En-Visioning: Tapping Into our Creative Side

teri • June 02, 2015 • 2 Comments

Over the summer, we’ve planned an on-going staff project: Vision Boards. Vision boards are a way of connecting who we are as individuals and a group with where we’d like to go and how we’d like to see our work (magazine/quilting/art) grow. Vision boards are collages of images and text that we glean from magazines and newspapers (or draw ourselves) that speak to us as we as we hunt for them, and later, as we see our finished collages. The process isn’t new in the creative world, but what is new for us is tackling something like this as a staff.

Our inspiration to do vision board collages comes from Associate Editor/Kitten Wrangler Tracy, who created a vision board at Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis in designer Carrie Bloomston’s part of the Windham Fabrics Booth.

 

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Associate editor Tracy Mooney and her Market-made vision board.

 

As our staff finishes their vision boards, we’ll share them with you, beginning with yours truly. Before I share thoughts on my personal vision board, however, I would like to add, that while this can be a deeper connection with ourselves and our goals and dreams–and feel a bit odd–this can also be a prayerful experience, connecting us with our faith in a deeper way. As I gathered supplies: quilting and wine related magazines, a glue stick; 11” x 14” piece of paper,  for making the board I spent a few moments in prayer.

Teris vision board

My personal vision board

 

Once I finished the board, I took a little more time to reflect on the images I chose. I’ll admit at first I was a bit confounded by what garnered my attention: the strong, confident pose, trendspotting and the stretching piece of leather. This echoes my love of color and thread and states clearly one of my long-term teaching goals: to cultivate creativity. I long to give quilters permission to pursue their quilting goals and dreams, leaving them confident that they can meet them.

The secondary comment there–“time well spent”–confirms my frequent thought and comment that time practicing and learning quilting is time well spent. I am experiencing being stretched in so many ways. Longing to meet the needs of the magazine, write my book and do well with my work with Missouri Star. This is a refreshing time, a time of growing and realizing long-held dreams and recognizing something important about myself. For me, this is in part where the prayer comes in. As a well-loved child of God, I want to tap ever more deeply into His creative spirit as I learn what it means to be an artist.

So, my board is more of a recognition of status than one with future goals, hopes and dreams. But here’s the really good thing about vision boards: You can make more!

Quilt. Sew. Live. Breathe.

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2 Comments

  • Kathy B • 9 years ago
    COMMENT #1

    Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

  • quiltzyx/sue • 9 years ago
    COMMENT #2

    I keep reading about vision boards. Have been for years. But you know, I just don’t get them. They are interesting to look at, but I don’t feel any more connection to my creativity with them than anything else I do. Just me I guess. Same as I can’t look through binoculars without closing one eye!

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