After 5 years of making quilts that track my self-improvement-oriented goals and habits, I decided to switch gears and focus on self acceptance instead. I want to see how it feels to live each day as it comes, without tracking my progress or giving myself a grade. I wanted to see if some of these habits I’ve been trying to adopt can come from a place of intrinsic motivation instead of relying on an extrinsic motivator like a hash in a notebook or a block in a quilt.

Radical Acceptance Quilt for 2019, 76” square

Radical Acceptance Quilt for 2019, detail

It’s still a sticky idea for me... wanting to accept myself but also wanting to change (aka working toward goals). How to reconcile those? My friend Jenni helped me understand it more. Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance helped too. My 2019 year didn’t look that different from previous years. I still tried to practice all sorts of habits like exercising, meditating, watching less tv, and I still worked toward goals like finishing quilts, books, and classes. The difference was I didn’t quantify or keep track of any of it, and I have to admit that felt good. I’m not saying bullet journals or any kind of habit tracking or goal setting is bad. I needed a break, though. And focusing on acceptance gave that to me.

So this is the quilt I made for 2019, a continuation of the series but taken in a different direction. For each day in 2019 I added a strip to this log cabin. (The coral colors are randomly placed. The gold strips represent the 23rd of each month, a way of marking time across the quilt.) For each day I wrote a statement of acceptance on the batting (muslin, in this case) and lined it up with the pieced strips. I backed it in a pale pink shot cotton that allows you to see all the writing if you get up close. This quilt was a big undertaking and so many of you followed its progress and cheered me on. Thank you for that. Measures roughly 76”x76”. Final photos by Mitch Hopper.

Radical Acceptance Quilt for 2019, label

Radical Acceptance Quilt for 2019, in progress

It’s always exciting when quilts get to be exhibited. I was pleased when this one was accepted as part of the MQG Retrospective show at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky in summer 2021. We made a little weekend trip to see it.

It also hung in the QuiltCon 2022 exhibit in Phoenix, Arizona. It was so fun to show off the hidden handwriting on the batting to folks attending the show.