I have become the finishing projects guru. (Here’s a blog post on how that happened. Did you know I even teach classes on how to finish your stuff? Yeah, even I am confused that this is me, now.)
Two years ago, when I resolved to finish this dress I’d packed away in a bag for over a decade, I discovered something new: This shit is addictive. I can find an abandoned project I completely forgot about, and it’s like joining together that spark of “Oh! Here’s an idea to make something” with already having the thing half done!
I admit, I would not have this delicious opportunity now if I hadn’t spent thirty years starting projects and not finishing them. BUT I can share with you some insights. Here are my last few long-abandoned projects completed, with why they were abandoned in the first place:
Das Nibelun-gown – (The above-mentioned dress.)I was attaching the final trim of this painfully hand-sewn gown, and had reached the deep curve at the bottom of the first sleeve and was unsure how to do it without adding folds to the fabric
Solution: I added folds to the fabric.
Calum’s Court Baron Award Scroll – I had drawn the design, and started painting in the flat color layer. The style called for a frame around the illustration and around the text, alternating colors in each bar of frame. I had painted one side of the frame red, one blue, one orange, and one green… and I realized that the bar separating the illustration from the text would have to be a fifth color, or else it would be the same as the bars near it. There aren’t that many colors in the period illustrations! I tried purple, but it was too close to blue, and I panicked and stopped.
Solution: Picking up the scroll 27 years later (!!) I saw the problem and realized that it wasn’t that big of a deal – I alternated the same colors on the top border. Gave the finished work to Calum last night. He took this picture on the seat of his car:
Seashell Necklace – my wrapped wire I’d been working beads onto didn’t extend to the top of the shell, and I realized I had no idea how to create a loop at the top to put this on a chain.
Solution: I bent a gold bead cap over the tip and glued a fabric back on to hold it steady. I couldn’t find a good jump ring in my supplies, so I just used a safety pin for now.
What do these all have in common?
I had to make a decision.
That’s it. I put the object down because I was unsure how to proceed and afraid of making the wrong choice. I finally finished the object when I was enough removed from it to not care if my choice was wrong or not. I just WUNG IT. I didn’t get better at painting or sewing or jewelry-crafting. To be honest, my hand-stitches are definitely worse than they were a decade ago. (DAMN I was a MACHINE back then. It’s like every stitch was exactly three threads long.) No, the change was a greater emotional distance from the decision. It didn’t feel as important.
Some of this is simply age. At fifty, I know no one is going to judge me. They’re barely going to NOTICE me.
We act like there’s this harsh audience waiting to pounce on our mistakes and chastise us for them, but in reality, the artist almost always is the only one to notice the errors (and obsessively point them out to the uncaring audience.)
If you’re stuck on a project, try to look at it they way you would twenty years in the future. How important is this decision, really? What happens if you just wing it?
Then just wing it. It’s intoxicating!
