The Seasonal Creative - Silencing your inner-critic

by cherishing your early work

Hello creative friends! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week and are topping it off with a lie-in, a cup of tea in bed, a cheeky pastry for breakfast with a few chapters of a good book or whatever floats your boat.

I won’t lie, I have had one of those weeks where all my creative pursuits seem to be falling a bit flat. I have all the symptoms of a creative rut; comparison syndrome niggles, lack of motivation, difficulty making decisions, telling myself off for not achieving more in the time available…Has anyone else got the same bug? And the cherry on the cake, I now have an actual cold to make me feel even more sorry for myself.

Whenever self-doubt comes to call I have to remind myself that it is an inevitable part of being an artist. We all get it. I think one of the trickiest symptoms to power through though is falling out of love with your work. This one is tough. I’m sure you’ve felt this, you finish a project and you love it, it’s the best work you’ve ever done and you want to show everyone. Then a couple of days or weeks go by and you look at it in a whole new and ugly light! It now looks amateurish and messy, it’s not polished or pretty or even ready to be seen by anyone else! What were you thinking?

This happened to me this week. The fabric collection that I finished last month was given this harsh treatment. I worked so hard on these patterns and enjoyed the process of creating the collection so much that I was surprised they ended up in the firing line!

My sister, who is great at sewing, offered to make me a top with one of my fabric designs for my birthday later this month and I jumped at the chance. I opened up my laptop to choose a pattern and all I could see were imperfections; this one needed some colour alterations, that one needed a motif moved etc. I honestly felt quite disheartened but I also had no time this week to make any changes so I just picked the handful that I liked most and ordered some fabric samples.

I fully expected to be disappointed when the swatches arrived but as soon as I opened up the package and held the fabric in my hands I didn’t want to change anything. In fact, I am struggling to choose a favourite!

The truth is that we get this feeling of dissatisfaction with our work when our skillset has developed and moved forward. Maybe we’ve read more on the subject, had a bit more practice, and moved in a different direction with our inspiration. It is a good thing in a way, it means we are developing our creative practice. The key though is to be kind to our current work, the projects that move us forward and develop our style. Don’t be afraid to share it in case you don’t like it anymore next week! Someone out there is going to fall in love with that work and cherish it. I still get messages from people who bought some of my earliest work who tell me how much it means to them even though now I might not consider it portfolio-worthy!

We should cherish our early work too and respect it. A good way to deal with this form of self-doubt is to frame it differently. When you fall out of love with your work, imagine that it wasn't you who made it. Imagine that a loved one or a dear friend created it, would you critique it in the same way? Probably not. Would it still not be good enough if it hadn’t been made by you? Would you appreciate it more if you didn’t know precisely what went into making it?

I have had some time to mull over my patterns and I won’t be changing anything. They were good enough for the me of a few weeks ago who patted herself on the back for creating a pattern collection in the little pockets of free time she found each day so that’s good enough for this me. I can’t wait to see my birthday present, try it on and enjoy owning a handmade gift in one of my very own patterns.