Creativity and Chaos

There is something very satisfying about turning chaos into order.  Taking rough materials and turning them into something beautiful, making something from apparently nothing.   The problem is, you have to have the chaos first.  Every project begins with a mess.  It doesn’t matter how neat you are, there is no way of avoiding it.  It’s like when you clean, you have to make things dirtier before you can make things cleaner.  Quilting works the same way.  I have had many costumers, and even some co-workers, apologies for making a mess in the shop.  Yet I have yet to figure out a better way of doing it.  Sometimes you have to pull every bolt off the shelves before you find the one that you really need.

I will admit that I thrive on a certain degree of chaos, much to the displeasure of my neater roommates; though even my roommate had the same problem when she attempted to sew a dress.  (She didn’t fail, she just hasn’t finished yet.)  As tidy as she is, for some time there was a pile of fabric and pattern pieces in the corner.

Creativity needs chaos.  You have to be able to let yourself make a mess.  There is an old saying that says an immaculate home is a sign of a misspent childhood.  Just as kids need to be free to make a mess sometimes, so do quilters.  There is a freedom `in mess making.  There is a joy in chaos.  There has to be freedom and joy in order to create: freedom to explore, freedom to make mistakes, and freedom to make a mess.

Cookies and Cream

In the new Oreo advertisements there is an ongoing debate about which is the better part of the Oreo, the cookie or the cream.  Of course everyone has their own favorite part and their own opinion on which is best.  My nephew however was able to cut through the chatter and debate with a piece of wisdom that can only come from a child: Both.  The question isn’t cookie or cream, it has to be cookie and cream.  Neither of them is really as good on its own.  The cookie by itself is too bland, the cream is too sweet.  Only when the two come together do we have that classic cookie loved for generations.

This same concept can be used in quilting as well.  There needs to be contrast, light and dark, in every quilt.  True, some quilts will have more contrast than others, but there are still lights, mediums and darks.  Not only does this make the patterns stand out, but it adds interest.  A quilt made only of one color, one hue, and one shade, would not be very interesting to look at, no matter how well the quilt has been pieced.  You need contrast.

In Life we must take the sweet with the sour, the light with the dark, and the good with the bad.  Though sometimes we may wish for a life of more calm tranquility, where things don’t go wrong, shirts don’t get stained, glasses never break, and hearts are never hurt.  But this would be like having just cream with no cookie.  And I think we all know that can only lead to a sticky sweet mess.  Just as we need the light to help us through the times of darkness, we need the darkness to truly appreciate the times of light.  After all, life is like a roller-coaster, without ups and downs, it’s just boring.

Shop Hop and Sesame Street

Over the last few weeks our shop has been participating in something called Shop Hop.  If you are not familiar with Shop Hop, I can only described it as a quilter’s Black Friday sale stretched over two weeks and twelve shops with games and drawings and giveaways and prizes.  It’s crazy, but fun.  What strikes me most about shop hop is how all these different shops can come together and cooperate in a common aim.  This would be almost unheard of in other stores.  One would hardly expect Wal-Mart, K-mart and Target to come together for one massive sale, even on Black Friday.  There is too much competition for there to be any cooperation.

This may be a result of being raised on Sesame Street, but I have often wondered if the spirit of cooperation is more effective then the spirit of competition.  Granted, competition has its place.  It can inspire us to heights that we may not aspire to otherwise.  It’s great to want to do better and it’s great when another person’s successes inspire us to do just that.  The problem comes when we start to mistake those we compete with as an enemy.  This is one reason I have such a hard time with politics.  I can’t help thinking more could get done if politicians spent less time demonizing the other party and more time listening to them.  Maybe it is naive of me, but I think more could get done if they had a spirit of cooperation.  Perhaps they could even find solutions rather than problems.

Even if this idea doesn’t work on a national scale, I still think it can on an individual scale.  How much less road rage would there be if we all realized that we are all trying to get from point A to point B?  How much more could we accomplish if we stop seeing other people’s successes as a threat to our own accomplishments?  How much more tolerance and acceptance would there be if we could see that we are all trying to do our best to make it through in this crazy world?  How would it change our own lives if we saw the people around us as allies instead of enemies?  How would that be?  Maybe it isn’t too late for all of us to learn a little from Sesame Street.

The Hope of Spring

I love spring.  When those first daffodils pop up it is like little drops of sunshine peeking out of the recently frozen ground.  After the long, dark, dreary winter, there is nothing quite as sweat as sunshine, green grass, and flowers.  It’s a symbol of hope, new life and new beginnings.  This is something I think all of us need whether we like winter or not (which I don’t).  We all go through periods of time that are dark and dismal whether literal or figurative.  We all need time to start over again.

Quilters love new beginnings, new ideas and new projects.  This is probably why nearly every quilter has an abundance of UFO’s (un-finished objects) littering their workspaces.  There doesn’t seem to be an end of work, only new beginnings.  As with spring, there is a certain amount of hope in the idea that there is always another project on the horizon.  No matter what happens with our last project, we can start over try again or try something new.

I have found that most things come in cycles: winter to spring, night to day, darkness to light, rain to sunshine, sorrow to joy.  This is something I try to remind myself when I’m feeling down or discouraged, the circle will eventually turn and as certain as spring comes after winter, eventually joy will follow pain.  Happiness is sure to come to all of us in our time.  If we focus on the light, the joy and the spring, we can make it through the periods of winter in our lives.

Art of Creation

There is a great joy in creating.  There is a spark, a type of magic that comes from knowing that you made something.  There is a great deal of satisfaction when you look at something that you created and you know that it exists because of you.  This is the feeling I get when I write a story, when I draw a picture (even though I’m not a great artist) and also when I quilt.  There is something magical about taking raw materials (or actual material as the case may be) and turning it in to something beautiful, something unique, something great.

I think that everyone, in one way or another, feels the impulse to create.  Some create paintings or statues.  Others create skyscrapers.  Every Computer program or app had to be created by someone.  Entire worlds are created in the pages of books.  These things were all created by someone with this same desire to make something, build something, invent something.  The desire to take a simple idea and turn it into something real, something that they can share with everyone else, I think is the most incredible and, perhaps, even divine impulse we have. 

Few of us will ever be famous, or powerful, or greatly influential in the grand scheme of things, but we can still do something great, something no one else can do, in our own little corner of the world.  We can leave our mark on the world.  We can create something.