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The difficult stage of embroidery that makes most people quit.

There is a point in almost every creative process where the initial excitement fades and something far less comfortable takes its place. It rarely announces itself dramatically. More often, it slips in quietly. You step back from what you are making and, with a small shift in perspective, you feel it. The colours no longer sing in harmony. The proportions feel slightly wrong. The idea that felt so alive and promising at the beginning has flattened into something uncertain and awkward.


This is the part most people do not talk about. Or if they do, they skim past it quickly, eager to arrive at the triumphant ending where everything falls into place. But I have come to recognise this moment as something essential. I think of it as the ugly stage. And over time, I have learned not only to expect it, but to trust it.


At the beginning of any piece, there is a particular kind of energy. An idea sparks and gathers momentum. Materials are chosen with optimism. There is space for possibility, and the mind easily imagines how it might all turn out. In those early hours, creativity feels generous. You feel capable. You believe you understand what you are doing.

Then, somewhere along the way, that certainty begins to dissolve.


The fabric pulls in a direction you did not anticipate. The stitch refuses to sit neatly. A colour that felt perfect in your imagination jars against the others in reality. What exists in front of you no longer resembles the image you carried in your head. It is at this point that many people quietly tidy everything away. They decide it was not a good idea after all. They tell themselves they have wasted time, or that perhaps they were never very good at this to begin with.


But the truth is far simpler, and far less personal. You have simply arrived at the part where the real work begins.


We are taught, often without realising it, that progress should look like improvement. That things should become neater, clearer, more obviously successful as we move forward. Yet creative work rarely travels in a straight line. It loops and falters. It dips before it rises. It becomes messy precisely because you are moving beyond the obvious version of the idea. The ugly stage is not evidence that something has gone wrong. It is evidence that you have stepped into deeper territory, where you are no longer copying the image in your head but responding to what is actually in front of you.


That is where the conversation begins.


Staying in this stage requires something different from skill. It requires patience. It asks you to sit with discomfort without immediately trying to escape it. There is a vulnerability in unfinished work. It reflects uncertainty back at you and refuses to be categorised as good or bad. It simply is. And if you leave too soon, you never discover what it was trying to become.

Much of my own work has evolved without a rigid plan. Especially in mixed media, the materials have their own opinions. They resist control. They demand negotiation. The ugly stage is often the moment when that negotiation intensifies. It might mean unpicking hours of work. It might mean introducing something unexpected. It might mean doing nothing at all and allowing space for clarity to return. None of this is wasted. It is thinking, just in a form that looks like hesitation.



Part of what makes the ugly stage feel heavy is that it is rarely just about the piece itself. It has a way of stirring older stories. Perhaps memories of being told your work was not good enough. Perhaps the echo of past attempts abandoned too quickly. The discomfort can feel like confirmation of those narratives. You might hear the familiar whisper that you should have stopped earlier, that you are not as capable as you hoped.


But discomfort is not proof. It is information. It signals that you are in unfamiliar territory, stretching beyond what feels safe or predictable. That stretch is rarely graceful.

Trusting the ugly stage does not mean forcing an outcome. It does not mean staring stubbornly at something until it submits. Sometimes it means stepping away with intention. Leaving the work on the table. Closing the notebook. Allowing your eyes and mind to rest elsewhere. When you return, you often see possibilities that were invisible before. The piece itself has not changed. You have.


If you only make things that look good from beginning to end, you are probably staying very close to what you already know. Growth tends to hide in the messy middle. It is there that instincts sharpen and confidence deepens. Not the loud confidence of perfection, but the quieter confidence that comes from knowing you can respond when things unravel.

Over time, you begin to recognise the shape of the ugly stage. You sense its rhythm. You understand that it will pass, not because you overpower it, but because you stay present long enough for transformation to occur.


And this is not only true in art.


The ugly stage appears whenever we attempt something new. In learning. In recovery. In reinvention. In any transition from one way of being to another, there is a stretch where the old has loosened its grip but the new has not yet settled into form. It is uncomfortable precisely because it is unfinished.


Learning to trust that middle space is a practice. You rehearse it with thread and colour and material, and gradually you carry that resilience into the rest of your life. You begin to understand that not knowing is not the same as failing.



Trusting the ugly stage is, ultimately, an act of self trust. It is the belief that you do not have to get everything right immediately in order for it to become meaningful. It is the willingness to remain curious rather than critical, to respond rather than retreat.

The ugly stage does not mean you are incapable. It means you are engaged. It means you are willing to move beyond the surface. And if you allow it to unfold in its own time, it often becomes the very place where something honest and unexpected begins to emerge.


That is why I stay.

Not because it is comfortable.

But because it is where the real work happens.

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