My darling friend Ebony Love wrote a powerful post on the topic of quality and sewing in the quilting/fabric industry. Her post is getting a lot of buzz. Mostly support with a few catty comments thrown in for good measure. She dared to go a place a lot of us have been thinking about but have kept to ourselves or only spoken about in private situations.
Generally Ebony is talking about projects that show up on blogs, at trade shows and in certain books that are rushed to market with the intention of catching the latest wave or craze in the craft industry. Her call down is blunt and well worded and I for one am going to raise my hand and plead guilty.
Yes, guilty – I have fallen to the pressure and unrealistic goals and timetables of this industry. I truly believe that no one wants to put out crap-tazalistic work but do know that some of us are working too fast in order to serve a master that is unending with it’s requirements and pressure to do more, faster, each and every season, and by the way make it mind blowing and share worthy while you are at it.
For me this is not all the time or on every project, in fact of late I have sent out some projects that I am so wildly proud of that I all but wet my pants each time I see them. But there have been others in the past where I have been so rushed, so harried and so distracted that while not the worst work in the world it was not my best either and for that I am sorry. Maybe I am the only one to fall in this trap – I don’t’ think so and I don’t know what sort of response I will get to this but keeping it real starts here.
You see I made a mistake. I let other peoples rush get in the way of something I hold dear. I let a publisher’s frenzy, a company’s unrealistic time table and just the generally hurry-hurry nature of the quilt/fabric industry trump my work ethic and it stops now. ( It actually it stopped a few weeks ago since I had a mini-break down due to it all but now seems a good time to write about it)
Like many in this industry I have a family, a home, pets, friends a more. When these seemingly impossibly assignments come along ( 4 complete projects with tutorials in 5 days.. SURE!) and I foolishly agree to them all those a-fore mentioned things get pushed to the wayside during long days and even longer nights of sewing, writing and eating take out food not to mention stepping over piles of laundry which we refer to as Mt. Washmore!
Don’t get me wrong I love my life and each misstep is mine alone. There was not one project I had to say yes to, no one held a {glue} gun to my head making me finish a project in a late night stupor. No, I bent to the rush and lure of seeing my name in a magazine, to the pleading of an editor for just one more project to round out an issue or to a some other hidden force that made me think that I could some how win back time with my kids ” next week” after the current rush was over ( the current rush is never over).
I am new to this industry (I think.. when does ” new” expire?) and I have no plans to leave of my own accord but I do know that I am re ordering my priorities –
Kids before quilts,
Quality over quantity,
Marriage before making another commitment
BadAss sometimes means starting fresh when things get off track.. what part of your life could use a reboot??
