I am inspired by…

• I read about Allison Manch in the Seattle Weekly a few weeks back.  Although I didn’t get a chance to see her show, I did check out her website.  I love the embroidered song lyrics, especially the “Buffalo Stance”!  (We taught Mogs how to do the Buffalo Stance pretty early on…I think it may be her one and only official dance move.) 

 

• My sister-in-law had an essay printed in Threads magazine during April.  She wrote about making all of her daughter’s clothes and a mishap with a black crayon left in a pocket.  What I love about the article, besides seeing everyone’s name in print, is the resourcefulness she is teaching her kids…not just in learning to sew, but in working with what they already have.  I really think that is the foundation of creativity.  Her kids are so lucky to grow up in such a positive atmosphere!

 

• Speaking of creativity, I recently checked out the book Art and Fear.  I had a copy years ago and sold it at one point or another.  I regret doing so as it is a wonderful look at the creative process and how to overcome the obstacles that cause so many creative people to give up creating.  One lesson in the book that I think about all the time is the “correspondence between imagination and execution.”  When I think up a project, I can see the final piece so clearly.  It is only when I begin working on a quilt or drawing that I see how my quilting or drawing skills are more grounded in reality.  “Vision is always ahead of execution–and it should be,” writes the author.  I think it is so easy to give something up when we can’t get it just the way we want it.  The idea this book suggests is to see this dissatisfaction as an incentive to improve your skills for the next project, rather than becoming an excuse to quit.  This simple twist in thinking has made all the difference to me when faced with just how much I don’t know about embroidery and quilting.  Yep, I really dig this book.