On Allowing Creativity

There are days that don't work for me in the studio, days that everything seems to go wrong. I cut the fabric wrong, I waste a thread color I cannot easily find again, my machine gets bogged down, my quilting gets tied in knots, I tear the fabric trying to rip out almost invisible stitches...

On days like this I need to take a deep breath and determine why things are going wrong. There can be so many reasons. 

But today, it is about not forcing the creativity to follow a particular path. The quilt just doesn't want to go that way and has its own ideas about what it wants to look like. It's like those authors who create characters in their novels, but the characters decide for themselves what they are going to say and do, and the author becomes more like a scribe than an influencer.

Alright, maybe it isn't quite like that. But it is true that sometimes being creative means I have to let go of any preconceptions or notions of what "should" happen and be willing to just "let" it happen.

When I am controlling, I am not focused on the process of the task, but instead on the outcome of it. And that is putting the cart before the horse. (This is about having patience again, isn't it?)

I have more success when I let go of the control. I don't mean not being careful or not being in charge. I simply mean, when I am not forcing things to happen, my mind opens, my body relaxes, and thus the work reveals itself beautifully and successfully.