One thing that I have learned over decades of dealing with severe anxiety is that I will experience anxiety in every aspect of my life, including the things I use to combat my anxiety. So while working on quilts does overall help my mental health, it is accompanied by the flooding of “what ifs” and thoughts of every possible thing that can go wrong. Over the past couple of years, I’ve come up with a variety of things I tell myself or remind myself of to help deal. This list is way too long for one post, but the major ones that tend to haunt me throughout the entire process of making a quilt are listed below in case any of you have been tormented with similar thoughts.
What if it turns out like crap?
For starters, nothing that you create is “crap”. It may not be your best work, but everything you do is a learning opportunity. Even if you make something that you decide will never see the light of day, you will have learned something in the process and future projects will be better for it.
Trust me when I say, there is at least one person in your life (and probably many more) who are going to think whatever you make is amazing. Non-quilters are amazed by the things that quilters create, and this is not limited to quilting. Any person in a creative field goes through this. They create amazing things and can only see all the faults.
A personal example of this would be my Rainbow Falling Charms quilt. I had been given a bunch of charm packs and had no clue what to do with them. I was still rather new in my quilting journey, and decided to try out a MSQC tutorial for the first time. Before I had even started the quilt, I knew this quilt was going to be my first full sized quilt that was free motion quilted. That alone should have let me know that everything was going to go wrong. I couldn’t get the seams to line up straight, the squares looked beyond wonky, and nothing was going right in general. By the time I got to quilting it, I had ripped batting, tension issues and spider webs everywhere. And let’s not forget the quick trip to JoAnn’s because I ran out of thread, only to get the wrong color. Still I kept going, just to get the practice in, knowing that future projects would benefit from these mistakes. When I finished quilting it, I didn’t even bother to bind it. I just threw a picture up on social media to keep a record of what I had done. The response overwhelmed me. I thoroughly hated this quilt with every ounce of my being and people other than my mother were telling me how much they loved it. Years later, it still doesn’t have binding and I’m considering ripping out all of the stitching and requilting it just to see how far I’ve come. While it’s never going to be one of my favorite quilts, I no longer hate it.
Remember you are always going to be your worst critic.
What if they don’t like it?
This comes up all the time when making quilts for others.
Here’s the thing, I have never had someone tell me they don’t like the quilt I’ve given them. On the other hand, I have had people burst into tears over how much a gifted quilt means to them. Even people who find fault in everything have gushed over quilts I’ve given them. These are quilts that I can point out a whole host of issues, but no, they love them. The thing is, people don’t care if it’s perfect or not, they are so overwhelmed that you would care about them enough to spend the time and energy it takes to make a quilt for them, they will love it no matter what.
One thing that has helped me with this particular issue, is that I’ve predominately stopped telling people that I’m working on a quilt for them. That way, if I really don’t like it, I don’t have to give it to them.
What if no one wants it?
This is a constant for me when working on a quilt that is going to be raffled off or put up for auction for charity.
When I first started quilting, I would put finished quilts up on social media and let people know I would give it away to a random commenter, asking in turn that they donate what they could to a specific charity. The second quilt I did this with was my Rebel Alliance quilt. I put it up the same day as The Force Awakens trailer dropped. The previous quilt I had done this with was a Boba Fett quilt and had a large response, and I figured tying it with a Star Wars trailer would boost the popularity. I got several likes on the picture, but no one commented that they wanted it. I was crushed and devastated. I had been really proud of this quilt, and was really happy with the way it turned out. I stopped putting my quilts for charity on social media after that, and I rarely attend anything that is raffling off one of my quilts cause I just don’t want to know. Years later I’m rather glad that no one wanted it because that meant I got to keep it. I rarely keep the large quilts I make, and this is the only bed-sized quilt that is mine. It took me awhile to get to that point, but at the end of the day, it is their loss, not mine. Plus curling up in it to watch Rebel One was an awesome feeling.
Ultimately, you are quilting for you before anyone else. It is your decision if you want to share it with others or not. If you decide that a particular quilt is too stressful for you, put it in time-out and work on one that you are going to enjoy the process. In a year or two, you can pull it out of time-out and you may be at a point where it isn’t so stressful.
What are some of the anxieties you deal with while working on a quilt?
