Creativity

I haven't always considered myself a creative person.  Even now, I feel pretty uncomfortable saying I'm a creative person.  It's kind of ridiculous.  But, I am!

I've been thinking about creativity quite a bit lately.  I blamecredit my friend Anne from Play Crafts.  Earlier this year, she started creating a quilt design every day, as a personal challenge to herself.  Soon after, she started the Quilt Design a Day group on Facebook and it has since grown into a thriving creative community.

One of my two QDAD designs

In August, Anne did a webinar for the Modern Quilt Guild.  Unfortunately, you can only view it if you are a MQG member, but if you are a MQG member, I highly highly recommend you watch it (find it here).  It's all about discovering and developing your creativity.  In her talk, Anne pulled together a number of creativity related threads that I haven't seen connected in quite the same way before.

The things I took away from Anne's talk were:

• you ARE creative (even if you think you're not)
• the way to become more creative is by doing something creative regularly
• regularity is important because:
• it gives you room to fail (today's creative endeavour doesn't have to be perfect - there's always tomorrow to try again)
• it's hard to deny that you're creative if you're doing something creative every day
• there's no perfect time to start being creative, so you might as well start now
• working with constraints can help you overcome the difficulties of a blank canvas, and push you to be more creative
• there's nothing wrong with doing things that have been done before - just make sure you put your own spin on it
• community is important - you'll get great ideas from others in your community, and more importantly, it makes things fun!

These are some of the things I had read or watched before I watched Anne's talk, and I think elements of all of them appear in her talk at some point - Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on Your Elusive Creative Genius, Phil Hansen's TED talk on Embrace the Shake, Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist talk and the book Steal Like an Artist, Brick by Brick by Stephen McCranie (Anne introduced me to this one), and this comic by The Oatmeal (quite sweary, in case that kind of thing offends you).

I haven't been a regular Quilt Design a Day participant, but back in July I took on my own creative challenge, and made a quilt-as-you-go block every day for the whole month.  At the end of July, it was kind of a relief not to have to make more blocks, but after a week or two I started missing the process.  At that stage I started joining the blocks together, and I finished the quilt (you can see it here) a couple of weeks ago.  I'm really pleased with my finished quilt, not so much for aesthetic reasons (although I'm pretty happy with it from that perspective as well), but because it represents a certain amount of commitment to the process of making a quilt, and a month's worth of memories, in quilt form.

My #blockadayjuly quilt

However, my #blockadayjuly quilt was just a warm up to the main event, to see whether I thought I had the stickability for a bigger undertaking - making a block every single day for a year.  Since I enjoyed making a block every day in July, I've decided to take on the larger challenge, starting next week on my 29th birthday.  Since this quilt will be made over the course of my 30th year, I'm calling it the Year 30 quilt.  Of course, this is not an original idea (you can read about my inspiration here), but I'm putting my own spin on it.

I've been thinking about how to get the most creative benefit out of the year long challenge, and specifically how to incorporate some of those key points from Anne's talk into the process.

The other one of my QDAD designs

Obviously, I've got regularity down!  I am going to stick with my original plan of making a block every single day.  That regularity is important, and for me, this is also the kind of project I don't want to get "behind" on.  A small block every day is manageable.  Having to catch up on a week's worth of missed blocks every weekend is not (or it doesn't sound fun, anyway).

Giving myself room to fail has proved a little bit trickier.  I thought about not including every single block I make in my final quilt, or putting some on the back, but I decided against those ideas.  Instead, I'm going to use the same concept that allows me to accept imperfection in my other quilts, and that is the idea that my quilts are a record of my skill level at the point in time at which I make them.  It means that I strive to do my best work, but accept that my quilts won't be perfect, and look forward to the time when I will have improved enough to look back on my current work and see how much better I've got.  In this way, I'm hoping that my Year 30 quilt will show a progression between the first block and the last block.

I'm also planning to bring constraints into the mix.  I can't quite imagine having to decide what block to make, every day for a year, without anything to guide my decision making.  I'm planning to set myself regular week-long challenges, where all the blocks made in that week must incorporate some common element (for example, curved piecing, triangles, improv piecing, appliqué, embellishment, etc).  I might also ask other people to set challenges for me from time to time, because I'm sure they'll come up with things I'd never think of.  That said, I'm giving myself permission to do the easiest possible version of the challenge if I need to - life happens, after all.

Constraints - seem bad, actually good (from xkcd).

I'm going to change things up a bit as well.  I'd like a finished quilt that's actually usable, not 13 yards long, so I'm going to make 4 1/2" square blocks, and not quilt them as I go.  If I assemble my blocks in a 19 by 20 layout, I'll only need to make 15 extra to fill in the gaps at the end, and I'll end up with a quilt that's large, but definitely usable (about 76" by 80").

Finally, community.  If this is the kind of thing you think you'd like to do, why don't we do it together?  I'll share my weekly challenges on the blog (I probably won't do one every single week, but maybe every second week), and host a weekly link-up for people who would like to play along, so we can keep an eye on each other's progress and provide encouragement, support, and creative ideas.

Last time, when I did the block a day July challenge, a few people wanted to know what the rules were.  There are no rules!  I am setting my own rules for myself, and if you want to follow them too, you're more than welcome to.  But if you want to set your own rules for yourself, please do!  If you want to make a block every week, instead of a block every day, do it.  If you want to make a quilt following a pattern (Dear Jane or Farmer's Wife spring to mind), do that.  If you want to use a colour palette that you choose at the start, do that.  If you want to go completely random and scrappy, go for it.  All options are on the table, so you can set your own constraints.

In case you're wondering (and I know someone will ask the question if I don't say), I don't think I'll use a set colour palette, and I'll probably do the same thing I did with my #blockadayjuly quilt, which was to work from my scrap bins most of the time, and deliberately add in bits of black and white here and there to create something vaguely cohesive.  But I still have a week or so to decide, so I might change my mind!

So, what do you reckon?  Are you in?  Also, can you think of a better name for this challenge generally?  Year 30 quilt only really works for me, and I'm rubbish at thinking of challenge names - I always want to put in far too many words!

#blockadayjuly quilt

Dear quilt-as-you-go,

I'm sorry.  I thought you were kind of lame.  An inferior method only to be used in extremis.  

 

Well, I was wrong.  I was unfairly maligning you. 

 

It was so much easier to quilt the blocks as I made them.  Putting them together really wasn't hard and I like the sashing effect.  

 

And, I love how the back looks - you let me make it much more interesting than it otherwise would have been.

 

  So, quilt-as-you-go, thanks for the lesson and I'll be seeing you again.  Lots of love, Adrianne.

 

These are the blocks I made during July as part of my block a day July challenge.  I generally used Alison from Little Island Quilting's QAYG method to assemble them, except that I cut my strips for the front 1 1/8" wide and my strips for the back 1 7/8" wide.  I also stitched in the ditch from the front rather than stitching from the back, and I glue basted the strips on the back before I stitched them in place.

I'm quite thrilled with how this quilt has come out.  I didn't really have a vision for it before I started, and it's very colourful and random.  I decided just to add in some plain blocks to fill in the blank spots so I would have a regular shaped quilt.  You can see there are a couple of blocks when I grabbed the wrong white for the back of my quilt - at night, it was hard to tell, but in daylight it's pretty obvious (I'm ok with it).

So, have you done quilt-as-you-go before?  Would you give it a try?

Block a Day July - Week 4

Oh no - I nearly forgot to post my fourth week of blocks! Oops! Anyway, here are all 27 of my blocks so far - I almost can't believe there are only 4 more to make! 

This week's blocks, all in the bottom row: 21 July - Forecast of overnight snow, 22 July - Time for an early night, 23 July - Anyone for a cuppa?, 24 July - Star flower, 25 July - Croque-madame, 26 July - Lazy Saturday, 27 July - Scrappy log cabin.

My quilt is continuing to be pretty eclectic and scrappy, which I'm loving.  Here is the link-up for everyone who who still playing along!

An InLinkz Link-up

Block a Day July - Week 3

This weekend I managed to take a quick photo of all my blocks so far.  I'm quite pleased with how my quilt is coming along (and that I'm more than halfway through the month).

This week's blocks, all in the bottom row. From left to right: 14 July - Fussy catting, 15 July - Stars, 16 July - Dreaming of summer (it's so bloody cold at the moment), 17 July - Drifting away.  Nine patch because that was what I was teaching that night, colours chosen because of that annoying but catchy song. 18 July - Nearly didn't happen but then I decided it was more fun than cleaning out the litter box, 19 July - Nearly silent, 20 July - A heart because that's a shape I can draw.

Here's the link-up for other people who are playing along.  I love seeing everyone else's blocks and there are some seriously cool things being made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Block a Day July - Week 2

I've been keeping up with my block a day challenge so far.  I was sick for most of the week so there were a couple of days which were a struggle (and these blocks were really the only sewing I did all week, apart from a bit of hand quilting on the sofa!).

Top row: 7 July - Hand quilted, 8 July - I love yellow, 9 July - Here's one I prepared earlier (started on Sunday but finished on Wednesday), 10 July - Improv lettering inspired by Chawne.

Bottom row: 11 July - My quilt just needed a lovely Melody Miller lady. Hand quilted, wonkily. 12 July - Testing out an idea, 13 July - Finally got some FMQ in.

Here is a pile of all the blocks I've made so far.  I was going to lay them all out but I ran out of time! Next weekend will be quieter so hopefully I'll be able to show you 20 finished blocks next Monday.

An InLinkz Link-up

Block a Day July - Week 1

Since my decision last week to make a 6.5" square quilt-as-you-go block each day for the month of July, I've been doing exactly that.  Here are my first six blocks.

 

Top row, from left to right:  1 July - Passport photo (imaginary self), 2 July - Hello winter, 3 July - Hand printed fabric and thoughts for a friend who had a sad day.

Bottom row, from left to right: 4 July - Dinner with friends (we talked a lot), 5 July - Scaled down star (and liberty just because), 6 July - Hourglass block for a busy day.

For a tutorial on how to make the speech bubble block, see this post.  The star block is a scaled down version of this block.

So far I'm not finding it too tricky to get the blocks done (although I have annoyed my sister by sewing loudly at 11pm at least once...).  I'm enjoying formulating a loose plan for what I'm going to make during the day, and then each block takes about 15 to 20 minutes to put together.

A few people asked me where I was going to take inspiration and colours for my blocks from.  I'm happy to share my ideas but they are just that - ideas.  This is a rule-less challenge and I feel really strongly that people should do what feels right for them.  My blocks are being inspired by what I've done, felt or thought about each day.  I didn't start out with a colour scheme but I did always plan to include bits of black and white throughout the quilt to add a little bit of cohesion.  I am deciding what block to make on the day I make it - there is very little forward planning involved for me.  I know some people are using this challenge as an opportunity to make progress with a particular quilt they're working on, and following a pattern is totally fine too!

Anyway, here is a linky in case other people who are doing the block a day challenge want to link up.  I'll post my previous week's worth of blocks, and the linky, each Monday for the rest of July.

An InLinkz Link-up

A block a day

This weekend I saw something which has inspired me to set myself a block a day challenge for July. The Year 60 Quilt was made by Norma Slabbert (who was the speaker at our guild meeting). Norma's quilt involved making a quilt block each day for a whole year, to chronicle her 60th year.

I'm actually considering doing my own Year 30 challenge (I'll turn 30 in September 2015 so would start my quilt on my 29th birthday this year). I'm a bit worried about committing to a block every single day for a year though, so I'm doing a trial run by attempting to make a block every day in July.

My blocks will be 6.5" unfinished, quilted as I go, and then my plan is to put them together using the method Alison from Little Island Quilting is using to assemble her Soy Amado quilts. My rule (like Norma) will be to finish and put away each day's block on the day, so I don't have to catch up at any point. I'm planning to use lots of different techniques and also to let myself make something very simple on those days when I'm under a major time crunch.

Anyway, I'm posting this idea in the hope that having made it public will help me follow through. Also, if anyone is keen to join me, let me know. I could do a linky (maybe once a week?) so people can share their blocks. I'll also be posting my blocks on Instagram using the hashtag #blockadayjuly, so that's another option if you want to play along.

There are no rules, apart from one block a day (and if you want to make them in batches rather than one every day, it's no skin off my nose!). You don't have to make the same size block as me and you don't have to quilt as you go if you don't want to. This is entirely a personal challenge for me, so if you want to do it as well, go with what feels right for you.