Reclaiming Creative Time

How does a person reclaim their personal creativity?  Elizabeth has felt like she has been in a creative void for nearly all of 2016.  Early in the year, her mother died after a short illness, and her employer was generous in giving her the time to travel over 1000 miles away for several weeks at a time to tend to her mother and then to have a memorial service.  The only creative endeavors she was able to squeeze in were a class to learn how to use the machine embroidery functions on her one year old BabyLock Destiny sewing machine, a VCQ workshop and the VCQ Celebration weekend.  The rest of the spring season was one giant blur.  

Summer came with the yearly chore of packing up her classroom and heading off to the family’s summer house in New Hampshire where an August wedding was planned for her son and his finance.  With the support of friends and family, she spent many hours preparing for the wedding and getting the property ready for guests.  Frankly, she was glad that the time line was relatively short since she can’t imagine spending a year or more planning and prepping for a wedding like some modern day brides do.

Although she took along her sewing machine, dyeing supplies, and her thermofax screens, she was able to get very little creative work done over the summer months.  Once back in Virginia, life was back to the annual tasks of setting up a new classroom and getting the school year started with a new schedule in a new room.

So, by the end of September she had given herself a good old fashioned talking to and decided she needed to get back to her machine embroidery and other creative pursuits.  She took a class at Artistic Artifacts, taught by Sue, where she made a fat-quarter pop-up from The Fat Quarter Gypsy.  She used hand dyed fabric which had been screened with PGFiber2Art’s crackle screen.  Time to use up some of this stash!  

A few weeks later she and Sue taught Printing with Thermofax Screens at Artistic Artifacts and set up a class on January 21, 2017 to teach how to make your own screens using Photoshop Elements.   She wrote a proposal to offer an Open Studio thermofax printing day also at the store.  We'll let you know when this is scheduled.  Perhaps, some of you will be able to come and use our screens and print away for an entire day?  Another creative endeavor was this sun print with a Thermofax screened tree for Halloween.

One weekend she went to Richmond to upgrade her “Super Baby” with all the new software Babylock has developed. This weekend she is attending an all-day embroidery party for Anita Goodesign products.  Let’s hope it gets her out of this funk!  The next creative inspiration will be a workshop at the November VCQ meeting in Martinsville, along with viewing The Art of the Quilt exhibit at the Piedmont Arts Center.

In the meantime, Super Baby has been churning out some fall mug rugs from Kreative Kiwi Embroidery.     

So, bit by bit Elizabeth is getting her creative groove back!  We will be participating in the Artistic Artifacts open house/handmade sale on December 3 where we'll have some screen printed scarves, wall art, mug rugs and other items for sale.  Come see us!