Celebrating 5 Years!!!

This week marks my fifth year of writing this blog. 

It hardly seems possible!

Confetti for Captain Klementz, 2017

My first posts centered around a series of wall hangings I made from my father's neckties in 2017. For the first couple of quilts I used traditional patterns. Then I was left with a pile of silk remnants and this quilt was created, - even the necktie designer's labels were incorporated. 

Somehow this became a pivotal moment; it felt like there had been a shift in how I thought about quilting. This was a quilt I would consider displaying as art. The whole process was energizing. 

A desire to share this experience and what I had learned started to grow, and more ideas about creativity came to mind. After much debating with myself, and asking everybody else for their opinions, I finally took the plunge. This blog was started with the goal of fostering and inspiring creativity. I decided to be as consistent as possible in posting every week. In 5 years I missed 7 weeks, (all within the last 7 months, not great, but fixable.) Best to look at the average, right? Overall it's a satisfying personal accomplishment and the discipline of maintaining this commitment has been very good for me. 

I'm well aware that there's plenty of room for growth in how I articulate insights and ideas, but the biggest challenge is "generating content." For instance, it was much easier to think of topics before activities were curtailed by a world-wide pandemic! My hope has been that even a simple quote or observation can be food for thought, nourishing the creative process. 

Through this activity, a reoccurring, common sense lesson has reinforced itself in my consciousness: there's no progress without lots & lots of practice. Devoting the time to sit down and formulate ideas has refined my writing skills. There have been countless times when all I had was the germ of a concept, and no idea how or what to write about it. I've had to learn to let the prose naturally evolve.  And many times I've surprised myself with how a post comes together. That's exciting enough to keep going!

In addition, I have branched out to include an Instagram account with the same name: @creativelifesampler. I've found that this visual medium complements my blog. Blogging allows me to "talk" more about the short, quick posts that accompany a photo on Instagram. 

When I think of how reticent I was to do any of this, I'm amazed at how far I've come as an artist/quilter, how much more comfortable I am in verbalizing ideas, and especially with how technology has become less intimidating. I can't help wonder what might be next. I hope you'll stick with me to see where all this goes. 

I also encourage you to look through the archive and label tabs in the side bar of this blog to trace themes and get some encouragement for your own creative journey.