Learned art

I've always found artistic people fascinating - that a person can take a pen and illustrate something beautiful in one swoop. It's innate. Magic. Some are born with "it" and some aren't. Just like some people can carry a tune in a bucket, and some can't. Some can leap over tall buildings in a single bound, and some can't. Ok, most can't.

Then I learned something in college (*gasp*). I was not a good writer in grade school (except in the eyes of my alcoholic sophomore teacher who loved my murder with an icicle story).  But later I picked up some tools in college that would not only earn me As in English, but would help me hone and refine my writing skills over the 15 years following.

The other day someone called me a writer, and said it was something they couldn't do. Of course I was totally flattered, but I just like to write... don't consider myself a writer because I wasn't born with the gift.  I've simply worked on it until I could form reasonable sentences in my head that others may want to read. It honestly took 15 years and many, many, many hours of reading, studying, training and writing, writing, writing... and I still suck at fiction.

The other thing I learned more recently is that a lot of art is unintentional. Who knew? After reading dozens of art quilt mags and conversing with artists of various mediums, it seems a popular approach is to mess with an idea long enough until it turns into something you like. The outcome is practically an accident.

These two learnings: that artistic skills can be acquired over time and that art is organic, have encouraged me to reconsider my feelings about quilting. Since I was a little girl, I've been designing quilts - in my head of course. I've invented more imaginary quilts than I could create in a lifetime. Then it dawned on me. In this age of the Internet, there is literally nothing stopping me from opening my own store.

So I did.

With much enthusiasm I bought fabric, cutting mats, thread, books, more mags, sat down at my sewing machine, and was ready to throw in the towel after about 4 hours. What a dumb idea. What made me think I could do this well enough that someone (in their right mind) would want to pay money for it?