Struggling with Perfection

A shared article in the Keepers of Athena's Thimble Guild page brought about a rambling muse ....

The Difference Between Embroiderers Yesterday and Today

Thank you SO much for sharing this post. This is an issue I have struggled with for decades and it still haunts me – at times even paralyzes me from sharing my work with anyone. Or even venturing to weekly or monthly get togethers I must confess.

I think it is very easy to see images shared by others and then our own work and feel we will never be “good enough”. Part of this may be human nature, we tend to share openly our best works and hide the learning pieces and flubs from anyone else’s eyes. I have a personal goal of earning competency in all 12 guild categories – but the idea of the lace ones keeps me paralyzed in “There is never any way I can do that”. It also is hard for me to see something at panel that the maker shrugs off with “it is not my best and it took over a two weeks to do…..”. I would love one day to hear the maker say something along the lines of “Thank you – this is actually my 23^rd time trying to do this – the first ten I just set fire to outside they were such a tangled mess!”

I am not against striving to be as good as we can be, and I understand the need of having a standard to aspire to. I am just regularly disheartened when the only things I see are “too” perfect and actually look machine made. This also stops me from showing some of my work, the comments that “such and such would not have been done in period …” I want to ask those who say this … “How do you know? Just because we have no pictures of a woman doing X, and textiles from the 11^th century did not survive outside a few rare snippets … can you prove that they DIDN’T do this? Can you honestly tell me that nowhere in the history of the world did a woman not sketch out something she saw and did her best to replicate that image in needle and thread?”

At this point part of my brain is screaming at me to apologize for airing my feelings. But when organizers of A&S Displays wonder why they have light participation perhaps how I feel is how others feel. When you attend an event, take the time to read the artist notes. Creators – write down why you did what you did – what is the story? Leave an encouraging comment or token, thank the person for sharing their work and passion.

So now I go back into my shell and work on my non-period-provable projects that I will enjoy but may never be seen outside of my home. Because despite what people think they know about me from the casual public contact we may have had – I can be hurt very easily and am scare of exposing my work to the raised eyebrow and elegant sniff from one of the “Perfection Patrol”.