I have been having a serious clear out of cloth. I am trying to be disciplined about this. I am attempting to organise all my work materials so there is studio space that is conducive to work and not one that is so chaotic it drains me of all my creativity.
During this protracted endeavour I came across some of my old silk work. In the photo above there is a bird hidden within all the colours. The original idea came from a medieval bas-relief bird I photographed on a visit to a cathedral (possibly in Germany, but it could’ve been in France) a couple of decades ago. In my memory it was always Speyer Cathedral on the Rhine. However, I have just Googled Speyer and though the magnificent 11th century Romanesque church is the building I have in mind’s eye, I can’t imagine where I thought this bird was ‘perched’. Strange how our memory plays tricks with us, isn’t it?
Anyway, I can now see that my ‘stork’ and ‘heron’ phases had a long forgotten forerunner lurking somewhere in Europe.
Of course, a freehand one-off motif once designed doesn’t remain fixed for very long.
Over time my bird motifs have lost most of their definition and morphed into little more than blobs with spikes!
Might be time to track down my old photos and revisit the original ideas and try working up a new motif or two from the primary source material. I haven’t unpacked either box marked ‘photos’ yet, but I am hoping that I didn’t bin them all the last time I had one of my ‘once every 10 years’ clear outs.
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Agnes Ashe 
I don’t think ‘blobs with spikes’ quite covers it’. Lovely free-spirited images.
Oh yes I do like that positive comment. 😊 Thanks – seriously, I do sometimes need to get out of a rut or two.
I agree with Margaret. I find this creative process so fascinating and the outcomes are always beautiful.
😊 Nice of you to say. But I expect, like you with your writing (which I hope is progressing well), I am a harsh critic of my own output.
I’m fortunate to have an agent,and she is expecting to hear from me this week as I managed to complete the first half of the second draft. So I tell myself she wouldn’t be prepared to read it a second time if she didn’t see some value in it. Then there is the comfort of knowing that if it does get picked up for publication it will go through another iteration after further feedback. But, like you, how do we ever know whether our work is “ready”, and, is it the best it could be? There’s no answer to our internal critic on that one.