Rest

Truth be told, I’m not very good at rest. I want to be, I try to be, but it’s hard. I’ve come to realize that this is because I would generally consider rest as sitting on my butt and doing nothing. Stop me if this sounds familiar though, you can’t sit and do nothing until everything is done. Everything is never done, right? Which means you never rest.

We thus need a new definition of rest.

At one time in life (when I was younger) I was a competitive athlete. Back then rest meant two things. One, just like above, rest was simply not doing the training. Two, within a workout there was active rest. So not the hard training pieces, but the easy strokes in between the hard sets. As a professional quilter I see the benefit of the latter. As a parent I realize the former is impossible. So that has led to me understanding that I need two unique forms of rest.

Active Rest

When you are working on deadlines and contracts quilting can feel like a chore, let alone actual work for some. Quite often the quilting becomes hard and full of drudgery. What once gave us joy and energy drags us down. It’s one thing to be pushing to meet a deadline like a wedding or show entry. This is why I am a big fan of Active Rest.

This is about, in many respects, mindless sewing and play. It’s the sewing that doesn’t challenge you or push your creativity. It might be creative action though. So maybe sewing snippets of fabrics in pairs, making HSTs, aligning strips, binding a quilt, stippling a quilt. The kind of sewing that allows you to catch your breath after a hard run. That’s why it is called Active Rest. You are still doing something but giving yourself the opportunity to slow down, gather thoughts, and be mindless for a little while. Because creativity begets creativity your juices will eventually start flowing again and you will be ready for the next challenge.

Escape to Rest

While running away to the beach or the mountains is many, many people’s idea of escape (myself included) we can’t do it that often. That’s why we need to find daily or weekly moments of escape. For me, this often includes long walks in the forests not far from home, a ski trip for the day, or maybe camping in the summer. It might be a hot bath, curling up with a great book, or binging a new show. My best advice when on a physical escape like this is to lean in to it. So no stitching while watching TV, no podcasts on your walk, leaving the sewing at home on a trip out of town. Let escape truly be a mental break.

Don’t want to give up your creative pursuits, even for a moment? Then switch it up! Escape to Rest also means exploring other creative interests. Trying crochet, taking a watercolour class, learning embroidery, even reading a fashion magazine. Your muscles and brain are still working, but in a different way. This alternate firing of brain cells gives your quilting brain a rest, your conscious mind an escape, but you are still pursuing creativity. It can be both relaxing and liberating.

In truth, this is what Morning Make has been for me over the last two years, on the months I am not sewing, that is. Trying weaving and embroidery and painting and poetry is an Escape to Rest for my creative brain.

The last few years have been rough for everyone. Indeed, rough is an understatement. While there were long periods of time where we were home, languishing, we weren’t still resting. Doomscrolling, cleaning, stressing, eating, teaching our kids, working on the dining room table - all of it added up to HARD WORK. Watching Tiger King at the end of the day just didn’t quite give us our energy back.

Resting is not easy.. I don’t want to be roped in to the mess of toxic positivity either when I say rest is important. Rest is a choice. It’s taken me a long, long time to see that and thus make it priority. I thought not having to drive my kids all evening was going to be the rest I needed. Nope, not even close. I puttered and wandered and zoned out but I did not rest. Since choosing to make rest an important part of my life I can feel myself catch my breath a little quicker, like I am getting in shape. The more I rest the better I feel when I am doing the hard stuff.

Full confession: I just spent the weekend in the mountains with my husband, just my husband. I brought crafty things to do and read but, in the end, read a thriller, took 5 baths in 48 hours, ate room service, and walked in a snowy forest. Now that’s an Escape to Rest! Then I came home ready to sew!

December Morning Make 2021

When November blends into December…

Hmm, isn’t that every year?

Regardless, November Morning Make trickled into December so I decided to ride the wave. I had something else entirely planned, anticipating some medical events and the necessary downtime. But Covid changed those (things got cancelled, I stayed healthy) and I enjoyed that beginning so decided to keep playing.

The first bowl came from a 3mm rope I purchased with the rest of my weaving supplies from Flax and Twine. The pattern is in her book, Weaving Within Reach. It was fiddly to start and it took me quite a bit to find a rhythm. I totally did not understand the finishing directions. What I did, however, worked but I knew I was doing something wrong. It’s still a bowl and it is still staying together!

After that I hit one of our local yarn stores for more rope. Their stock wasn’t the same, but it was still a 3mm rope, just softer. With two colours under my arm I kept going on the rope bowl fun. I even went ahead and started playing with the weaving pattern, with different levels of design success. These bowls don’t have as much structure but the weave is tighter. And I figured out what I was doing wrong in the finished directions.

It turns out I only have one real, large, round bowl. Many bowls, but in great shapes that are anything but typical bowl shapes. A lot of flat bottoms or wide openings. So all the bowls (save 1) were made from the same mold/bowl, not that it is totally obvious from the finished results. It was a bowl from Alexia Abegg.

The next batch of rope that I bought was from Flax and Twine again. This time a 5mm, so slightly thicker. And, shorter in length so the bowls did not end up as big as the first one. No complaints about that, but it is a noticeable difference.

Speaking of differences, the big difference between the rope from Flax and Twine and that from my local shop was that softness. That results in a bowl with more structure or less, so it would be personal preference. I really liked Anne’s colours at Flax and Twine as the ones at my local were a bit garish (neon pink and lemon yellow).

After a few bowls I was feeling a bit bored and a lot cocky so I decided to try something different. Anne had sent along some linen twine with my order. Twine/rope? Same thing, right? Obviously the size is different, and the texture, flexibility, and length of the spool. I ended up using 2 spools, with a simple knot to join them when necessary. Needless to say, I used a small bowl as a mold, just a little IKEA bowl. Small is not easier or faster, not at all. It took me a week to make the one little bowl. It was fiddly. I also used more warp threads than the big rope bowls so there was more weaving to do on the whole. The result was totally worth it. It is a compact bowl but with beautiful structure. As you can see, I did something a bit different with the finishing. The edge treatment is the same, but rather than weave the ends in I made them obvious with a visible knot.

December satisfied my need for meditative yet creative action for Morning Make with these rope bowls. It’s also piqued my curiosity for different types of woven bowls and even basket weaving. I’m not done with weaving yet.

November Morning Make 2021

Oh, what a month!

It is a very good thing we live in a small house because after a month of mornings spent weaving I am dreaming of a large loom. Just a dream though, because that small house thing. Weaving is a delightful discovery for me.

Like many of my Morning Makes, the challenge of being a beginner was there. You can definitely see the progression between day 1 and 20 in my simple coasters. Learning set up, tension, and patterns was a lot at once but the pursuit of improvement drove me. As did the meditative aspect of this. Those two things combined made this a perfect Morning Make for me.

See? Look at that improvement in technique from right to left. Learning tension was a key thing. So was understanding patterns. Some I picked up more easy than others, some still confused me at the end. There is so much more to try.

These coasters were made on the small frame loom. I bought a kit from Anne at Flax and Twine. I already had her book, Weaving Within Reach, but you can buy that from her too. In fact, everything I made came from her book and all supplies from her. It was a nice one stop shopping opportunity. She has loads of kits and video classes too.

While I could have made coasters endlessly I had purchased supplies for some other projects so moved on.

The Bento Bag pattern really appealed to me for its modern styling. I also, frankly, thought it would be easy. While it wasn’t difficult, it was a bit tedious. I do quite love the results. You can buy handles and turn it into a purse even. In the book it is styled as a yarn bag which, I think, would be quite lovely. The bag doesn’t stand up without anything in it and the fruit from our dining room table isn’t quite the right filler! I’m sure it will find a good home soon enough.

The month ended before I finished the next project so I’ve just continued into December with it. Using a rope twine I am making a basket. This is another meditative project and I can see more in my future. I am even contemplating dying some of the rope to see what happens. Stay tuned.

October Morning Make 2021

Went back to my childhood here. There were many an evening I spent in my room with a stack of Seventeen magazines and a glue stick making collages. Generally, I was cutting out things I liked and filling the page. Maybe it was a mood board before I knew what a mood board was? In October I made a collage each day for Morning Make.

I still like my magazines and the stack from this year was falling over. Rather than ripping out the recipes or rooms I liked and recycling the rest I decided to bring the glue stick out of retirement. Each morning I did a colour wash with some watercolours then while it dried I found my images.

Some days I had a clear idea and set out to find images that worked. Other days I waited for an image to strike me. Everything was made up each day, no preplanning. Frankly, some days worked better than others. I don’t define success as a beautiful image, rather, it is about the time spent. That being said, I wasn’t always happy with what I produced.

I was game for trying new things within the month, playing with text and images, just text, just images, and always with composition. Indeed, this was an excellent month for exploring composition. As a quilter that is always a useful exercise. It also forced me to reckon with negative space. So while I didn’t love all the literal results, it was a good skill building month.

You’ve heard me say it before: Creativity Begets Creativity. Playing in a different medium with translatable skills can only ever be a good thing. At the end of this month I have a few new ideas I want to explore in fabric, my comfortable medium. I’m not sure they would have emerged without this exploration into collage.