I'm back and I'm ready

I'm ready to commit to an idea. That's a big step, knowing that I will be involved with this project for quite a long time. My last quilt was three years in the making! But that's not exactly fair, as I had little time or focus for creative work. During the dark period of losing eleven people through unrelated events, I was fortified by the hope that I would one day return to my art with more insight and resolve.

Barometer of Excuses
Susan V. Polansky,  2012

I was rewarded for my patience with the best piece that I have done. "No One but You" has been accepted into Quilt National 2013, a prestigious biennial show - sort of the Holy Grail for art quilters. The headline picture for this blog is an excerpt from that work, which I will put up on my new website.

Finishing a big piece always leaves me at loose ends.  It's a fragile period, being between projects. I battle doubts that I will never make anything worthwhile again or never come up with an interesting idea. The best cure is to focus on process, not end points. These things I make are souvenirs, it's the traveling to get where I'm going that is so fascinating. I look at the end product as a summation of how I got there, and see it as a roadmap to where I should head next. So while ideas were incubating, I completed some spontanious smaller works, and also had some fun with mixed media.