Always Be Beginning (Your Fabric Collage Quilt)

Occasionally, when Tom has an idea for a blog post that particularly appeals to him, I hand over the reins for a week. This is one of those occasions. —Susan

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“This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.” —Shunryu Suzuki

It’s fascinating to watch Susan work. Imagine looking over the shoulder of your favorite artist—or pianist or bricklayer—as they do what they do so well. If you didn’t know how much time and effort they’d put into honing their craft, you might be tempted to say that they are performing magic. That’s how easy it looks, that’s how it flows, effortlessly.

But it isn’t easy. And that’s the most impressive part of the illusion, that the effort is invisible.

I think Susan starts a new quilt with the same excitement and trepidation as when she was a beginner. Actually she may have more fear to overcome since she has long lost the beginner’s blissful ignorance. She knows precisely how hard it will be to do what she is considering.

An idea for a quilt has to germinate for some time—often months, sometimes years—before she begins. She refers to this state of expectancy as “dream time,” where her unconscious mind, her sleeping brain, her daydreams—like a computer running a program in the background—plan the making of her next quilt. This long lead time—I think, I imagine—is also a period in which she can conquer her fear, quiet the voices that live in each of us that tell us why we can’t, we shouldn’t, we won’t. It is time in which she replaces those voices with a mind ready and open to receive inspiration.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, says, “If the angel deigns to come, it will be because you have convinced him [or her], not by your tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning.”

For Susan each quilt is starting over—not from scratch, of course—but she has to put away the idea that she knows how something will be done and be ready to discover how it will be done. She is always beginning.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” —Shunryu Suzuki

But Susan is also a teacher. She spends much of her professional life telling people how to do fabric collage. Her students rely on her expertise to guide them toward success (in whatever way they judge that). As beginners it’s easy for them to become overwhelmed by the possibilities they face. They expect her to narrow those possibilities and tell them the “proper” way to do it. I mean, that’s what they pay her for, right?

And there are certain methods and techniques she uses that are, pretty objectively, the right way to do it. There’s a best way to apply glue. There’s a best way to cut your fabric. There’s a best way to blend one fabric into another.

But beyond the mastery of those physical techniques, there’s another layer of artistry that Susan attempts to—not teach—but draw out of her students. Inspiration isn’t something anyone can teach, it has to be allowed to happen. Susan could easily tell each of her students what project to do, which fabrics to use and how to cut them and glue them down—it would probably be easier for her. Easier than allowing them, encouraging them to make these choices for themselves.

As a teacher, Susan needs to be simultaneously both expert and beginner.

An expert where she is teaching a particular technique. But a beginner where she is helping her students find their own unique vision. Sometimes as I watch her teach (especially during her live online classes, in which I play a part), in the course of one coaching session, I can see her switch from one mindset to the other. She will explain in expert detail how to glue down one particularly vexatious piece of fabric, then follow the novice student’s thought process through why they chose that fabric in the first place.

The risk of being an expert is that it can lead to a kind of myopia. An expert knows what has worked before, which may blind them to what else might work.

Rather than passing judgment from her daïs of expertise, she descends to the level of the beginner and allows the student to lead her to possibilities only they could have imagined.

“When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something.” —Shunryu Suzuki

Susan recently began a new quilt. I have no doubt it will be as spectacular as any of the others that she has turned out over the past two decades, each more impressive than the last. (As her husband I can brag as much as I want!)

Starting with “Samuelsaurus Rex” in 2001, Susan’s work took a more personal turn. After years of churning out quilts to sell, she chose to start making quilts just for herself, the ones she wanted make, rather than the ones she thought would sell. What a leap that was! With a single quilt, the self that identified itself as a certain kind of artist was obliterated.

Even if the subjects she chose weren’t so personal as her adorable three-year-old, her approach to making quilts changed. She took chances she hadn’t felt comfortable making before. She set herself challenges where success was not guaranteed: using pink for her rhino, using only scraps, making a life-size saltwater crocodile. These challenges stimulated her because they broke new ground. Becoming a beginner—repeatedly—has allowed her to learn new things.

Her new quilt (which I am not at liberty to share yet) will be equally groundbreaking because the challenge she has set herself has yet again given her something new to learn.

This way of thinking—and Susan’s example—has made me rethink a personal journey of my own. Objectively, I’ve reached a level of competence at sea kayaking almost as far above a beginner as Susan is from some of her students. And yet it’s only recently I’ve begun to realize how much more I have to learn. That is the gift and curse of competence: the awareness of how much you don’t know.

Can I let go of what I think I know? I have to, if I want to progress. How else will I continue to learn?

Can I abandon the self who so highly values my past accomplishments and become a beginner again?

Can I be both expert and beginner?

Can I always be beginning?