I am sure that anyone who is a creator in any medium goes through a period of stagnation.
You know that feeling, yesterday you had so many different ideas buzzing around in your head. Today nothing, a flat feeling, don't know where to begin and really, what is it all for.
To create another piece, just for the sake of creating?
I have a few ways of dealing with this. The first is to take a break. I don't go near my studio, I read a book, go for a walk, watch a movie. Those are some of my options. But my best one is to dance. Just to dance. I have my playlists, plug the earphones in and rumba and lambada around the house for about an hour. I am a different person after that.
Then what I do is go into the studio, throw a pile of scraps onto the table and randomly pick out pieces and start sewing. Those are my best pieces, random, colorful and interesting. Therapeutic. I invariably gift these pieces. The dancing and the random sewing brings back balance.
Another thing that I have learnt to do over the years is to write down ALL of my ideas in notebooks, no matter how crazy or disconnected they are. I have filled a number of notebooks every year for a few years. They are a treasure trove of ideas.
So after dancing and sewing I make a cup of coffee and go to my notebooks.
I take a notepad choose the first subject that comes to mind, be it patchwork landscapes, yoyo collages, a ruffled duster, a bag sewing class that has been running around in my head for a while. I make notes and go through my notebooks picking out all of the random ideas that I had written down for that subject and I see a lesson plan being born.
All the ideas are there, scattered through my notebooks, I need to collect them, and structure them and do them. These notes are then put in a separate folder and I am on my way.