As part of my creative sabbatical this summer, I have been exploring how routine, hands-on work can sharpen thinking, shift mental models, and unlock new possibilities. My last stop was a collage class. This time, I signed up for quilting, something I have not attempted as an adult.

The class reminded me that we need more safe spaces to experiment before committing a tool to perform an important job. That lesson applies as much to AI as it does to sewing.

Creative Practice Notes

This series explores how routine creative practice and hands-on work can sharpen thinking, shift mental models, and unlock new possibilities. Each note reflects one or more of the following goals:

• Reconnect with creative practice
• Demonstrate creativity as strategy
• Share new paths to innovate

Selecting Your Tools

A few days before class, the instructor emailed a supply list and casually added, “Bring your sewing machine.” Bless her heart for assuming I owned one. I spent time researching models and quickly realized I first needed to understand what I planned to sew before I could decide which machine would be best. So I started with one I had access to, my mother-in-law’s, until I had enough experience to know if I needed something else. She gave me a crash course on using it, one part refresher, three parts brand-new information, and a dash of secret sauce (“this is how I do it”). She used to make clothes, including my husband’s, and his family knows their way around fabrics. His dad owned dry cleaning businesses before he retired. My husband grew up working in his dad’s dry cleaning businesses, so he slipped into the role of her assistant during the lesson, which I found mildly irritating. Apparently, I was not the star pupil.

The Assignment: Making a Quilt vs. Sewing a Square

I walked into class with my sewing machine, a bag of supplies, and a big idea for what I was going to make. Then I saw the day’s agenda: fundamental lessons on quilting, practice exercises, and a short block of time to sew a single square. The instructor gave us templates to choose from, ranging from the simplest squares to the most complex quilt squares. I wanted the most complicated one, but she suggested a beginner pattern, probably because it was a beginner-friendly class and most of us were beginners.

I ignored that advice and selected the most complex template. A few seams later, I realized sewing a straight line under time pressure with tools you barely know is its own challenge. I switched to the beginner template. That pivot gave me space to focus on learning the fundamentals without the pressure of producing a perfect finished piece. The beginner template was not easy. It was simple.

Using Tools vs. Mastering Tools

By the end of the class, I had developed a much better understanding of my tools, how the sewing machine worked, how fabrics behaved differently, why certain stitch lengths mattered, how to fix things when they went wrong, and how to navigate constraints (like time). Ironically, I spent more time setting up the conditions for sewing than actually sewing.

Final Thoughts: On Quilting or AI

Right now, a lot of people are reaching for AI without asking the most important question: why this tool for this job? And it is not just about why or where to use AI, it is also about in what way. AI is an entire field that includes disciplines like natural language processing, robotics, machine learning, and other areas. Each works differently, excels under different conditions, and is better suited to certain use-cases than others. Start with tools you can access and learn from before chasing whatever is trending. There is always something new. The most innovative move is to allocate more space to practice and experiment, discovering new ways to use a tool while building the skill to choose the right one for the job.

Back to quilting class. My final product was a completed square that was used to make a pillow. The pattern was uneven because I started unable to sew a straight line. Thankfully, it was just practice, and since my family did not see the reference template, they were extremely impressed, especially considering how I behaved during my crash course on using a sewing machine.

Takeaway
The real skill is not chasing the latest tool. It is learning how to choose the right one. For important work, find more places to practice and master your tools.

This post is part of my Creative Practice series, a collection of field notes from my creative sabbatical. If it resonates, subscribe to the newsletter or follow the conversation on social.