Most of my life I have thought I lacked creativity, largely because I stitch instead of paint. All too often folks dismiss needlepoint as Painting by numbers” or “something my grandmother did” and decide it isn’t as creative as what ever the craft du jour is at the moment.
But that doesn’t make them right. It just means that we march to a different drum, which isn’t so bad.
These days our needlepoint pretty much screams for our creative input. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 60’s my grandmother tried needlepoint. This was the couturier-quality seamstress and demon knitter who got bolt ends from tailors and made magic. What was the needlepoint she could pick — a fill-in-the-background muddy floral. The grand sum total of creativity here was the choice of background color, at best.
No wonder she never finished it.
Today we pick out our canvas or charted project. We decide the threads we want. We might change colors. We pick stitches and our techniques. We decide about embellishments and finishing. Each time we do one of these things we exercise our creativity.
When we do any of these things we grow our brains a little bit.
Even so, we may not feel very creative — I know I don’t. I look for books about creativity and almost always I am disappointed. They suggest doing things I don’t do: painting a small painting or making something out of wood. These exercises may work for some folks, but not for me — I am a needlepointer.
Needlepoint constrains me in many ways. I’m not a turbo stitcher, I can’t stitch a needlepoint a day. I have a stash full of projects, I’n not going to design a canvas to stitch later each day, or even once a week. Of course that’s laying aside my poor drawing skills. The books I find on creativity exercises don’t work for people like me — or so I thought.
That is until I came upon a little book that is coming out in May, Your Idea Starts Here, that is amazing. I’m blown away by it (full disclosure I got an advance copy for review, but I’ve pre-ordered it.) I love it because it’s the first creativity book I’ve come across that doesn’t want me to be something (or many things) I’m not. I could be a woodworker, a stitcher, or even a computer programmer and benefit from this book.
There are 75 ideas here, each of which could be applied to any endeavor. For example #59 is “Try it on.” The suggestion is to try something for a day or two to see how it works. If it doesn’t throw it out and move on. Think how this could be applied to needlepoint. Perhaps you want to conquer your fear of couching. Find a canvas where this technique will work, even if it’s a small area. Gather your threads and try it.
Did you like it? Great — now you’ve added a new technique.
Are you neutral about it? Plan to try it again someday or plan a new piece that features it soon.
Did you hate it? Try to think of techniques you know or could learn to replace it: a stitch, needlefelting, appliqueing a fabric.
Whatever your answer is you’ve accomplished three things. First, you’ve given yourself permission to stop doing something. Second, you have been creative and expanded your possibilities by trying something new. Third, you have opened yourself to new ways of using what you know and what you’ve learned.
See why I love this book? It shows how we all can be creative no matter how unskilled we might feel.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
Pam crone says
Would love to know how you used the Inkodye and what you thought of the results. I have been reading about this product for quite a while but dismissed it as not being suitable for canvas because of the coating on it and I need something I can use directly on to the canvas rather than as a transfer agent.
Would like some comments. Pam
Janet M Perry says
There’s lots of information about using these dyes on the Dharma Trading Company site. I’ll do a post aboput using it soon.
Keep stitching,
Janet