Well, anybody who has been paying attention will realize my personal work has stalled a bit the last
couple of years. I normally would whine and apologized and be racked with some good ole fashion guilty but ya know what??? I've decided to be kind to myself. In the old days, it wasn't unusual to hear about middle age women having "nervous breakdowns" or empty nest syndrome or their husbands leaving them for a younger woman. At 54, none of that has happened to me. I've just had a bit of a creative pause. Even with that, I still feel creative but I just haven't done anything about it. I think in 30 yrs of being a quilter, it's okay to take a pause.But with my studio just begging to be used, it was easy to jump back. I decided though to finish up the two biggest projects I have going...
2016 Block of the Month Quilt and my Hell Freezes Over Pinwheel Quilt. So this week I worked on both. That pinwheels is still giving me fits on what layout it will be but I do know that I need more dark-dark for the layout I thought I wanted. Now that I look at it......I don't know......I really need to make visual decisions visually and get them up on the board. It just take FOREVER to lay them out that way....not to mention looking up and down and up and down makes me sea sick (pathetic inner ear - lol). But its a great project to listen to a book and work by hand in the air conditioning.My studio (without air) had me doing the next month on the block of the month quilt. It's getting bigger and bigger!!
With that, work this week, reminded everyone that we haven't been taking time off enough since most vacations where cancelled....so I'm taking their advice and taking a few long weekends and try to get some of this stuff done. While doing that I'll keep my eye on my next big project....
So What Have Been Working Creatively?
4 comments:
Congrats on jumping back in, it feel good right? Thank you for the linky party.
sometimes we do loose interest in what we are doing have a "block" it is just time off for a little bit and our creative juices come back
NIna be kind to yourself….yes, yes. I don’t know any of my quilter pals who aren’t struggling right now…esp. now….your creativity and desire for it will return….it’s like having one’s house on the market. When you least expect it, an offer comes in.
Middle aged women having nervous breakdowns... That's interesting; I need to think about that! It makes sense, for sure, in earlier eras where women's entire sense of purpose and worth was rooted in child rearing. Once the kids were out of the house and independent, it's understandable that many women would face an existential crisis. These days, what I'm seeing is an outright denial of aging/mortality in our culture for middle aged women. Remember the recent fuss about Jennifer Lopez, 50 years old and half naked on the stripper pole at the Superbowl half time show? The weird thing to me was how everyone was talking about this like it was emblematic of empowerment for women. I felt like, "Really? When will I FINALLY get old enough that I don't feel pressured to live up to unrealistic beauty standards anymore?! How old does a woman need to be in order to age out of Sex Object and just be a PERSON?!" Anyway, I'm glad you're getting some of your "sewjo" back again. It's easy to fall into that comparison trap in social media, where it seems like all the other quilters are so much more productive. i feel that, too. We just have to remind ourselves that our art and our craft is for our own enjoyment. When you feel like doing it, you will, and when you don't feel like doing it, you don't have to!
Post a Comment