Tag Archives: creativity

takin’ it slow

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Two lists for you today.

First, in defense of an upholstered chair as design board:

  • it’s there
  • it is soft — meaning: “will take a pin readily”
  • it is tattered — meaning:  I don’t have to worry about ruining furniture here, and most importantly
  • at about 12 feet from the couch,  it provides a view of the work while I am relaxing doing something else.

Second list enumerates a few insights that have allowed me to finally enjoy this project:

  • I can take my time
  • I can revise in a whole host of ways — by unpicking seams and replacing poorly-fitting fabrics, by abandoning whole chunks of pieced sections, and by appliqueing onto pieced sections
  • I don’t have to know how it’ll all come together at this point, and
  • I can trust that I’ll figure out HOW to connect it all up when the time comes.

In the meantime, I continue to make three to four side-designs with rejected sections, which also provides relief when the going gets tough.

repetition

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It is possible that I am making the same quilt over and over again.
Oh look, there’s another blue moon! And — surprise! — another hut, with its two-toned roof angled skyward.
And, my goodness — two in a week!! —  ANOTHER two-toned roof and ANOTHER moon — stitched together!
Leave it to a Buddhist to address the matter of repetition with eloquence.  Gary Snyder:

Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms.  Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick — don’t let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits.  Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our ‘practice’ – which will put us on a ‘path’ – it IS our path… The truly experienced person, the refined person, DELIGHTS IN THE ORDINARY.  Such a person will find the tedious work around the house or office as full of challenge and play as any metaphor of mountaineering might suggest…. One goes out onto the ‘trail that cannot be followed’ which leads everywhere and nowhere, a limitless fabric of possibilities, elegant variations a millionfold on the same themes, yet each point unique.

From, The Practice of the Wild.

Here is a peak at what I really think about this latest Moon Hut quilt (depicted with my feet above).

I make the sky out of a linen so soft it begs to be touched.  The swirls on it suggest wind to me, and are a green I struggle to name – sea foam?  Moss?  The dragging of thread along some of the swirls pleases me, accentuating their drama and direction, providing a welcome counterpoint to yammering, televised heads debating Medicare’s future.  The orange leaves and red leaves play off of each other, and provide a feathery sense of movement, and a nod to the incomparable work of Jude Hill, who explores feathers and wings this season.  The moons of the foreground place sky into the ground – a kind of reversal that also pleases me.  There’s even a little redemption here – for I am making use of a fragment from a barn quilt that couldn’t find a place until it landed here.  How can all of this not be (to quote another icon) a ‘good thing’?!!

Today I will practice thinking about these hut and moon quilts as “elegant variations” – which I already know to be true, if I am honest, if I stay away from over-thinking, if I flick doubt away like a pesky gnat, denying it purchase.  That’s a practice, too – flicking doubt away like a pesky gnat, denying it purchase.

Where pleasure resides, repetition is no effort at all.

sedum bowing from the rain

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Everybody knows that big game cats kill their targeted prey some very small percent of the time, right?  (It might be as low as 15%).

I thought of that (half-remembered) fact photographing the sedum this morning.  They are bowed down from last night’s rain.  It really came down hard for awhile, and they bear signs of repeated pummeling.

Still, they soak up the sunlight and afford bees their nectar like any other day.

Do they wring their petals with self-blame because they are not standing upright?! Thinking to themselves, “I am so weak, so bad, so stupid” ?  Of course not!  Sedum can’t wring their petals!!

Just kidding.  Even on a day not particularly marked by self-doubt, I like to remember that fact about cats. We think of them as such mighty hunters – and THEY ARE – but they fail more than half the time!! Imagine how much poorer their kill rate would be if they berated themselves for all those misses?!! What if when I was bowed down, I could still soak up the sun just like any other day?  Absent the narrative?

I am also interested in the FENCE in this picture.  Over at Spirit Cloth, where I am taking another cloth class, I have asserted the house as my motif (what? again?) and noticed that, unlike wings (Jude Hill’s chosen motif), houses are about enclosures, security and shelter.  So different from flight, freedom, and expansion.  But, the house sits on a parcel of land… and that has an edge too.  So, there is something to expand to from the edges of a house.  Or, there is a secondary enclosure.

Kind of thinking out loud here.

In what ways does a HOUSE bring freedom? 

And, if a house does or does not afford freedom, why?  What does it depend on — who lives inside?  where the fences are — if there are any? the foundation?

silly

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I have a few questions this morning, prompted in measure by the most recent class I’m taking over at Spirit Cloth.

What if silliness is a form of freedom?  And, if you decide being silly is important – can you make it happen? Or is it by definition spontaneous?

I can’t draw horses.  Should that stop me?

I am looking into slavery in all its grotesque specificity.  Reading about pestilence, torture, whippings, labor practices, the Middle Passage, transmission of culture, textile traditions, loss of culture, roles of mistresses, overseers.  Is it possible that such a weighty reading discipline ALONE ought to dictate a measure of specific whimsy… for balance?

What if I tipped the eaves, just a little, on some of my little houses, and they sprouted wings?!

And why don’t I dream about flying anymore?

Do you? Do you dream about flying?

 

don’t think too much

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‘Don’t think too much’ is a pretty good philosophy.

Just finished “The Art of Fielding” where the story follows an incredibly gifted athlete who learns the hard way about how thinking too much can intercept and poison talent.   Thought can interfere with one’s craft as well.  Studying, plodding along, reworking, while essential components of completing work, are often not enough to resolve a project in a satisfactory way.

Which is why I pin works-in-progress to quilts that are already on the wall — so that I can look at them while doing the dishes, or talking on the phone, or while exiting the house in a mad dash.  You get different ideas and solutions at those times, and they seem to come without trying.

This woven cloth is going to become an apron.  Why?  Because last night, after pausing in my stitching, I laid it in my lap.  K. and I were watching a VERY long movie (“Henry Fool”), waiting for it to end, honestly, and I noticed that I really liked having the cloth there.  In my lap.  It seemed to belong there.

So, even though I never would have set out to turn this rectangle of linen into an apron HAD I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, I think it’ll be a really nice one. And a keeper.

Have you made any surprise decisions with a work-in-progress lately?

P.S.  “Don’t think too much” happens to be a good mantra for the days following dropping a first born at college!  In service of not thinking too much, my house is probably going to get pretty clean this week.  A tiny compensation for C’s absence.