Teaching Philosophy

I feel successful when I teach people:

- to see what they look at!

- that it is ok to be different!

- to open a whole new world of creativity for them....

- that there is a solution for every problem (mostly with a quick-unpick!)

- that it is a joy to be creative......


The Creative Mind Plays with the Object it Loves -
Carl Jung














Saturday 25 May 2013

Passion for the Creative Process...

I am slowly catching my breath and touching down on mother earth after a marathon quilting session, hence the silence....  

We all make quilts for different reasons.    Some quilters get pleasure by stroking fabric, some working on a huge stash of UFO's, others by making as many quilts as possible and then suckers like me, who have this crazy passion to push the boundaries all the time...

The creative process can be very lonely as one often battle against ideas not working, fatigue and fast approaching deadlines.... When does patience become stubbornness not to give up?    Two words with such different meanings, yet so close in a way...    During the past two months, I again realized how passionate I am about the creative process.    It is an emotion which I cannot really describe, it is very spiritual and takes me on a journey of intense focus and discovery...    The amazing thing is that while I'm in this creative mode, concepts and ideas just flow and I am the privileged one to execute all of this...    It is extremely exciting and the deeper I'm drawn into a piece, the more I switch into an autopilot mode where I can work very long hours, make do with little sleep and work with intense concentration...    It makes me feel so alive...   When it is done, I instinctively know it is finished...  

Working to deadlines provide me with lots of thinking time about what, why and how I do things, the processes which I follow etc...    It is like solitary confinement, just me and my thoughts.    This time around I again realized how difficult it is to estimate "production" time for a creative piece.   It is fairly easy to calculate how long it will take to make a traditional style quilt top.    Not so easy with creative pieces as one has no pattern and no instructions...   Finding your own path, often stumbling as not all ideas work which can be very frustrating and wasteful of precious time...    A successful piece will embrace all the different design elements in harmonious unity like all the music instruments in an orchestra - nothing out of sync...    It sometimes is a long journey to find that harmonious unity in a piece...    Lots of patience and time are needed to do creative pieces as it is a process, one cannot rush it as it develops over time.  

This piece below was pinned onto my design wall for about 14 months before I stitched it....    It just came to me one day how to stitch it and I am so glad that I did not rush into it as I was so pleased with the outcome - completely different to what I initially envisaged...  

Part of a quilt which I will share at a later stage....

As my latest work is for a competition, I cannot share it yet.   I will gladly do so in July....  

Enjoy the creative process....    It is so special...