Creating Under Duress: What’s the Difference Between Creating Because You Want To or You Have To

I love to quilt. I see something and it just inspires me to create it in fabric, to bring together different colors, textures and patterns with uneven hand-quilting to bring up details and contours. My quilts never look exactly like what I initially saw to inspire me; they take on their own identity through the creation process and I happily let that happen, too.

Sometimes, I quilt because I haven’t done it in a while, and then I ponder a bit to get started.  Typically that doesn’t take long, since I love to quilt.  Other times, I will see or imagine one thing after another, and quilts just flow into existence.  At no time do I have a timetable on a quilt; each one sets its own schedule.  It is just pure joy to work in this manner – no deadlines, no pressure, just do it for the sake of doing it.

But…

We recently suffered a disaster.  A laundromat dryer, set on 10 minutes at the coolest heat setting to take the dampness out of 11 quilts (my other quilts, most of my comforters and all of my table linens were in a separate, identically set dryer), broiled them on high heat, melted the batting and permanently ruined all of them.  I am still teary just thinking about it.  Certainly there’s the financial loss to my shop, but that comes far behind the devastation I feel for the hours and hours of love that went into each and every one.

And here’s the predicament…  I have a total of three quilts in inventory.  I have three shows over five weeks time seven weeks from now.  For the first time, I am forced to create, to produce more quilts not because I am inspired, but because I need quilts to display.

A Whole Different Process

A full five days ago I got out all of my printed quilt fabrics.  I sorted them into pieces that could be quilt backs, chunks that could be cut into shapes (which I also put into color groups), and tiny scraps that might or might not be usable.  This activity took the better part of two hours.  My idea is that I want to do as much as possible without buying anything.

But here’s the problem…  nothing has changed in five days.  The piles of fabric haven’t been touched or moved.  I simply don’t know where to begin.  Do I attempt to recreate what I had?  Or do I look for new inspiration?  Do I shoot for three or four larger pieces, or a larger number of smaller pieces?  If I opt for smaller, what are they?

Creating Under Duress

Creating under duress is a whole different thing than doing it for the love of doing it.  It requires discipline and deadlines.  It mandates that the love factor be placed on the back-burner in favor of production.  It’s “just do it” time, whether you want to or not.

It remains to be seen whether what I ‘create’ in the next 7 weeks has the feeling of what I had before.  This is so different………..

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