“I could never design my own cloth – I’m not creative.”

Have you ever said something like that to yourself? If so, you’re not alone. Many weavers tell themselves a similar story – and it can be crippling.

“I’m not creative” isn’t usually about actual ability. Instead, it’s about skills and beliefs. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s how it works:

If you believe you’re not creative, that it’s not possible for you to become creative, then you won’t work on developing the skills used in creative work. Lacking skills, you won’t be able to make creative work. And that reinforces the belief that you’re not creative and never will be.

Once you believe you can be creative, the world opens up.

Beliefs are hard to shift, though. How can you convince yourself that you’re creative – or artistic, or a “real weaver” – if you just don’t believe that’s part of you? How do you blast through that barrier?

Usually, we take one of two routes. One is validation from the outside world – having someone “certify” you as creative. The second is showing yourself that you’re creative.

Of the two, showing yourself is far more powerful. You know it in your bones, in your own identity. No one can take that away from you.

The outside world, though, discourages showing yourself – or declaring yourself – to be creative. Starting with our first “A” (or “F”!) in grade school, we’ve been taught that someone else has to declare us good at something. Until they do, we’re not allowed to believe it ourselves. Declaring yourself to be good at something – well, that’s just bragging! If someone else hasn’t said it, it’s not true.

So we wind up saying things to ourselves like:

“I haven’t graduated from art school, so I can’t be an artist.”
“I can’t do creative things because I failed art in high school.”

Society reinforces this belief through gatekeeping. If you don’t have a certificate, you can’t claim skills.

For example, there’s a vocal faction in weaving that says “If you don’t have a Master Weaver certification, then you can’t call yourself a master weaver.” Even for experienced weavers. Even for renowned weavers who have clearly mastered their art.

Those claims are just another form of that same debilitating voice – the one that says “I need someone else’s permission before I can believe in myself.”

All of this external gatekeeping makes believing in yourself an incredible uphill battle.

But it’s a battle that can be fought, and won.

Here’s how you do it.

First, recognize something important. Most weavers were never taught how to design. Almost every book, workshop, and video you’ve encountered taught you the execution half – how to warp, how to weave, how to use structures. But the design principles behind why choices work? Almost no one teaches those.

So “I’m not creative” is almost never true. It’s more accurate to say “I was never taught the skills I need to design.” That’s a very different problem. And once you frame it that way, it’s easy to see what to do next: get those skills.

Design skills are best learned step by step. Don’t try to create from scratch the very first time you try to design. That’s like learning to ride a bike by entering a bike race. You might succeed – but you’ll likely have some serious crashes along the way. If your first ride is a disaster, you might never try it again.

Instead, start small. Change one color in a draft, or add two repeats to the threading. Do something easily achievable. Then, once you’ve had that small success, try something a little more ambitious. Change two colors, or add borders and repeats to your threading. Develop skills step by step, practicing each skill along the way.

Even if each step is modest, it shows you that you can do more than you expect. And soon you’ll be looking at your work and thinking, “Oh! I am creative!” The proof will be right there in front of you. Nothing more convincing than that.

This is how we help people become creative at the Handweaving Academy. We teach design skills, but we don’t dump a ton of knowledge on you and expect you to apply it all at once. Instead, every design class includes step-by-step exercises every few lessons, each focused on one concept. You practice small components of design, making your own independent decisions.

At each step, we support you with video demos showing the thinking and design process. We answer your questions, and give you feedback on your designs. If you’re faltering, we help you!

Many of our classes include a project. But in that project, you make your own design decisions. You start with a full project recipe, then modify it however you like, to whatever degree you’re comfortable with – step by step, with suggestions, instructions, and supporting videos. At the end of the project, you’ll have made something that is truly your own – one more step towards saying, “YES! I am a designer.”

If you’d like to start designing your own projects, here are some great places to start.

For project design, Getting Started with Design explains how to modify a project recipe to suit your own tastes and needs.

For color, Understanding Value and Hue and Saturation cover the fundamentals.

For weave structure, Drafts: the Written Language of Weaving starts a series that will give you a thorough understanding of draft structure.

Got more experience? Dive straight into some fascinating color classes, like Color Gradients or Color & Design in Twills. Or head for some structure classes, like Advancing Twills or Understanding Overshot, and start designing your own drafts.

However you choose to learn, we wish you happy weaving.