Finding my focus with a simpler life once more, has already had a huge impact on my work.
It has given me the opportunity to strip everything back to the core and to consider what is important to me and what I want to hold on to, as I move forward.
The garden is a great place for thinking.
As I am busy working with my hands and connecting with nature every day, everything seems so much clearer. The blanket of confusion and brain fog that modern life sweeps over everything, is blown away and makes me feel hopeful again.
I realised that I love to watch things grow – my children, my garden, my work.
All of my passions in life stem from the same root desire, to watch and to help tiny beginnings develop and flourish.
I have found the strength to know what I want and what I don’t!
I don’t want to feel forced to be just one thing. Social media platforms (in my case instagram), galleries and craft events, all seem to push creatives into narrowing their outlook. They must stick to their lane if they want to be seen or accepted.
I don’t want to have a narrow outlook. I want to develop and to do that I need to try new and varied things. I also don’t want to feel forced to leave things behind, like my basketry. I want to be the big mixture of things that I am and I want my work to reflect that.
Life is so much richer when you mix it all up with a big spoon!
I don’t want to judge the success of my work on how wide the reach of my last instagram post was. That might sound obvious and easily avoidable, but if you are a busy mother, relying on social media to connect with others, with no gallery representation, no one else at all in fact to help you show what you do, what you’re all about……then it’s all too easy to get sucked into watching with horror as your posts reach less and less people. It takes a conscious effort not to react to that.
For me it took saying “I’d rather nobody sees my work, than live and work like this”.
It helps too, that I have barely made a penny in last few months, but the world hasn’t exploded. We’re still surviving. In fact we’ve had some wonderful, happy months.
So I’m focusing my online energies here and on Buy me a Coffee. My own spaces, with my own rules, where I can be that big jumble of mum, wife, gardener, basketmaker, textile artist, home maker, thing finder, gatherer, blog writer etc etc etc
I’ll still be posting on Instagram, but I’ll be posting what I want to post when I want to post it, so you’ll probably never see it and I’m ok with that!
So what have I been making, with this great new positive outlook and freedom to just be?
Well that little stitched book really gave me the confidence to express myself through stitch and I have been working on a little quilted wall-hanging that just sums up where I am right now.
Oh To Watch Things Grow, has a patchwork backing, made from leftover fabric and fabric from a pair of trousers that I found in the local charity shop. The front is appliqued and embroidered with the image of a woman, holding a crown of flowers on her head. I originally planned to surround her with plants, but all of my thoughts about simplicity over the past few weeks, made me decide against it. I found that I knew what I wanted to say and I felt that was enough.
So it reads
“Oh to watch things grow. To see them triumph against all odds and lift their joyful faces to the sun”
I will hang it from a length of wooden dowel this week and add a couple of my paper beads and then she will be heading to my shop.
I think I’ll make another little book next, because I enjoyed the first one so much and I would like to capture some of summer in the garden. But who knows what will come after that?
One thing is for sure, “It will be an awfully big adventure!”
