If you spend any time with young children, you will be reminded of childlike wonder and their resilience to keep trying.

Young children don’t yet know the rules, so they aren’t constrained by them. Colouring inside the lines doesn’t cross their mind. They are quite happy to mix all the paint colours together and see what happens. No need for harmonious colour palettes. They are free to play and explore their creativity. Going where their imagination takes them. They are happy to try, to give things a go. They are masters of trying, trying and trying again.

We were all those young children once. What happened?

When I see people come into the workshop room or talk to people about their crafting dreams, there is so much hope and excitement in their eyes. For some, this can quickly turn to fear once they get started. They become frozen by this idea of not being able to do it perfectly. They daren’t try.

“What if I make a mistake?” they ask.

It can be a real battle for them to fight against this instinct that it needs to be perfect and if it isn't, then they’ve failed. I’m always really keen to help people work through their fears. One of the best parts of my job is seeing the smiles on their faces at the end of a workshop. The pride they have in what they’ve created.

What’s important to remember when doing anything creative, including crafting, is that you are going to make mistakes. It is part of the process.

When people are sat there frozen with fear, it’s often coming from a place of comparing themselves to others. It tends to be experienced crafters whose patterns they’re admiring. Or perhaps a book they’ve written. Seeing their finished work that they're sharing online". The key word here is 'experienced'. They will have spent hours and hours trying out ideas, tweaking, refining and making mistakes which led them to the finished article people are admiring. Many will have spent years honing their craft. So how could we expect to create something just like theirs straight away?

Even the most experienced crafters will talk to you about the mistakes they make in their projects.

The sooner people realise mistakes are part of the process, the easier their crafting journey will feel. The best part is, the more you do this, the more you get used to it. You build a muscle for tolerating the messy middle where you’re learning something new, and the fear subsides. This is how you go from having just a few rows of crochet done to a finished jumper you can wear.

So what can science offer us here? To help us to release ourselves from the grasp of perfectionism.

What if, instead of being fixated on making something perfectly, we got curious and saw our next crafting project as an experiment? Something we have an idea about how it will turn out (our hypothesis). Then we test out our idea (the hypothesis), we give it go (run the experiment), and we see what the results are. Either we’re proven right or we’ve learnt something. If it’s not gone as we expected, we can tweak our process and try again. Approaching our crafting projects with this level of curiosity and experimentation can really help to release that pressure we feel to be perfect.

The sooner we’re able to come to terms with the idea that being experimental is part of the process, the sooner we can work on improving our skills, finishing our projects and having pride in what we’ve created.

I’ll leave you with this question this month, which you could journal on if that’s your thing.

How could I experiment with my crafting projects?



Sophie is a creative mentor and workshop tutor at West Plum Studio, based in York. She’s passionate about helping people spend more time crafting.

She offers a variety of online and face-to-face workshops and events. Bringing people together to spend time working on their own projects, understand how to overcome the barriers in their way and learning something new. As well as working with people 1-2-1. Everyone is welcome whether you’re a beginner or a more experienced crafter.

Find out more about West Plum Studio on the website www.westplumstudio.co.uk and on Instagram @westplumstudio