What Would You Do If You Could Not Fail

There is a quote attributed to Dr. Robert Schuller (the late pastor and motivational speaker) that I have always loved: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”  What would you do?  Well recently I decided to stretch a little and I took an art quilt class. 

I would not consider myself an abstract quilt or art type person.  I like quilts to look like a picture or a quilt block.  I have trouble with mixed media projects.  I do collages but there still seems to be a theme to my collages. With a lot of abstract art, I don’t see an image or a theme.

So when a quilt artist came to our quilt guild and taught a class, I decided to try it. What I really liked about her quilts is the use of embroidery in them.  Embroidery is what started my needle work history with a crewel embroidery kit of a squirrel at the age of 9 and embroidery seems to be where I am returning now some years later. 

I bought her book ahead of the class and was reading it for the third time by the time of the class took place.  Well the book and the class showed me there was no way to fail.  She gives you guidelines, not rules, not shoulds or shouldn’ts, not a step by step process.  And what she would ask us as she went around the room was: What is your thought here and Do YOU like it?  She would make suggestions and it was OK if you didn’t accept them.  It was your art quilt. 

She also started out small.  We worked on 6 inch art quilts not a big wall hanging.  So if you didn’t like what you were doing, you could easily start over. Or if you didn’t like the whole process, you didn’t feel like you were wasting a lot of fabric or money or time (always a concern for me).  And it was easier to envision the guidelines she gave on a smaller scale.

Sometimes you have to take a chance and try something new.  It is easier in a class and I think after this, easier if you start out small.  I wrote in my first blog to begin small.  You want to paint, paint one color.  You don’t have to start with a mural.  When I taught quilting, I started with a table matt.  I had a design that gave all the parts of a big quilt (a block, lattice strips, border, quilting and binding) but it was only 18 inches square. This way if you decided you didn’t like quilting, you weren’t committed to a king size quilt.

And while my opening quote asks “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”, it is OK  to try something and not like it afterward.  I tried embroidery on paper recently.  I love embroidery but to do it on card stock, you have to poke a lot of holes to prepare the cardstock for the embroidery.  That I decided was not for me.   But I don’t think of it as a failure, I tried something new and learned a little about me (I don’t like poking holes in card stock).  You have to try something to know if you like it and that in itself is a success.  You can’t succeed or learn something new if you don’t try.

So ask yourself this “What would YOU attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” 

©2018 Cheryl E. Fillion