Posted by dravon in Featured, Random Stuff | Comments Off on Creative Confidence
Creative Confidence
It’s been a while since I’ve done a post. I’ll be honest here, like many creatives, I look at what I create and am not happy with what I see. My Inner Critic comes calling even during the planning process, and it just gets louder until all the praise in the world can’t drown out the Inner Critic.
I spent a year and a half teaching classes almost daily and the number one thing I heard over and over again was “I’m afraid of (insert rest of sentence here).” It saddened me greatly that so many wonderfully creative, talented people would be so intimidated by their own imagination and the process of making that vision into a reality. It’s a huge reason why I started this blog, as a way of backing up what I was trying to impart to my students. It’s why I posted mistakes and talked about what I learned during the creation process. It’s why I try to include why a specific technique works as it does or a what a foot does mechanically or any other of the many “whys” or “hows” that I included.
My entire goal, my reason for all of this, has been to encourage people to try. To have faith in themselves. To boldly embrace that creativity and let the chips fall where they may. To just have fun with it.
Every time a student spoke about wanting something to be perfect, I stopped them. Perfection should never be the goal – that’s boring. Every mistake became a learning opportunity or a creative challenge while every crooked stitch just added character to the final piece. Skill comes with practice, and nothing else. And practice means that sometimes it’s what exactly as you imagined it, but that’s ok too.
Despite this mindset, the further I went with this blog the more my doubts began to surface. I’d think “who wants to see that?” or “someone else will just explain it better” or “everyone does this, what narcissism makes me think that anyone would care about my version of it?” The Inner Critic shut me down, succeeded in convincing me to stuff my creative light under a basket.
I was about to remove this blog and walk away, but I started thinking about the reasons why I started it in the first place. Reasons that got lost as I began to compare myself to others, as my confidence faltered. Then I heard someone casually mention the term creative confidence.
Creative confidence.
Those words reached out to smack me upside the head. I don’t teach to be someone important, or get accolades, or be recognized, or have a giant fan base. I teach to give people a set of tools they can use to express their own uniqueness in a tangible way. I had forgotten that, and the Inner Critic replaced that soul objective with fears.
Here is the definition of Confidence that I like best: a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.
Where in this sentence is there any reference to anyone other than the self? There isn’t. Confidence is internal, and because it’s internal until it can truly blossom it is easily crushed. So I’ll keep adding to this body of work, and if even just one person says “well heck, if this lady can do it, then so can I” then it will have been a success.
The corset in the featured picture was made from a very expensive heavy white silk that I imported from China directly, with coutil material from France. I’d made this pattern before. I knew what I was doing, theoretically, and yet still, I managed to completely mangle this piece to the point where I literally just had to throw it out. There was no saving it – and I did try. heh. I used it as the picture for this article because confidence isn’t about knowing that everything is perfect and will be lauded by others. It’s about knowing my own process and being assured that I will learn from those mistakes and be richer in the end for having made them in the first place — then boldly trying again.
So I say the same to you that I say to my in-person students. Don’t be afraid of your creativity. Embrace it. Experiment .. stretch yourself … fail … learn … then try again. Neither confidence nor creativity is a final end result; they are processes which you learn and master only by doing. Like a toddler learning to walk, we do fall down. But falling is not a failure unless the fear of falling stops us from trying.
So sew. Glue. Quilt. Piece. Embroider. Glitter it up. Whatever puts you in touch with the spirit of play and fun and creativity which resides at the core of every one of us. Then keep doing it until you reach your own Creative Confidence.
Until next time, have fun sewing!
– Dravon
