which you think might have been the beginnings of some blocks you were intending to make.

However it happens, there you are, confronted by a project that has not been finished and probably will never be finished. This is your moment of truth. You have two ways to react to this discovery:

(1) You can throw up your hands and say, "Obviously I'm not a good quilter, because I can't even finish one simple project. I won't do any more quilting until I finish this," even though you know perfectly well that you will never finish this, for whatever reasons, or

(2) You can look at it and say, "Well, that didn't work out, but it's all right. I'll just put it over here and get to it later, when I finish this really good project I'm working on now," even though you know that you may never get to it in this lifetime.

EVERY REAL QUILTER ANSWERS WITH SOME VERSION OF NUMBER 2.

Yes, that's how you can tell you're on the road to becoming a real quilter. If you let little things like UFO's faze you, you don't have the true quilter's attitude. If you can get over the idea that nothing's worth doing unless it's worth finishing, then you have a wonderful future ahead of you as a quilter.

As you get deeper and deeper into the world of quilting, you will find that some quilt shops actually offer courses in finishing UFO's (and you thought they were talking about extraterrestrials! Ha! Even though some of those UFO's look as if they might have been made by aliens, this isn't science fiction we're talking about here!). You should even resist the temptation to take such a class. UFO's are a badge of honor among quilters.

What's so good about them? Oh, any number of things:

(1) They prove you're willing to try new things, even if those new things turn out to be horrendous. Nobody is born knowing everything about quilting. The only way to learn how to do it is by trying different things. Maybe you would have liked applique. You didn't know that it would drive you to a state of near blithering mania until after you started that Baltimore Album Quilt block and frayed every single piece you tried to applique. Maybe purple and orange would have looked good next to each other, even though they weren't very promising when you tried to draw the block. Maybe these particular purples and oranges would have been heavenly, instead of making onlookers dizzy. You didn't know that till you put the pieces together. Maybe that class in piecing kaliedoscope quilts would have introduced you to a wonderful new method that would have greatly simplified your life, instead of leaving you with a dozen blocks that won't lie flat no matter how often you press them. It looked like a good idea; you were smart to try it, regardless of the results.

(2) They prove you have the sense to know when something is NOT working Imagine what happens to people who don't have that sense. Imagine what their quilts look like! Imagine the frustration, the horror, of spending untold hours working on something that will not cooperate with you no matter what you do, when you could have simply realized that it was a mess after the first block, and ditched it.

(3) They prove that you're not wasteful. Yes, when things start going wrong, or when you get interrupted in the middle of a project and put it somewhere and forget where you left it, some people might just throw away the unfinished project, but not you. Not a true quilter! Throw away fabric? Anyone who would do that would throw away her fingers, or her arm! No, you save this botched piece, and all the little pieces that were supposed to fit somewhere only you can't remember where and they seem to have multiplied. They're fabric; you will save them.

(4) They prove you're an optimist. Creative people have to be optimistic, to keep going when things are at their messiest. What could be better evidence of optimism than a drawer, or a shelf, or a laundry basket, full of unfinished quilts in various stages of creation? After all, what does that collection say about you? It says that you believe that someday you will figure out what to do with all those misplaced pieces. You believe that someday you will have the time and the patience to put together that quilt that had three thousand pieces, all different, in seventy two blocks with three different pieced borders. There are some who would say that this is closer to lunacy than to optimism, but you will ignore them.

(5) They give you a sense of security. If something horrible happened and all the fabric stores were closed, and you ran out of your stash of fabrics, or you drew a complete blank in your imagination and couldn't think of any quilts you wanted to make, you wouldn't be totally bereft. You know that there they are, unfinished objects, just waiting for a little time and creativity to be turned into viable quilts again. You will never be without some quilt to work on.

(6) They give you something to share with your fellow quilters. There's nothing that brings quilters together faster than a sharing of disasters. It's possible that other quilters might be able to see something in your UFO that you didn't, and give you the hint that will allow you to make it all work out. Someone else might even take one of your UFO's off your hands! And even if that doesn't happen, the knowledge that we're all human, and all capable of making mistakes (even horrendous ones), and that we all get up and try something new, gives you a friendly feeling toward your fellow quilters.

So have no fear! Be proud of your UFO's! After all, in quilter's heaven, we'll all get the time and the energy to finish all our quilts. Eternity should be just about enough time.