The other day I came upon a half hour talk by John Cleese about Creativity it is on You Tube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg - this is the link if you want to take a listen, too.) but first finish reading here, then go listen to big John...
One of the points in his speech was about PONDERING. Do you use this exercise when you are working on a project? I have done this type of thought process for years without realizing that I was doing it. I use PONDERING not only to be creative with my quilting, but for most everything in my life! I ponder about juggling finances to include paying for brakes on the car. I ponder about how to rearrange my living room to fit in my treadmill - it is currently on the balcony but the cooler winter air means it needs to be brought inside. I ponder about what combination of meat, starch and veggies to put together for our supper each and every day!
For sometime now -- getting into the triple months of pondering - is a project for a machine applique class I will be teaching in February. I have thought this would be a fairly small project but I added to the criteria of its creation, that it should also be useful and maybe even displayable at a future quilt show... so it has taken quite a lot of pondering. It went from "going to be" a Door Quilt that was blocks with sashing, to being a Bed Runner with neutrals background, to back to being a Door Quilt with that neutrals background...
Currently thown on top of a pile of stuff while it waits (already quilted) for the new, brighter dresden plate pieces to be sewn
As you see, the cuts for the dresdens are still quite floral but the colours of each piece is quite a bit brighter or more strongly coloured. The first dresdens to the left and the new on the right in the above photo.
Another project that I am working on and pondering about is Christmas themed Quilt blocks -- these blocks when done will go into my Etsy shop for sale so that someone else can more easily create something for christmas.
A different sort of project that I have been pondering is "what is the next step" for this coptic bound book. I have mentioned before that my hubby gets brown paper wrap by the carful every week because of his delivery job and I want to use that brown paper to make something.
So I listened to a couple of videos on You Tube and learned to do coptic binding. Now I want to add some fabric and texture to make that black cardstock 'arty'... Soon, I will get to it soon as the pondering of an arty cover has almost reached a complete idea!
One of the other things that John Cleese says in the video about pondering is that some people are quite lazy about it. He means that they will latch on to the first solution and go with that, but other people keep on pondering until they reach that even better idea. I think I am mostly a lazy ponderer, but I am going to make an effort to struggle through and ponder about it until I hit on an even better idea!
Now, go take a look at John Cleese's talk about creativity.
I am linking up with the Needle and Thread Network today.
