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Creative Play: Great Ideas Start Here

June 28, 2018 by Clara Nartey Leave a Comment

A while back, I wrote an article titled, “Make Play Work for You”. The gist of it is you can put play to work so that you become more creative. In this post, I’m going to share with you how I used creative play to design and make my most recent piece of work.

Creative Play is an important component of creativity. When you’re playing, it frees your mind up to come up with many ideas (divergent thinking) to solve the problem at hand. 

Creative Play | Thread Sketching
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So, I started this project with a sketch from my recently completed 30-day drawing challenge. Although I’d planned to use that one particular sketch for this work, the design took its own path meandering through lots of twists and turns.

So based on my sketch I created the small collage pieces just like I did with “Lovecicles”. 

Fabric Collage | Creative play
collaging together orange fabric pieces

I worked one little piece at a time until I had created the 3 main design elements in my sketch.

Fabric Collage | Creative play
collaging fabric pieces through creative play

Then I attached them to a black background to get this:

Collage pieces collaging through creative play
Collage pieces attached to a background

That’s when creative play began in earnest.  At this point, I’d decided I wanted the series to be about the issues of water scarcity some people face around the world. So I wanted to include a teacup in the design to represent water. 

So I took a photo of the piece at this point and transferred it to my iPad so I could digitally play around with how to incorporate the teacup.

iPad Drawing | Creative Play
Teacup loosely sketched in the bottom right-hand corner on my iPad

I played around with it in my sketchbook as well.

Sketchbook Drawing | Creative play
Creative play with the design in my sketchbook

In my sketchbook, you see that I toyed around with the idea of completely repositioning the top design element so that it will be flipped and placed on the right-hand side of the design.

Eventually, the final design I created incorporated some of the ideas I generated from both sessions of my creative play on the iPad and in my sketchbook.

I stitched the “ropes” first, adding thread shading to make them realistic.

Thread sketched Ropes | Creative Play
Thread sketched Ropes

Then, I proceeded to incorporate the teacup into my design. I’d decided I was going to exclusively free motion stitch the teacup without using fabric collage.  This meant I had to expect the heavy stitching to draw up the fabric in that area.  More about that later.

Thread sketching with orange threads |Creative play
Starting to stitch the cup with orange threads –

When I was all done I’d lost about 3 inches from the fabric drawing up as a result of my dense stitching.

Severely drawn up fabric from thread sketching | Creative Play
Severely drawn up fabric from thread sketching

However, because I knew this will happen I made sure I’d properly stabilized my materials. This way, with the heavy stitching, I didn’t get any fabric puckering problems. (If you do experience puckering, I wrote an article on how to solve fabric puckering issues.)

Now, I had to stitch the background to get done with it.  I’m not so fond of the standard free-motion meandering pattern that much.  Because I don’t find it challenging or interesting when I’m stitching a large area. I need to be challenged in order to keep going otherwise I may get bored and not finish. (which I wouldn’t want to happen 🙂 ) 

Thread Sketching Detail - Creative Play
Thread Sketching Detail

So here was another part where I decided to employ creative play.  I didn’t have a pattern in mind when I started.  I decided to let the design elements guide my stitching.  Initially, it was hard not to judge my stitching but I have a “no unpicking of stitches rule”. So I kept going. As I proceeded a pattern emerged and I began to gain more confidence in the direction I was going.

Thread Sketching Detail | Creative Play
Thread Sketching Detail

This was the most fun part of the entire process – the playful part – where I had no specific expectations of the outcome. And what came out of the process blew my mind.  I so love the pattern that was created.

Thread sketching Detail | Creative Play
Thread sketching Detail

Then using my fail-proof facing method, I finished the edges beautifully.

Nicely faced edges |No bulky corners| Facing Art Quilts
Nice facings, no bulky corners

And another view

Nicely faced quilt edges |No bulky corners| Facing Art Quilts
Straight-faced edges

Finally, Here’s the completed piece.

Fiber Art by Clara Nartey
Untitled, 40″ x 30″, threads on cotton, by Clara Nartey

I need your help naming this piece.  As I previously said it’s about the issues of access to potable water for the millions who live with this issue daily.

So let me know in the comments what you would name it.

In my next post, I’ll create a video for you to see how I did the stitching.  Till then,

My warmest regards,

Clara's Signature

 

 

PS:: Don’t forget to suggest a title for this piece below

 

 

 

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