The newly released book Simply Successful Appliqué should have included the Thomas Edison quote about success: “Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration,” and author Jeanne Sullivan‘s comparison as it relates to appliqué: “Appliqué is 10% inspiration and 90% preparation.”
Who knew that Edison has two quotes with similar (but not the same!) comparisons? We should have! But we didn’t.
In fact checking, we erroneously “corrected” the quote to reflect Edison’s similar statement, comparing appliqué to genius: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” That left our author to chalk up appliqué’s success to a measly 1% inspiration and whopping 99% preparation.
That’s just not right.
Particularly because Jeanne’s book is an amazing amount of inspiration as well as an amazing amount of preparation. As a technical editor at heart, I know I can’t allocate more than 100% total, but I am sorely tempted to say it’s 100% of both!
Some of the author's thorough 90% preparation
Jeanne’s inspired technique makes her richly intricate (and complicated looking) appliqué completely accessible, even for beginning appliquéers.
She gives a photo-rich, detailed step-by-step process for her sample project in both turned-edge and fusible appliqué. And while it’s a technique book (and 128 pages of that technique) and should therefore be very light on projects, she’s also generously included 9 complete projects with full-size templates on the accompanying CD. Now that’s preparation! (And a great value!)
One of the author's 10% of inspiration, but arguably also genius!
So while the quote would have been more apt with Success’ ratio, I’m not going to decide… I think Simply Successful Appliqué is a genius book that makes sure you achieve appliqué success.
(And we’ll much more carefully fact check quotes in the future!)
Be sure to come back next week when we reveal more about this new book and also give you a chance to win one!
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Thank you, Gailen. You make me simply happy!