For years we heard the phrase “you can’t force creativity”. Well, I am going to challenge that today.
When you were in school, did you ever have to take classes that you hated? Of course you did. You even had to take classes that you weren’t good at. Well, unfortunately sometimes education is wasted on the very young. I have found myself saying that time and time again.
I hold a BSN. So, I have a bachelor’s in nursing. I was fortunate to love nursing from the minute I went to school. But the gen-eds, not so much. Math wasn’t my strong suit. But, I did find that by taking math classes it forced my brain to think in a certain way. When you take science classes it forces you to think in a certain way. At first, it comes hard. Real hard. But then, you are suddenly thinking that way. You can actually feel your brain start to change.
Let me try another analogy. Have you ever noticed that when you get a car of a certain type, you suddenly notice everyone else’s cars that are just like yours? Or, how about dogs, if you don’t have a car. If you have a Golden Retriever, chances are you are noticing all of the Golden Retrievers around you.
Well, creativity can be the same way. I remember when my quilty bff and I were making bug jar quilts, years ago. All we could see and collect were bug fabrics, and it was hard, even when we finished our quilts, to stop looking at it and for it. Where on earth is she going with this you wonder? Well, if you only think of using whites and off whites as background fabrics, that is all you’re going to see, and that is as far as your imagination will take you. Force yourself to do something completely different. Use a print with a dark background as your background fabric and a light solid as your foreground. It will force you to think differently.
Start drawing things on paper. Get some graph paper out and start deconstructing blocks into different parts and pieces. This will force you to think differently. (More on this topic later.)
What I am going to ask you to do is to think about using stripes in a different way. Use stripes as your foreground blocks, or use them as your background. Use them just like you would use any other print. Force yourself to think in a completely different way. This will develop the brain cells in your brain that look at things from a different perspective and you will find yourself doing that more and more.
Here is my example of doing just that.
Here I am playing with stripes as a background and I have taken the colors of the stripes and brought the solids to the foreground as a fade in type of technique for the blocks. This will eventually be an entire houndstooth pattern but it will be a completely different concept.
Watch my progress and start playing on your own.
