Creative Quiet

So this past year I opted to go on a bit of a creative hiatus. I didn't design. I didn't sew. I didn't buy fabric. I didn't sketch. I did my best to be creatively quiet. You see, I had found myself sewing, sewing, sewing, and making a project as soon as I had finished a new sketch. There wasn't enough editing, enough painstakingly slow contemplation in the planning stages, or enough of throwing sketches into the trash. I was just making whatever.

But that's never been the way to create good work. So I purposefully left it alone for months, in order to return to the peace and quiet of observation and intentional creation.

Once, during a conversation with Anne of Play Crafts, I talked about moments of creative silence - and that it's good to be quiet when we don't have anything we need to say. Why fill the void with endless chatter? Wait for something meaningful, something worth saying.

And it was time to put that into practice.

I had gotten far too caught up in the rat race, feeling the pressure to make make make, and was filling space with endless chatter. So I was purposefully quiet for so very long, to push myself back into intentionality.

I've started designing and sewing again, and it's been amazing to see how fruitful that hiatus was.

I did my best to "consume" as much as possible during that time - which I would equate to listening, in a sense. I spent hours on Pinterest, Instagram, and reading books & magazines on a variety of topics. I entered into very few conversations on what I saw, and instead worked to bring everything inward for reflection. To sit with the things I saw. And I looked at as much as I could.

I opted to kick off my return to quilting at the beginning of the year with a personal challenge that had been stewing around in the back of my mind for quite awhile - designing as many paper pieced stars as I could - 100 of them? - and have been working on that since.

I don't want to push myself back into creative fatigue, so I'll be stopping myself once I reach 26 - I'm nearly there - and will probably return to add additional sets in the future. Four volumes of 26 stars (an alphabet's worth) will land me just over that goal. I think I will have no problem reaching it, but at the same time, I'm not going to tie myself to it too tightly. I don't want to sacrifice creativity for the sake of a named goal. So we'll see where it takes me.

But I'm super excited to share theses stars with you - here's a peek at them so far!

[vls_gf_album id="6137"]

A pattern bundle will be coming soon :) You can watch here for a blog post, or sign up for the newsletter, to hear about that!