Take it as it comes
It’s easy to post about the wins and opportunities when our hearts feel full after getting swept up in them. A piece being selected or an application being approved feels like a little encouragement that the ideas that swirl around your head might just be appealing to others in the outside world as well.
It’s less easy to post about the rejections, though it is probably even more important to do so.
An artist friend of mine once talked about striving to get 10 rejections a year. That has totally stuck with me, and it was actually this kind of attitude that I started stitching into my quilts and into my life. It led me to just go for it and apply to all sorts of things I couldn’t have expected to be accepted into, and opened up opportunities I am hugely grateful for.
But there were/are many rejections as well.
Last year I got 6! rejections from QuiltCon. Here’s a whole pile of rejected work:
As I mentioned in a recent post, I spent much of my summer vacation working frantically to finish a very meaningful quilt to meet a deadline. The density of stitches meant it was a quilt that my hands had held for months on end. The personal nature of the quilt also made its weight in my lap feel especially pressing.
“Take it as it comes” was the last full sentence my 92-year-old father was able to clearly articulate. This quilt is about honoring those precious words, and his progressive loss of them, by sitting with my grief and stitching slowly and intensely, by hand.
The quilt follows the way the stitches wanted to move, the colors and waves that come, the ripples which appear.
I don’t think I’ve put more time or emotion into anything else I’ve made. So when the rejection email came, of course it stung especially deeply. I knew it was a long shot- Quilt National is a very esteemed show- but I let myself hope for a while that I had a chance.
In the meantime, I know that I am in very good company- many other quilters I deeply respect and admire also didn’t get chosen. I have also seen from a lot of the pieces that were selected that the judges simply favored techniques and aesthetics that I don’t fit into.
It still feels a bit tender, and I’m still not ready to share this quilt too widely, but I do know that I’ve made something I am really proud of, and that the whole process has meant a lot to me.
In creating this piece, I lived the concept of embracing what lies ahead and the places where life and inspiration may lead. And that includes rejection just as much as acceptance.
Take it as it comes.