When you speak English you don’t try to imitate Shakespeare, Whitman, or Wolf, right? You have your own unique way of speaking. You use the same words, sure. But you have your own diction that’s just as special as you are as a person. The same is true for your quilting skill.

As a beginning quilter, I first looked to traditional patterns. I made log cabin blocks, snail’s trails, square in a square, hand quilted lines, machine quilted feathers, etc. I kept trying to create these patterns to learn the basic skills needed to create art in this medium called quilting. Do you know what I learned?

Quilting isn’t really about the replicating of a pattern. It’s about creating a vision of your own. But when you’re first starting out, you can’t see that, let alone DO that. Right?

It takes time to learn to quilt. There are many, many hours of work that go into practicing to gain control to be able to take an idea from your head and execute it in stitch. You will fail many times. That’s ok. I still fail. At every roadblock, return to the creators that came before us to look for inspiration and solutions.

You have to remind yourself, “I am where I am.” Don’t compare where you are now to where someone else is or was in their skill level. The more you practice, the more experience you gain, the stronger skill you create, and the more freedom of ideas that will begin to emerge in your quilting-not just to recreate, but create anew!