As a quilter, you’ve embraced your creativity. You love making things with fabric, using your hands and brain and celebrating the personalisation that is handmade in a mass-produced world. You identify as a creative, and you’re already a step ahead of the majority of the adult population, who left creative pursuits behind when adulting took hold, or even way before that.

Go, you!! You’re starting from a great place. But stop for a moment and think about it, hard and honestly. Sure, you’ve embraced your creativity, but are you stuck in a creative rut? Have you grown as a quilter lately? Or is fear preventing you from growing creatively and stepping out of your creative comfort zone?

The thing is, quilting has quite a steep learning curve, but once you master the basics, it’s not rocket science. When you learn the fundamentals – accurate ¼” seams, precision piecing, correct pressing techniques, how to sandwich, quilt and bind a quilt – you’re well on your way. These basics become muscle memory and you have the skills to make virtually any pattern out there. You can happily go through your quilty life making pretty quilts using the basic skillset you’ve learnt. And that’s fine, and if this is where you want to go with your quilting for the rest of your days, then go ahead and embrace it and stop reading this article. But if you feel like there might be more, read on to discover ways to get out of that creative rut.

Face Failure

We understand – theoretically – that experimentation, trial and error and learning from doing is how we grow and unlock new levels of creativity. But with trying new things comes the inevitability of failure. If you try a new technique, there will be wonky seams, wasted fabric, blocks that don’t line up, and unpicking. You might pour your heart and soul into something to realise it can’t be used for its intended purpose, or that it’s hideously ugly. You’ll probably ruin materials and waste resources as you go. If you’re time poor, spending time on something that might not even work seems counter-intuitive. Yes, it’s easier to stick with what you know. Pick up a pattern, a stack of coordinating fabrics, and just sew, knowing you’re guaranteed a good result. But that won’t make you grow artistically. You need to be willing to face messing up as you try new things.

Be a Beginner

If you’re an intermediate quilter with those basic skills down pat, it’s hard to go back to beginner status. But if you want to master new skills, you must start at the beginning. You have to be prepared to fail, unpick, have sloppy stitches and generally mess up. As uncomfortable as this is, it’s an important part of any creative process.

Ask the Experts

Learning new things is daunting. One of the most effective ways to learn something new is to take a class. What are you interested in that is also completely terrifying? Free motion quilting? Foundation paper piecing? Hand-dyeing? Improv quilting? Landscape quilting? Sure, you can learn any of these things on your own, through magazines, books and videos, but a great way to accelerate your skills is to go straight to an expert. They’ll be able to provide you with the tools and materials you require for that first project. They’ll also have insider advice and be able to teach you how to do things. Once you have the fundamental skills, you can decide if it’s something you want to pursue further and you can add to those basic skills through self-teaching

Seek Inspiration

We’re all inspired by the world around us – whether it’s the work of others, or the natural and built world, or a combination of things. Start being mindful about what inspires you and curate the creative input you get from others. Don’t just follow the most popular quilters on social media. Seek out other quilters whose work you adore – and ask yourself what it is you love about it. Is it their use of colour? Or a specific technique they employ? Are they pushing the boundaries in their techniques? Do you want to learn the skills they use?

Also seek out other creatives. Just because your focus is quilting, doesn’t mean that has to be the sole source of your inspiration. Follow crocheters, embroiderers, photographers, painters, sketchers, cake decorators, knitters and gardeners. Visit travel or geography pages and seek inspiration in nature and architecture. Don’t just mindlessly scroll. As you’re cruising Instagram or Pinterest looking for creative inspiration(or just to pass the time), take notes.

Try Something New

You’re a quilter, sure. And quilting might always be your first creative love. But that doesn’t mean it has to be your only creative pursuit. Just like there is inspiration in admiring other mediums, there’s huge value in having more than one creative passion.

Try other things. They can be textile related, like embroidery or garment making or bag making. Perhaps crochet, macrame, knitting or jewellery making is more your style? Or try the ‘home arts’ like cooking, baking, cake decorating, gardening or preserving. Or delved into different creative mediums with painting, writing, screenprinting, film making, drawing, wood turning… anything goes. There are a million ways to be creative and you don’t have to just be a ‘quilter’.

Don’t Overshare

Social media is awesome, but it’s also a lot about content creation. Be okay with not having the content out there. While you’re in learning-new-things-and-making-beautiful-mistakes mode, don’t feel like you have to put it out there. Keep it private so that you can play and grow without outside influence. Yes, it is important to critique your own work and decide what worked and what didn’t, but you don’t need to share every single mistake and failure with the whole internet.

Of course, share if you want to; and when you hit a creative breakthrough, shout if from the rooftops. Share your messy moments with your closest, most trusted friends. And we’re not saying that everything on social media has to be ‘instagram-worthy’ perfect so your failures or test runs aren’t good enough, we’re just saying that give yourself grace to make messy mistakes privately without feeling like you have to share everything.

Elevate Your Current Style

I know some of you are thinking that you’re perfectly happy where you are. You’ve got a style you love, making quilts you love… why should
you change? That’s fine, and if you don’t want to change anything up, then stay you! But you can still push yourself creatively and stay true to your style or brand. For the next quilt you make, I challenge you to slow down and ponder each step of the process. If you’ve designed it yourself, is the design the best it can be? Or can you push it to the next level? As you’re piecing, is it as accurate, well-pressed and perfectly produced as it can be? As you’re quilting it, can you take a bit more time, change the thread colours, or alter the design to make the quilting even better? Is the binding the best choice, or could you change it up to really make the quilt pop?

How does one go from being an intermediate quilter to one of the best in the field? It’s perfecting these little things at every step that will elevate your quilting. They take time, care and precision, but they will make you a better quilter, if you want to go down that path.

This is an extract from Getting Out of Your Creative Comfort Zone-Facing Fear and Growing as a Quilter by Jane Kelly. Read the full article in Make Modern Issue #50.

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