A Different Approach to Creativity

The sashing on the Sunbonnet Sue top is mostly quilted. I’ll finish the sashing today and quilt the borders tomorrow. We are supposed to get a big storm tomorrow night:

We are “in the mountains,” so it’s quite possible we’ll get dumped on. And this looks like a back door cold front with high winds.

The sashing design required some thought. I had it in my head that the blocks were 12” square. They were, before I put them into the quilt. Finished, they are 11-1/2” because the seams are 1/4” on all sides. I didn’t want to trim them down any further and risk losing space around the appliqués. When it came time to quilt the sashing, though, I realized that none of my quilting ruler motifs would fit evenly into that 11-1/2”. Sometimes it’s possible to fudge things a bit because the human brain will smooth out any tiny discrepancies, but I didn’t see an easy way to do that without ending up with partial motifs in places.

I have always had terrible spatial perception. I have a lot of trouble visualizing things in my brain. In some ways, it feels a bit like being head-blind. We used to take aptitude tests in school where some of the questions involved looking at a two-dimensional drawing, with dotted lines, and we were supposed to “fold” the drawing and predict the shape of the object. Fail.

I’m much better at this than I used to be, which is a testament to the plasticity of the human brain. (And, apparently, to how stubborn I am.) The turning point seemed to be when I had to force myself to learn to read knitting charts. There was a time, back in the early 1990s, when all the magazines wanted to transition to chart-only patterns. I wanted so desperately to knit a vest pattern from Vogue Knitting, but it had a five-stitch, four-row chart. (That sounds so simple now…) The key to reading a knitting chart is to know that the symbols show the stitch as it appears on the public side of the work. Thus, when working back and forth, every other row has to be translated. If the chart shows a knit stitch, it has to be worked as a purl and vice-versa.

Some of you out there are probably saying, “That’s not hard!” but it was for me. I persevered until I had figured it out and knitted the vest. And then, just for fun, I went on and designed complicated cabled sweaters with intricate charts. The husband always says that he thinks it is interesting that I have picked hobbies which challenge my lack of innate ability. Really, though, where is the fun in something easy?

Because of what I saw as a deficiency in processing, I always assumed that I was missing that “thing” that enabled one to be creative. Creative people see things in their heads and bring them into being, like Sunnie, who paints beautiful pictures. The husband can look at a set of plans and know what the finished house will look like. My friend Ginger comes up with an idea and brings it to life in the form of visuals in our sanctuary. I could never “see” the thing that I wanted to make. Drawing? I can’t do much more than stick figures.

[Interestingly, I cannot play music by ear. Transposing is difficult for me, too.]

One of my art teachers, in middle school, said something one time that has stuck with me. She said that art can be considered as a problem to be solved. I can solve problems! I love algebra. Maybe I could approach creativity as a problem to be solved rather than a fully-formed idea that springs from my brain.

This was the problem: I had blocks that were an odd size, such that I either had to quilt the sashings freehand, without rulers, or I had to figure out some way to fit a pattern into that space. I don’t like to quilt freehand. It feels too much like drawing to me. I like quilting with rulers.

One of the tricks quilters use is to work from the center out. I do this when quilting borders. I’ve got a center-zero tape measure that allows me to identify the center point of a long stretch of fabric. I’ll position the motif so that it either straddles that center point or starts next to it—depending on how the math works out—and go from there. Any partial motifs end up at the sides where they won’t be so noticeable.

This is what I came up with. I’m showing you a line drawing I made up in Illustrator because I’m quilting in a thread color that blends into the sashing print and a photo won’t show this as well:

Imagine that those ovals are diamonds and the stars are hearts. I found the one diamond ruler in my collection that fit well into the sashing space. I marked the center point of the sashing along each square, then positioned the diamonds—there are six—so they split evenly on either side of that center point. I quilted a heart in each cornerstone.

[Someone out there just read this blog post and thought that the solution was blindingly obvious. If that is you, congratulations. Your brain works differently than mine. I have to analyze and dissect and think through a problem before I come up with a solution.]

In any case, I am happy with the way the sashing looks. I am still thinking about how to quilt the border. The border is 8” wide, so I could do something dramatic, like feathers—I have feather rulers—but I’m not wedded to that idea. After I finish the sashing, I’ll go through my collection of rulers and see what might work.

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I’ve got two Laundry Day Tees cut out—one of which is the fruit and veggie fabric—two baby quilt tops assembled, and two more baby quilts cut out. Next week is mostly clear until Friday, when I am teaching a Renee Pants class. After I get this Sunbonnet Sue quilt done, I’ll quilt the baby quilts and put those two LDTs together. We’re also starting choir practice this week. If you are local and want to sing for Lent and Easter, feel free to join us at the Mennonite Church on Wednesday night at 6:15.