Creating…or Executing?

Have I been fooling myself for all these years?

The summer of 2022 I began my adventure in tapestry weaving. This wasn’t the first time I had tried a new fiber or textile pursuit. In the past almost 60 years I’ve tried sewing, quilting, needlepoint, cross stitch, knitting, crochet, spinning, tatting, embroidery, rigid heddle weaving, and pin loom weaving and have had varying levels of success in each. I still dabble in most of these which means my home looks like a craft hoarder’s house.

Let’s return to the tapestry weaving. For me, initially, the hardest part of weaving was warping the loom. It is far too boring and repetitive for my neurodivergent mind. When I finally finished warping the loom I discovered something shocking about myself. I apparently lack creative vision. I had no idea what I wanted to weave. I cannot tell you how many days I stared at that warped loom before I began weaving. I didn’t know what I wanted to weave, I only knew that I wanted to weave.

Most of my other fiber/textile pursuits began with a pattern that was always created by someone else. Knitting patterns, crochet patterns, needlepoint patterns, tatting patterns, rigid heddle weaving patterns-all of these could be found in publications or on the internet. I own a disgraceful amount of knitting and cross stitch patterns I purchased in pdf format and in print and have faithfully executed them to produce a lovely finished item. Did I create or did I execute?

It wasn’t until I began to pursue tapestry weaving that I realized that I may not be creative at all but I may be a very proficient executor of other peoples’ creative efforts. Tapestry weaving required me to create rather than execute and I was completely blindsided by my lack of imagination. I’ve spent a year weaving tapestry and I’m slowly developing creative vision but it doesn’t come easily. I can actually sense that tapestry weaving exercises a different part of my brain than executing an existing chart or pattern

So now you can see my dilemma. Was I ever a creative person? If you are executing other people’s ideas and designs is that the same thing as being creative? I must say that my meager efforts at tapestry weaving up to this point have made me feel more like a creator not an executor. Tapestry weaving has taken me out of a comfort zone I didn’t know I lived in. It is after all, so much simpler and less stressful to follow directions and produce a reasonable facsimile of another persons design than to imagine something entirely new and bring that vision to fruition.

Perhaps my definition of creative is flawed. What do you think? Is is creative to execute someone else’s vision?