Monday, August 25, 2008

The Shopping, errr Creating Process

Okay kids. The project in the works right now is one that I hope to enter in a competition this year. The deadline is December 31, so I have a few months to make this happen.

The competition is one that involves a theme and a challenge fabric, which means that there is one fabric that I am required to use; I can use any number of other fabrics with it. So, I've chosen a picture for inspiration, and off I've gone!

The more I contemplate this goal, the more I think about how to actually achieve it, the more I realize that I'm embarking on a journey that will, at the very least, expand my comfort zone and push me to another level. My bag of tricks is getting bigger as we speak.

In the meantime, I'm still in the planning stages, where I'm trying to find the pieces of the puzzle that I'll need to bring the picture together. This weekend, I was in Baltimore for a wedding, and took the opportunity to scope out a few quilt shops in Maryland. On this adventure, it struck me how organic and nonlinear the creative process is. All it takes is looking differently at one thing, before doors are opened, and you've changed the scope of your search.

Case in point: I was struggling with how I was going to depict the grass in the foreground of this particular picture. One of the things I love about the scene is that the perspective creates a huge contrast between foreground grass and background grass. This grass in the foreground is long, straight, and very defined. I was finding it impossible to find grass like this anywhere...or even a pattern that would double for it. But then, I looked over at a fabric this weekend with fern leaves and butterflies, and saw it. The pattern I was looking for all along, in leaves, not grass. Now I'm looking all over for fern leaves that are not ridden with butterflies.

It's like that with everything...you never know where you'll end up, but sometimes I think finding your way there is the most fun. And a key component to the creative process.