Failing Better

I had expected that this blog would have posted two days ago and would be a tale of eight leaves.  But after two days of work, it's a tale of four leaves.

In planning my work, I completely underestimated the amount of time it would take to work through the wiring and embroidering of these eight four little leaves...

Fittingly, yesterday the Wall Street Journal published the article, "We Know Why You're Always Late."

According to the article, there are those who are chronically late and who suffer from a little-known concept called the Planning Fallacy, a tendency to consistently underestimate the time a task will take for completion.

Cue the sad face...That's me.

And that sad realization led me to reflect all day on the ideas put forth in the article and the challenge of blogging a creative life.   Frankly, as many of my fellow blogging needle friends already know, it's tough to blog long-term embroidery projects (especially when they take years a long time).  Sure, it's great to have the "TA-DA" post...the finished project in all its glory...but the reality of the creative process is that most days, progress is slow and just plain hard work.

That being said, the up-side of the work is that there are little tiny creative breakthroughs all the time.

When we are not slave to the clock, or a deadline or our own expectations, we are free to play, explore and experiment.  And this, I believe, is where the real work is done.  

Figuring out what you want to stitch is one task, figuring out how you are going to stitch it is quite another.  For me, the stitching of the final product once I've figured out the how, takes the least amount of time.

Most of my time is spent in trial and error and it's where the bulk of my work takes place.  I often gloss over this phase when blogging, failing to share its two-steps forward, three-steps back nature, and I jump directly to the final result e.g. eight finished leaves.

Indulge me and let me use these eight four leaves as an example.   Last time I tried embroidering directly on fabric solvy and I didn't like the result.  This time, I made a sandwich of fabri-solvy and organza so my embroidery had a stabilizer.  I chose organza because I wanted my stabilizer to be as negligible as possible.   

First, I couched wire to the underside of the leaves...

 I couched wire to the underside of the leaves.

That statement is a perfect example of how I usually gloss over the minutiae.  Here's what "I couched wire to the underside of the leaves" really means...

[I tried using two different sizes of wire and decided I like the look of the slightly larger SM size as opposed to the XSM.  I tried couching with a YLI silk 100/3 thread in green and then using one strand of Gloriana brown floss to wrap the stems.  I found that it was too bulky to stitch using those two threads so I decided to couch the stems in the brown floss and skip the green altogether.  Next, I tried different numbers of couching stitches, trying to find the minimal number of couching stitches (which would be faster) while still getting the look I wanted on top.  I decided I liked more because it gives me a straighter vein on the topside.]

Next, I started stitching the leaves.  

[Which really means...I decided on using two strands of Tudor Silk floss.  I stitched one leaf with one strand of Gloriana floss but its twist is looser than the Tudor silk and tends to fuzz out a bit, which I didn't like as much so I ripped it out.  Once I decided on Tudor Silk, I played with different methods for using the variegated thread.  I already had decided against using the fly stitch leaf method in last post so the two left most leaves were stitched by using the modified fishbone.  I started stitching those leaves from top of leaf to bottom, alternating stitches as I went.  Because of the variegated thread, that was giving me the effect where the color changes on the leaf traveled down the leaf evenly on either side.  Next I tried muddling the leaf color by combining my two strands of floss in opposite directions which mean the colors were "pre-mixed" in the needle.  That's the center leaf below and I liked that idea least of all.  Lastly, I tried stitching my leaf using Separated Single Layer (which is the Japanese embroidery term for up one side and down the other leaving a one point open space for the vein).  The effect of this stitch was to have the color variation travel up one side of the leaf and down the other which is shown on the leaf all the way to the right.  This technique ends up showing off more of the vein so I need to make sure I couch my wires more carefully so they line up topside as I move forward.]  

Well, if you're not asleep from reading all that detail, you'll see how iterative and time consuming the process can be.  

Showing the result of four leaves in two days of work doesn't seem like much and gives a false idea of how much actual progress is being made.  In reality, a TON of learning has taken place about types of stitches, about limitations of threads, about sizes of wires, about improved methods, etc.

In many respects, it's the same process that a writer goes through in choosing the right words, the right sentences.  Whole days can go by where an author writes and re-writes the same paragraph over and over until it's just right.  Writing a good book can take years.

And so it is with me. 

I have a story to tell and I am choosing which threads and stitches and materials will best convey all that I have to say.  Sure, there are dozens of ways to make rose leaves, many of them much quicker than the methods I am using.  

But the process of carefully choosing and curating the process becomes part of the story itself.  

In the next few days, I will dissolve these leaves in water, and my technique will likely change again based on the result.

I can get some idea of how it might look from the underside...

Already I can see where some refinement is needed in the wrapping of the stems.

So it goes.  

It's all part of figuring out what to say and how to say it.

While I was working today, I was listening to this podcast thanks to Maria Popova's post today on my absolute favorite daily read, Brain Pickings.

Even though she's a writer, I felt like the words of Dani Shapiro were speaking directly to me...

When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the unknown.

Here's to failing better tomorrow.

Happy brazen leaping everyone!