I Think I Can't...oops...

Over lunch yesterday I was watching a recorded episode of Simply Quilts, and Alex's special guest was someone who does a lot of work with batiks. She was walking us through a relatively simple pattern for a quilt done with batiks, and I was thinking, "That's pretty--I could easily do that. Maybe I'll go online and download the pattern."

Just a few minutes later, Alex had the guest talk about some other quilts she'd brought along with her: a wide variety of patterns, although all using batiks. I haven't entirely been bitten by the batik bug yet--just a little bit nibbled--but I was struck by the beauty of the way the guest had put colors together and how she'd used relatively simple block patterns that really highlighted this unique fabric. Looking at one particularly nice one, I thought, "Boy, I wish I could figure out how to do stuff like that. I'm not good at that kind of thing."

Uh, what?

I stopped at the realization of what a negative message I'd just sent myself.

OK, here's where I give you a little backstory. I have led workshops and written program sessions on creativity. I have been invited as a guest speaker at women's events and asked specifically to speak on creativity. I've written countless articles (mostly for women and girls) on creativity. My saying is, "Creativity is only looking at something in a new way." My pet peeve is women who say they're not creative, and I expend a tremendous amount of my personal and professional energy in trying to help them see otherwise.

And yet my first thought when looking at someone else's creativity is, "I can't do that."

Doh.

Of course I can. I just have to get over myself. I do normally think of myself as a creative person--although my creativity tends to show itself in much more pragmatic ways. I'm able to view problems creatively, set up creative organizational structures for groups...basically, I'm able to look at things in a new way and help people find new ways to address issues. But artistic creativity has often felt like a completely different thing for me, and an area in which I'm less confident in my abilities.

I vividly recall my mother once saying to someone, "Oh, I'm not creative", completely discounting the several stacks of beautiful quilts she had made over the years. But simply because she typically followed patterns rather than designing her own, she saw what she did as something less than creative. And yet she took those patterns and made them her own--used her own fabric choices, tweaked sizes, or block placement, or border treatments--what turned out was not just a carbon copy of what the designer had originally created. And yet my Mom didn't see what she'd done as creative. And might I also comment here, raising 5 kids and several foster kids on limited budget and in a self-built house and subsistence farm in the country required a tremendous amount of creativity!

I realized a few years back that my admiration for my Mom's creativity and my sadness that she couldn't see that in herself is quite a bit of what has inspired me to preach the word of creativity to women and girls today. I firmly believe that a lot of women have been trained to see what we do as "less than"--we do crafts, not create art; we have hobbies, not artistic passions. We are very quick to discount our own talents and explain them away as something that's not really all that and a bag of chips. And that's why my knee-jerk-reaction to what I was watching on the television--"Oh, I can't do that, I'm not that creative"--really surprised me. Dang it, practice what you preach, girl.

Why is it that we relegate artistic creativity to the experts? Why do we relegate anything to the experts? How does someone become an expert, anyway? I'm not knocking artists--there are several quilt artists whose quilts I pore over in fascination and try to learn everything I can from seeing how they put fabric, stitches, and embellishment together. But why is it that I see what they do as something so completely removed from what I do?

I have to remind myself to change the tape in my head from "I wish I could" to "I want to--how do I get there?" and from "I can't do that" to "Gosh, I could do that. What do I need to learn to get to that place?"

I have often gotten called in as computer tech support for various members of my extended family and a fair number of people I work with. They all know I spend the better part of my life on my computer and use a wide variety of software, so they call or email me with questions. Most of the time, I can figure out their issues and help them solve them. One of them said to me once, "I'm sorry, but I've never been trained on any of this." To which I responded, "Neither have I. I'm just intensely curious, and positive that any software I buy should be able to do what I need it to do, so I just keep poking away at it until I figure it out."

I'm not afraid of computers, so I'm able to work easily with them. After watching the Simply Quilts episode yesterday and thinking through all of this, I realized I had to apply the same thinking to quilting. It's only fabric. So what if I screw something up? I can always try again. No one ever needs to see it. If I even end up throwing it out, is that such a big deal? And it's not nearly as expensive to replace as a crashed computer!

So I'm planning on embarking on a journey of getting over myself. Stop thinking in terms of "cans" and "can'ts" and thinking instead of "hows" and "let's trys". There is no such thing as failure...it's all "a learning experience". And if some projects end up hitting the trash can, that's just a good excuse to make another trip to my favorite local quilt store, isn't it? How can I lose?

....Pause....

I did some machine quilting tonight. That's something I always approach with great trepidation. My skills are pretty bad, but yes, they're improving with use. They're also improving because I'm no longer assuming it's a skill I should be able to pick up quickly. Rather, I'm being much more intentional about playing around on a practice quilt sandwich (if you're not "in the know", that doesn't involve ham on rye, which would do unspeakable things to my Janome; my quilt sandwich is a small practice quilt made out of fat quarters I'd decided I'd probably never use so they may as well give their lives to me improving my stitches). I'm also s...l...o...w...i...n...g down. No longer do I blithely stuff my next quilt victim under the needle and plow away at top speed. Now I roll a little at a time, gently easing my quilt friend a few inches at a time while entreating it to play nice with me.

And every now and again, I pause. Take a deep breath. Regroup. Reposition my hands, take another deep breath, roll my shoulders, remind myself to relax, and move on.

Hmmm. Yet another life lesson.

I started back to work today after my three month sabbatical. Last night I found myself dreading what I would find waiting for me. I'd had a few hints here and there (I hadn't completely cut myself off from communication) but I wasn't sure how I'd react to it, or if there were nasty, hidden surprises. But the day went along as if I'd never been gone. I caught up on projects, moved some other ones along, began a couple of new ones, and even found myself feeling excited again over certain possibilities. Part of what made the day go well, I think, was that I had very conscientiously taken the time to pause--something I haven't always been good at doing. Went to the gym early, before work--an active pause but a pause nonetheless. Throughout the day, occasionally reached down to pet my faithful doggie laying at my side--a pause with a very grateful recipient. Allowed myself quick 30-second daydreams of what quilting I'd get done after work. I was very careful not to slide into my usual "head-down-blinders-on-nose-to-the-grindstone" mentality. And I was just as productive, if not more so, than usual. What a surprise.

So after my workday was through, I sat down with one of my machine quilting books, reminded myself of some technique tips, practiced on the aforementioned quilt sandwich--none of which were things I usually did before--then began work on my wallhanging. It's a simple quilting pattern--that's all I can handle right now. Since the wallhanging looks a bit like a mosaic wall in an Italian villa, I'm doing vines climbing from bottom to top with leaves hanging off in random intervals. I chalked it out just to have an idea of spacing, but I'm not being rigid about following my own design. After all, the chalk will erase and no one will know what my original intentions were, and there's great beauty in that fact. But still, I chalked one out on the practice quilt just to make sure I'd know where I was going from point A to point B before working on the real mccoy. And then I began.

Every few inches, I'd stop with needle down, breathe, roll my shoulders, reposition my hands, glance up at a distant point to relax my eyes, and then slowly start in again. Another few inches, breathe. Another few, breathe. And after I had only one complete vine done...stop. Quit while I'm ahead. Don't put some arbitrary deadline in my head. Just...breathe. I've done enough for the night--I've gotten my quilt fix and made progress. I can pick it up again tomorrow evening.

I remember my flute teacher telling me once that, in music notation, the rest is the most important thing--it allows the notes to be more of themselves, more prominent, heard more clearly. Without rests, the notes will just run into themselves, tripping one after the other, and the listener will get exhausted. But the rest makes you stop and really hear what it is you're listening to. In quilting, even the most experienced, excellent machine quilter takes frequent pauses to allow him or herself to regroup. Without those rests, the stitches would tumble into one another, skipping and tangling, and one would end up with a mess rather than a work of art.

Why wouldn't daily life be the same way?

My quilt has been gently moved off to the side of my sewing cabinet and the machine is shut down. I'm going to catch up on emailing some friends and spending time with my family. A pause is a beautiful thing.