The Care and Feeding of Creativity

What comes to mind when you think about creativity ?  Paintings?  Music?  Films or plays?   Does quilting come into focus when you think about creativity?  If it doesn’t, it should.  Anyone who has made even one quilt is aware of all the decisions which have to be made – pattern, color, fabric, finish – a half dozen or more choices must be considered with any quilt.  However, I do think it’s worth noting creativity is a precious commodity and can run low at times.  For me, when 2023 ended, my creativity (and my energy and my mood) was at an all-time low.  It was a difficult year workwise, with many hours logged behind a computer.  And it ended on a particularly tough note with the death of one of my cousins.  Then 2024 uploaded no favors with mom having health issues and the unexpected death of a nephew – all before the middle of January. 

My creativity and  my desire to be creative and my yearning to produce anything creative were really non-existent.  I was tired.  My brain was tired.  I was seriously considering hibernating for most of February.  But fate, high power — call it whatever you want – intervened.  My guild’s first guest speaker for the New Year talked about creativity.  The Letter from the Editor in January’s American Quilter dealt with creativity.  And with all these signs pointing to ways to keep your creativity intact, I wanted to know two things:  How to massage mine back to life and if there were activities you could walk yourself through to keep away the burn out.

The first piece of information I discovered was that there are different types of creativity.  We tend to think of creativity under the umbrella of the arts – singing, dancing, painting, sculpting, drawing, etc.  There are actually four types of creative intelligence:  Deliberate and Cognitive, Deliberate and Emotional, Spontaneous and Cognitive, and Spontaneous and Emotional.  Deliberate and Cognitive creators are folks like inventors, such as Thomas Edison. These people can think through a plan and come up with a way to make it work to fill a need (theirs or someone else’s or the general populous).  Deliberate and Emotional creators are individuals who thrive on “A-ha” moments.  So these are the folks who research and try ideas and then finally something clicks, and it works.  They see the light, everything comes together, and it’s truly a “A-ha now I understand” moment.  They don’t mind putting in the work for the reward. Spontaneous and Cognitive are people like Isaac Newton who can observe something happening and then immediately connect the dots between that action and the reality of something else.  Spontaneous and Emotional creators are the folks we typically think of as creative – the artists and musicians who tend to wear the cloak of creativity in what is of thought as the normal way.  Quilters generally fall into the Spontaneous and Emotional category – to a degree.

The neat aspect of these four types of creative intelligence is this:  No person has just one type of creative smarts.  Nope.  Everyone has some spark from each of the four.  And to me – the mother of two very logical, engineering type of kids – it means all the mathing they do is just as creative as all the quilting I do.  It’s all beautiful.  You don’t think you have some of each of the creative intelligences in you?  Let me ask a few questions:

• How good does it make you feel when you’ve struggled to figure out some difficult quilting technique or pattern?  Don’t you feel wonderful when that “A-ha” moment happens, and the lightbulb goes off over your head?
• How terrific is it for you when you can make a half yard of fabric do the work of three-quarters of a yard?  Don’t you feel awesome when you can break down a complex quilting pattern into simple terms for yourself or someone else? 
• Isn’t a wonderful feeling when you can look at a picture of an antique quilt or a quilt pattern which is no longer in print and know – sometimes with even the briefest glance – how that quilt was made? 

I imagine, if you’re honest, you enjoy all of the above. None of these have anything to do with design or color or fabric selection – none of the “artsy” things about quilting.  But they’re all types of creative intelligence we have and use in our quilting.

But how do we keep our creativity on point?  It’s wonderful to know the different types of creative intelligence and how they all fit into our quilting world, but how do keep our creativity bubbling freely when we our minds and imaginations feel completely dried out and useless?  When you’re staring at the fabric stash and can’t feel any zing of enjoyment or have no desire to take even the first stitch, how do you cope?  How do you get your mind back into the flow of creating?

For me, the first step was taking a look at my lifestyle.  And I realize that sounds trite.  However, we all have a lot to do.  We wear a lot of “name tags.”  We’re employees or employer.  We’re daughters and sons.  We’re moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas.  We’re sisters and brothers and in-laws and a dozen other things I can’t even begin to name.  Many of us are in the “generation squeeze”:  We still may be dealing with our own children and now our parents need us, too.  Some days it’s hard to take a deep breath, much less be any kind of creative. 

So don’t.   Instead, look at yourself, where you are in life, and determine if any of that is choking the creativity out of you.  Are you facing stressors you weren’t anticipating?  In my case, this was a solid (and loud) yes.  Was this stifling my creativity?  Definitely.

How did I deal with it?  I allowed myself grace.  Usually I write 1,000 words each night, Monday through Friday, plus work on quilt projects.  I gave myself permission to take a couple of weeks away from both.  I was handed a series of events I had to process mentally and emotionally.  They were unplanned and unwanted, but I needed the time and I needed to be with my family – who are far more important than any words or any quilt.  When I returned to my studio and my laptop, I was still a bit shaky and still searching for the right thing to write about, but I did feel better. 

Are your days filled with too many “to do” lists?  Again, my case was a solid (and loud) yes.  I have “to do” lists for my job and “to do” lists for home and “to do” lists for quilting.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like lists.  I am a list maker (obviously).  Lists keep me on track, and they help me make sure I get everything done.  However, lists can also be gruesome taskmasters.  If you don’t feel you can relax at night until everything is crossed off your lists or let the lists dictate when and if you can spend time being creative, then there is a problem.  Keep in mind that a list is a bit like a budget.  Both are wonderful tools.  One manages money and the other manages time.  And it’s terrific if you can keep both in balance.  However, in the course of life, stuff happens none of us have control over, and nothing too overtly bad will happen if we have to break with either of them.  Try not to overschedule your “to do” lists.  Leave yourself some breathing room.  And, if you need to, tell yourself this:  I cannot be everything to everybody.  Sometimes it’s somebody else’s turn. 

Are you taking care of yourself and allowing time for self-care?  My answer is a solid (and loud) no.  Couldn’t tell you the last time I hit the treadmill.  I was lucky if I remembered to take my vitamins.  We ate out too much.  The years of allowing my lists and responsibilities to sabotage the critical care items I needed for myself were slowly creeping up on me.  I had to figure if I wasn’t taking proper care of myself, how could I possibly maintain the energy to be creative?  Most days after work, all I wanted to do was flop down on the couch and read or watch TV. 

Are you listening too much to the “inner critic?”  This is the imaginary person who lives in the back of our minds and constantly reminds us whatever we’re making isn’t good enough or “so-and-so (insert name of person you think quilts better than you do) wouldn’t have made it that way or made so many mistakes.”  First, let me assure you that you are good enough and your quilt only has to please you.  Listening to your inner critic can really throw a monkey wrench into your creativity.  I learned how to deal with mine a few years ago in of all places, a class on writing.  I took the class to receive the continuing ed hours I needed for my teaching certificate and my instructor was a much older, slightly built woman, white hair neatly pulled back from her face with the pre-requisite glasses perched on her nose.  She looked more like one of my Sunday School teachers back from my childhood than a writer.  However, this lady blew me away.  She had chased her family roots and found out one of her ancestors was a madam and ran a brothel in California during the Goldrush.  She was writing this woman’s biography. One of the students in the class asked how difficult was it for her to do this?  What was the hardest part?

“The hardest part,” she replied, “is shutting up that voice in the back of my mind which tells me every day how much my mother would not approve of such topics.”  To get that voice to shut up, she physically would take a chair, set it outside her office door, and invite the inner critic to take a seat and wait outside while she was writing.

So I tried it.  It worked.  The inner critic stays outside my quilt studio pretty well. 

This last point is one I really want to spend some time on because I feel this one impacts more quilters than even stress:  Are you in a creative rut?  Do you feel like you’re making the same thing over and over again?  Do you feel like all of your quilts look too similar or use too many of the same colors?  Do you want to make something different – something new and exciting but just can’t seem to pull it together to do that?  I could throw out some suggestions such as have a good quilting friend pick out your next pattern and fabrics.  I could ask you to sketch out what you believe is your ideal quilt and make it.  I could tell you to take walks (which are helpful), take pictures, enlarge the pictures on your screen, and take in the details and the colors.

But I won’t.

Instead I will offer three pragmatic suggestions which work well and aren’t quite as drastic.

• When you feel like your quilt isn’t working – whether it’s in the middle of a block, center construction, or the quilting – take a break.  Get up.   Walk away.  Go do something mundane.  Wash the dishes.  Fold a load of laundry.  Take a nap. Walk the dog. Do something which takes very little brain energy.  Often when we pop our brain into a neutral gear, the subconscious takes over and solves our problem for us.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out of my studio in the middle of a quilty problem, gone to bed, and the next morning the answer came to mind immediately.  I think our brains sometimes need a vacation from the ”rut,” too. 
• Meditate.  In meditation, you sit with your thoughts and try to detach from them. Or you sit and focus on one specific thing, like your breathing or a mantra, that will help to move you away from your racing thoughts.  I find that focusing on my breathing is the best remedy for me.

I do a counting meditation where I count my breaths from 1 to 10, then 2 to 10, and then 3 to 10, and so on. When I get to just 10, I start over from the beginning. For me, this specific meditation requires enough attention to the sequence that (for the most part) I’m able to let go of the other thoughts in my head.

If I do find myself going back to the thoughts in my head, once I recognize what I’m doing, I let them go and return to counting.

But meditation does more than just help you get to sleep. It actually improves your creativity because it stimulates the neocortex, which is the part of the brain involved in creative thinking and problem-solving.

• Try something creative that’s not in your wheelhouse.  In other words, step away from the fabric.  Pick up a pencil and some paper and sketch.  Refinish a piece of furniture.  My current favorite creative-but-not-quilting activity is adult coloring books and knitting.  Those still use the same parts of the brain, but the actions and methods are different.  My very favorite creative-but-not-quilting activity is working with my youngest granddaughter.  She’s becoming quite the artist and we have a good time drawing together.  These different but still creative activities somehow can jumpstart the quilting part of us again.  Maybe we relax because these are new activities which means we have nothing to prove, and this jump starts out quilting mojo again.

Rick Rubin, in his wonderful The Creative Act: A Way of Being shared some great insights into creativity.

1.  Creativity is not just about the final product, but about the process of exploration and discovery.
2. The creative process requires a willingness to take risks and embrace the unknown, balancing structure and spontaneity, discipline and hard work.
3. True creativity  requires both vulnerability and authenticity.
4. The creative process is a continual process of experimentation and refinement to challenge conventional thinking and break rules.
5. Creativity is about connecting with one’s deepest self and expressing that truth. Embrace your perspective and voice.
   In closing, I think it’s important to remember, that while our creativity is indeed a precious commodity, it’s also organic.  It can ebb and flow.  It can be fed and revived.  It must be taken care of like it’s a living, breathing soul.

So this week, even if you don’t put a stitch into anything, feed your creativity. 

Until next week, From My Studio to Yours,

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix