The idea behind the Teach Yourself Visually series is that non-English speakers can learn a skill by simply looking at pictures. In my book's case, that's 650 pictures of which I sewed or put together all but five.
Simultaneous with sewing and writing and managing this enormous project, I also started a new business with a partner. Consequently, I worked every weekend and every night for months trying to meet my multiplying deadlines.
Yes, it was pretty awful to live through. I would not recommend it to anyone. Seriously. No matter how young or old.
I digress because that's not the comment for today. Today, I'm aiming at the impact that deadlines have on acquiring and perfecting skills.
When I first started writing professionally—i.e., getting paid for my wordiness—I worked for a newspaper. Deadlines were part of everyday life, and they served several good purposes—learning to be closely observant so that you "got" a story as quickly as possible, how to research a topic efficiently, how to ask questions that led to more information, how to write smart and tight and fast.
After my newspaper stint, however, it took years to unlearn the need for speed so that more flavor lay among my sentences.
I realized the other day that deadline mania was killing my love for quilting.
Now my other best-favorite craft is crochet. I've never crocheted on a deadline so consequently, I cherish my crochet as meditation. In fact, I deliberately seek out patterns that are simple yet eye-catching so that I can feel the yarn move through my hands without the need to pay attention to every individual stitch.
I feel the same way about hand sewing.
But every time I sat down to quilt, this "hurry up" energy emerged. "Don't stop for anything. There's no time. Hurry. Don't worry about the details. Hurry." It was a tape loop that never stopped. As a result, this winter as I took care of myself emotionally, I've mostly avoided quilting. And I couldn't figure out why until this past Sunday when I grabbed that tape loop and told it to shut up.
At the time, I was playing with some scrap squares in a pattern called Disappearing Nine Patch. I had three different sized sets of squares, and wanted to see what size worked best for a quilt I have in mind.
I whipped through the smallest size and was completely unhappy with the result. It bowed, didn't lay flat, yuck, yuck, yuck.
The middle-sized squares came out the same way. Just at that moment, my deadline tape loop started playing and I thought "What's the big hurry?"
There isn't one—except between my own ears.
I stepped away, took a walk with the dog, came back and spent the next couple of hours doing things deliberately, working with my seam allowances until they were right, paying attention to how I used my iron.
And that last block? It came out perfect.
Speed is no substitute for joy.
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