It couldn't have gone far!

Something happened these past few weeks, I lost my creative mojo. I cannot put my finger on exactly what happened, or when it happened, but it did. There’s a conversation in an episode of my favorite show ever, The West Wing, where two speech writers are talking about losing their talent. One of them says to the other something along the lines of: It must be in the building, it couldn’t have gone far. That’s what I felt: that my talent, my inspiration, my love for making had flown the coop.

I wandered back into my sewing room a few times to survey the scene, and it wasn’t pretty. Well that’s just it, it was pretty. It was clean and organized and all ‘put together’. It was not at all what I am used to with WIPs strewn across every possible surface and scraps from my last 2 or 3 or sometimes even 4 last projects littering the ground. There was nothing. No life. So that’s where it stayed.

So I’ve spent a lot of time working my day job at night, sleeping, reading great books, sleeping some more and generally feeling pretty glum. Until finally I just said enough is enough. The next CFLMQG meeting is right around the corner and I need to get a few projects done for that, so as much as I hate forcing myself to be creative, I did.

I started working on a nametag….

FAIL.

I tried again…

FAIL.

One more time because third times a charm….

FAIL.

I threw that aside and tried working on the BAM-BOM that we are participating in….

FAIL.

Nothing was coming together. Nothing was working. I actually cried. I was officially pathetic. I was forcing the fabric to go together and look like it “should”, which is not what I do or have ever done. I do what I want. I sew what I want. I don’t follow directions well, and I hate to measure and be precise. As these thoughts drifted back into my mind that’s what I decided to do (or not do).

So I grabbed a pile of solids and randomly cut some squares and strips and went to town. There wasn’t a plan, there wasn’t a size, and there was nothing in mind. I just needed to sit behind my machine, blast some Dinosaur Jr. and drift away. So that’s what I did.

Then it happened. Slowly (very slowly) by surely my creative mojo came back. I sliced and stitched and sliced and stitched late into the night Friday, and these wonky little haphazard blocks that emerged made me smile.



As I laid them out on my ‘Design Floor’ I realized I had stitched myself up quite a puzzle. No worries. I grabbed the pile and threw them next to my machine and just started piecing them into larger blocks. Once I had it down to about 6 sections I went back to the floor, sorted out the mess and got the final layout. A few quick passes through my machine and I ended up with 30 inches perfectly square. Exactly.



I have only started to quilt it, but that’s ok. This is my creative mojo wrapped up into one project and I will cherish this more than any other beautifully precise masterpiece I have ever made.