Fostering the creative spirit

People often ask me how I had the confidence to put my creative work in the public sphere. Even more often, I hear how amazed they are by my girl's confidence in her own creative ability.

Here she is (below), in her first finished wearable knitting project - a knitted-in-the-round beanie. It was school holiday pj-wearing-and-watching-tv-craft. She is dead proud of it and a bit amazed that it only took about three days to make. She's also wearing the dress she designed for me to make for her recent 10th birthday....and she's looking at books on Japanese animation at ACMI. Her interests are many and varied.

 Last week, with great excitement, she published her first ebook "The Silver Star" through Amazon Kindle, and there's  a limited edition print version (being on-the-spot printed and foisted upon anyone who looks vaguely interested). She's also working on a website and has animated a part of the story on Scratch. As always, I am enormously proud of my girl.

Lately, I've been thinking that this creative fearlessness is less about talent or drive and more about never having to think "I can't". It's simply following through the ideas that come to us... to the natural finish line, as we see it. A friend recently commented that my daughter is learning from my example of following through the creative process to publishing books, patterns and online classes (and this little blog), but I think it runs deeper than that.

I've been thinking a lot about parenting in recent weeks: the bigger, long-term picture. I have spoken about it before, but I can't stop thinking about my mother's genius, patience and encouragement in bringing up her own eight children.

Yes. Eight. (I know.)

I'm number 7, and certainly not a stand-out talent.  We're a family of artists, sculptors, storytellers, designers, gardeners and general free-formers. As kids, we were encouraged to create and make and grow things. We were provided with materials and space and allowed to make the necessary mess to paint, draw, sew, knit, woodwork or electrical circuit* our ideas into reality. And - what I think is key here -  in a time before the internet gave everyone a platform to show and tell to the world, Mum made us feel that our work was worth putting into public space.

 *(for the science-obsessed brother...Creativity isn't always about art.)

My first published work, aged 6.

Our little house was far from winning any interior design award (especially after that unfortunate accident with the purple candle-making wax on the dining room carpet), but it was busting at the seams with our drawings, carvings, textile crafts, paintings, (... ahem... candles,) and all manner of other creative achievements, all proudly displayed. And the house was always full of people - neighbours, family friends and extended family - talking, drinking tea and telling stories. Our art and craft work was always pointed out, acknowledged and admired. We were all shy kids - and not encouraged to be shouty "show-offs" - but faith in our creative ability was constantly reinforced in everyday life.



Early sewing example by me, aged about 5 or 6.



When a little local community-run craft shop opened, my mother did all the membership duties for those of us who wanted to sell our handmade wares there (and starting at the age of 7, that's how I made my pocket money).  When we wanted to sell at craft markets, she'd do all the purchasing of materials, paying of fees and management of transport. We'd look sweet, sell a few things, feck off to play somewhere (leaving her to mind the stall) and then keep all the takings at the end of the day. (That sounds a bit familiar, actually...).

 

Whenever there was an opportunity for an exhibition or art prize, we were encouraged to enter. Local newspaper clippings were saved when we won or were acknowledged in any way and our efforts were always praised, regardless of the outcome....

...Or the fashion crimes involved, apparently.... I have an embarrassingly large collection of photos of clothes that I made, that from the age of 12, my mother let me wear in public .

 

Aged 16, in front of the garment mountain I had sewn.

My mum took us seriously. She showed us that if we had an idea, it was possible to see the creative process through as far as we wanted to take it, even if we were only children. She showed us that achievement takes effort and follows a process, nothing happens if you don't give it a go, and that you have nothing to lose by trying. In doing that, she also showed us how to foster creativity and individuality in our own children.

 

My girleen holds my hand as I work on the computer (with her in a sling) during the first few weeks of her life.

We have no way of knowing if Mum is aware of anything that any of us have done in the last 8 years or so, or if it would have any meaning to her now. Before that - in the first few years of this devastating illness -  despite difficulties with language, she made sure that each of us knew she loved and was proud of the adult that we had become.

My Mum with my newborn girleen. 
She had lost most of her language by then, but still had her gift for communicating with children.

We are all enormously proud of our mother and miss her every day.

And every single day, I am thankful for what she has given to me and to my super-creatively-confident kid.

Happy Holidays 2016

However you celebrate this time of year, I wish you lots of joy and special time with the people you love.

My girl and I have been over-indulging in Christmas movies and looking at houses with lots of twinkly lights.  We've enjoyed hearing carols and ... well, SHE enjoyed the buzz in the city centre (I wanted to run, screaming towards the train home)... She particularly liked that I let her have chocolate pancakes for lunch at The Pancake Parlour (highlight of the year!).  And since we set up our portable swimming pool, we've had an endless stream of friends for play-dates and outdoor dinners. 

Basically, we've been hanging out, enjoying the Summer holidays and the magic that Christmas inspires in a sweet 10-year-old's imagination. 

I have been feeling grateful for a year that has brought lots of opportunities and (for the first time in ages) no major upheaval.  I have been grateful for health and a roof over my head, and for the peace that we enjoy in this country.  I have been grateful for good friends, family and being able to make a living from the work I love doing.

I have been grateful for cheap Korean restaurants on end-of-year school nights when I can't be bothered cooking dinner (we did this twice).

We are very lucky people, indeed.

Teacher gifts were no surprise, really... The latest inkjet printed pencil case design is very Manga-inspired.  (The two in the background are my own pencil cases, made using her 3 and 4 year old drawings. They make me smile every day.)

Holiday activities have also included the transfer of a board game she drew in pencil into a fully packaged, laser-printed affair. I'm very impressed with the clear instructions and the level of complexity she developed in the game.  All done without a scrap of help from me.

You might have noticed that I've dropped the diminutive "een" from the end of my "girl".  In the last wee while, she appears to have grown nearly as tall as I am (which isn't actually that tall) and on that  train trip to the city the other day, I realised that her (kids size) boots are the same size as (adult size) mine.

And so, the summer holidays stretch before us.  I will have a kid-free week in which to catch up on some book-writing, and then it'll be back to juggling work around holiday fun.  

We will probably have more dinners on the trampoline.

Wishing you all the best for the happiest of days over the holiday period and a wonderful 2016.

Happy Holidays

 It's that time of year again (hurrah!).

 

 

And so the tradition of the cardboard Christmas tree continues.... 

 

This year, the girleen broke away from standard flat-tree format and went all 3-D.  She also (making use of a feature in the recycled ballot box that we were using as base material) incorporated a secret door in the design....

 

We fashioned a secret shelf in the middle of the tree, making it a cupboard...

 

...in which to hide the handmade Christmas crackers (another emerging tradition of ours, it seems).

 

 

The last week of downtime makes all the madness of the previous few weeks seem like a million miles away, as it should. 

 

(Here's a bit of design college humour from the last few weeks at work.)

 

 

It has been a time of winding down, going to craft markets and kicking back with my girl and with friends. It's a time of al fresco dining and drinking and talking.

 

 

Sometimes, we've even managed an accidentally-colour-coordinated theme for the evening.

 

 

The garden is rewarding us with harvests of spuds and salads and vegetables. There have been apricots (and there is now a larder full of apricot jam).

 

 

My Christmas surprise this year was the arrival of a copy of The Better Bagmaker in French!

 

 

To celebrate both birthday and Christmas this year, I broke with tradition and bought some fun red shoes... because a girl sometimes needs to step outside the practicality of functional black sandals for summer.   

 

I wish you all a very happy holiday season, whatever you may be doing to celebrate or relax.  See you in 2015.

 

To One and All

 Every Christmas, since my wee girl was very wee indeed, we have made a cardboard tree. 

 

This year, as we were about join the two tree pieces in the traditional cross-intersection to make it a stand-up 3D tree-like shape, the girleen came up with a brilliant new structural idea.

 

The stash of glitter and glue - hidden away since the great "Oooooh....It looks like MAGIC...!" glitter-throwing disaster of 2009 - was brought out and used with great control and design sensibility.

..and even so, two weeks later, I'm still finding glitter all over the backyard and house.

 

And so, let me present This Year's Tree! 

The space between the two sides of the tree was the "perfect" place to stash our hand-made, Lindt-Ball-filled crackers. 

We also finally made the "Gorgeous Gingerbread" recipe from the Mary Poppins book that the girleen read (and copied the recipe from) mid-year. 

I'm thinking it was more miraculous than gorgeous... We had named it "Gingerslop" as it went into the oven.  The mixture was so runny that we didn't believe that it would ever bake into anything other than thick custard.  But it was ok!

 

The first few days of school holidays passed with preparations for my family Christmas lunch, which we celebrated at my house on Saturday.  And since then, the girleen and I have been on a go-slow.  We have goofed about the house, baking and sewing and doing nothing in particular.

 

We decided to play with the paper dollies she was given as a birthday present a few weeks ago.  She wasn't interested in the outfits that the dolls came with - she wanted to design her own (*proud mama's heart skips a beat*).  

 

She then suggested that we make a real doll's dress, based on the paper design.  (*cue simplified, Barbie-doll-size design analysis and patternmaking lesson*)

It was a collaborative effort, involving both Elna-Mini and Fancy-Schmantzy-Bernina, the box in the fabric stash labelled "Shiny, Drapey & Sparkly", and a paring-back of design details (by the youngest collaborator...when it was all taking too long). 

 

Barbie will indeed go to the ball!

Wishing all a very safe and happy Christmas and New Year, and happy holidays with the people you love.

Feeling quilty

I've had this niggling quilty feeling for the last few weeks.  I keep thinking about the quilt I accidentally started (when I was making a patchwork panel for a small handbag) a few months ago.

 

I woke up on Sunday and started stitching again. I needed a day to let my brain freewheel and unwind, and this seemed like the perfect meditation.

 

Every fabric is designed by an Australian, and I'm lucky enough to call some of those talented designers my friends. These were scraps that were too precious to throw out.

 

I had visions of floating these strips in broad bands of a solid colour, but couldn't decide which colour.  After bit of experimentation, I thought a mix of red, black and grey would be interesting...

 

I started cutting up fabric and began the well-practised art (read: habit) of flying by the seat of my pants.  There was no clear plan.... just the enticing notion of a finished quilt and a strong sense of very little time in which to make it.

 

 

After I cut up all the red fabric I had, I decided that there should have been more thought put into proportions and layout, with a few much wider bands.  I didn't have enough fabric to re-cut. 

 

In came a 3-D shadow effect with grey and black.... which appears to be overwhelming the subtlety of the pieced prints.... I'm not sure about it... but it's sewn together and there's no more red and.... well... let's just see what happens, shall we...?

 

My approach to quilting appears to be of the improvised "from little things, big things grow" variety, which - as an amateur - could lead me into all sorts of unforseen  trouble.

 

My girl, on the other hand, is a planner.  She dreams big.

 

She talked about "an idea for a quilt" for a week before she suggested starting it at a time that wasn't two minutes before bed, in the middle of dinner or just as we were simultaneously brushing teeth and running out the door to get to school on time. 

 

 

  We found an appropriate moment and she started vliesofixing and sketching out shapes for applique.

 

 

There were flower petals cut and flower petals fused, and then the addition of a caterpillar... and then the retro-fitting of some caterpillar-bites out of a flower petal....

 

 ...and then the narrative of the caterpillar story was 'adjusted' to fit in with the designer's waning enthusiasm for flower-petal cutting and fusing.

 

"The caterpillar ate the rest of the petals."

 

It was quilted, "bound" and declared finished.  

 

I think that maybe, some time in the future, she'll be employing me.

Back to it

Ahhh... back to the school routine.  School holidays are over. 

 

I know that many parents find that a bit sad, but as a small-business-running single parent with a few very pressing deadlines, I must admit to doing a little happy dance (and having a swim) after school drop-off this morning.

 

In preparation for the new school year, one of the holiday projects the girl and I made was a new lunch bag (based on the project in One Yard Wonders... tweaked slightly).

As is our new way of doing things, it was a joint effort (and I was allowed to advise). 

 

The smallest of us did the quilting...

And the largest did the very fiddly bits. 

 

The smallest was so excited as we packed her lunch this morning (I only hope it encourages her to actually eat her lunches, this year...).

 

To get into the study mood, she began a 'research' (or "reserch") book.  I love her synthesis of the books she's reading (and her little back-to-front Fs). 

We also had some lovely mail over the holidays....

These beauties from Lara's new shop....

And almost-edible fabric (and postcard) from Yardage...

 

..and ..ahem...a bit more from Yardage... 

I also finally got around to picking up this book for my little resource library. 

And in between times, I've used evey spare minute (and a few too many graveyard-shifts) working on the new book.

 

I'm looking forward to being able to work in normal daytime hours now, and the girleen is very happy to be back with her friends, and the non-stop stimulation and structure that school provides for her over-active mind.

Back to it, then....