If you think you could never do something …

Exciting win for student!

It’s always wonderful to hear that someone has found success in exhibitions and competitions.

A couple of days ago, the lovely Lois Johnson (Stawell, Australia) messaged to let me know that a thread sketched quilt she’d started in a class with me has won Best in Show at the East Wimmera CWA craft exhibition.

She also exhibited the quilt at the Vic Quilter’s Showcase exhibition.

Many of the students in the class I took in Stawell had little or no experience with either art quilting or free motion thread sketching, but over the course of the day they all designed unique and beautiful pieces.

Some worked from their own inspirational landscape photos, while others—who felt they couldn’t find anything suitable—worked from one of the photos I took along to share that day.

In Lois’s case, she chose my poppy photo (which incidentally I also used to create my Red Poppy quilt and pattern some years back).

However, Lois created a unique interpretation and design from the original photo. The design is all her own work. The inspiration was the photo. She created her own ‘pattern’.

Show off your creativity

Even when students are working from one of my photos, designs or patterns, I encourage them to take the design in whatever direction they want, interpreting as they wish.

To me, this adds their own creative touch of ‘specialness’. Much, much more preferable than simply reproducing a design exactly as shown.

Why slavishly copy a design (unless, I guess, if you absolutely love it the way it is!)?

If it’s practice at a technique you’re after, modifications are still allowed!

Remember my oft-repeated mantra?

There are no rules … [in art quilting, thread sketching, thread painting, or free machine embroidery]

If you look at Lois’s quilt (above) and my Red Poppy quilt (below), many of you will prefer one over the other—they are very different—and yet they are both worked from the same original poppy photo (not shown), and both work well as thread-painted art quilts.

It’s not even obvious that these two designs originated from the same photo.

Lois’s quilt uses a technique of layering fabrics to create the design, with stitch embellishments and thread painting to complete the work.

My quilt uses a different technique—my freestyle stained-glass appliqué technique—with some layering of fabrics; also with stitched embellishments.

Encouraging Originality

Pondering this topic now, as I write, I turned my thoughts back to the days following my post and email on 3 things we can learn from the Impressionists about thread painting, in which I shared my thread painting of Cézanne’s House with Cracked Walls.

After posting this article, emails and messages flooded in—it was wonderful to hear how many people were inspired by the piece, but (I must confess) I was also a touch alarmed at the number of responses from people saying:

Oh, I could never do that! 

Now listen up, people!

Everyone is creative if they just let go of limiting thoughts.

Limiting thoughts—yes, I have them all the time, too. ‘She’s better than me.’ — ‘I could never achieve that level.’ — ‘How did they come up with that idea—amazing!’

The bottom line is—I am no different to any of you. I have been where some of you are now, and I have yet to reach the levels of those I perceive to be ‘better’ than me. (Even the words ‘better than me’, or ‘can’t’ should be banned from the language!).

We all have these thoughts from time to time.

So what I urge you to do is stop comparing: learn from others, by all means; but make sure you DO—CREATE—INTERPRET in whatever-the-heck way you want to!

It’s your creativity. Not someone else’s.

Always strive to take a different angle, explore colours, experiment with layers or 3D. Don’t settle for being the same as everyone else.

So I applaud heartily both Lois’s creativity and her success with her Poppy quilt. It’s gorgeous. She did exactly what I love students to do:

• Have a go
• Believe in themselves
• Learn a technique and use it in a way that suits them

If you think you could never do something … stop saying it. You might just surprise yourself. (Leo Babauta)

Get started in thread sketching with Creative Thread Sketching (the book). A beginner’s guide, packed with tips, techniques and projects for starting out in thread sketching and thread painting.

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