Guest series :: My creative process always begins in my sketchbook

Guest series 2012: I asked fellow bloggers, makers and creators to write on their creativity and focus their essay on one of four topics: creativity and health, creativity and business, creativity and parenting or creativity and process. I am very excited to have a wonderful lot of fellow creative folk guest posting here at whipup.net over the next couple of months. Please welcome…

Blair Stocker is the author and maker behind wise craft. She lives with her husband, two kids, and one sweet cat in Seattle, Washington, USA. She works each day in her bright white basement studio, where she designs original quilt patterns, refurbishes secondhand treasures, looks for things to add crochets, listens to good music, and drinks good coffee. Her first book, is due out at the end of 2012. She is also runs a brand consultancy with her husband, Story Trading.

My creative process always begins in my sketchbook, whether I am doing a quilt, or redoing an item for our home or to sell in my shop. I use only one kind, a Moleskine squared soft notebook in the extra large size. They are easy to find locally, and I get the ones with fewer pages and try to look for the kraft brown covers, because I like personalize the outsides of them myself. The pages have grid-like squares on them, and because I’m usually drawing quilt patterns or flat designs, these give me a great starting grid (plus a blank page can often overwhelm me). I will staple fabric swatches on the pages, tape in bits of ribbon and trim, stick in a couple of strands of yarn, clip in a scanned image or one torn out form a magazine, or make a crafty to do list in these notebooks. This is a discipline I have carried with me since my days in the apparel industry. Even the small fibers of a single color can inspire, and I don’t want to lose them, so into the notebook I go. I keep all the old notebooks, and they are all neatly stored. I love going back through them.

Tagged as: creativity