This is a reblog from around ten years ago, but I still think it holds true. How do we gather the courage to do art? And the courage to show it and let it into our lives like a strange wild cat? T

I’ve been teaching now for almost 30 years, so it’s not uncommon to find people who’d had class with me teaching, writing, creating amazing art and winning awards. Students in the quilt world are not like students in other places. They’re often experts in their own right. They’re there in class to pick your brain, but they’ve already got amazing skills. So it’s not like that student owes you very much. They’re another traveler, perhaps out ahead, perhaps a step or two behind. But you’ve showed them a cool trick or two and they may well have showed you as well. It’s more like meeting a pilgrim on a similar path.

I used to give everyone three scraps of fabric: A red badge of courage, a green lunatic fringe and a purple heart, because if you’re doing brave things, of course they’re shooting at you. At some point, in the four thousand things that have to get done before class, I stopped. 

I also always used to wear a badge. At one point someone gave me the most wonderful bug pin. I put it on my badge and it was part of it. At another point, I lost it. No one seemed to miss it.
My old student asked me if I was still giving badges. I think I had him in class 15 years ago.
It still mattered to him.

Every so often, someone would stop me and tell me they lost their badge. I gave them explicit permission to make another for yourself or for someone else. 

Perhaps the badges need to come back. Am I as brave as I need to be? Are my students? Are any of us?

A sacrament is an outside sign of an inward grace. A symbol can be one too. Can an ordinary person can stand behind a curtain, make a great deal of noise and convince people to be brave and have a heart simply by giving them one? Yes, perhaps. Symbols do work

Should I start making badges again?
Do we need the lunatic fringe rampant?
Would you stand in the lunatic fringe?

10 years later, I’m no longer teaching. But I am struggling for my own courage, my own celebration of my wounds, and my understanding that of course I’m out in the fringe. I ask you how you hold your courage to create? What badge, pledge or thought holds you straight and strong at your art? And if I made you a badge at some time, would you let me know if it worked?