Where Did My Creativity Go? How I Recovered from Creative Burnout in My Quilting Businesses

Spoiler: I changed my business!

There was a period in my life when I couldn’t touch fabric. Not “I didn’t feel like it” - I mean that it made me nauseous and I genuinely couldn't make myself pick it up. I'd been a quilt pattern designer and teacher for years, and somewhere along the way the thing I loved most had become the thing that drained me completely. The creativity I used to pour into color choices, block creation, and arrangement, and pattern instructions had gone past quiet and into repulsion. This is what burnout looked like for me.

Tori with her first published pattern sample: Target the Stars

However, I didn't want to let the business go.

I didn’t set out to become a digital marketing coach. Originally, I wanted to form a community around what businesses were doing for their digital marketing and model what I did that worked. so that we could all learn together. And whenever my creativity (which I thought was only through quilting!) came back, I'd start making new patterns again. However, as I started building resources for my early adopters (this was when the DMMC was free!), I was figuring out systems and frameworks, writing new kinds of content, helping other creative entrepreneurs find their footing online, I noticed something I wasn’t expecting: the creativity that I thought I really only had for fabric wasn’t gone, it had just relocated.

That realization was genuinely a relief and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, especially as I’ve been quilting again for the first time in years. More on that in a minute.

The creative brain doesn’t give-up, it reassigns itself.

When I was designing quilt patterns, my brain was constantly working on what I thought as 'creative problems': How do these colors read across a room? Does this layout move the eye the way I want it to? Where does the complexity live, and where does the eye need to rest?

I do the same thing now, it just looks different.

When I’m looking at a client’s website for instance, I’m reading it the way I used to read a quilt layout - where is the eye going, what’s competing for attention, and where does the reader need to breathe? When I’m helping someone build out their social media presence, I’m thinking about pattern and rhythm: what does a week of content feel like, where does the repetition create trust, and where does the variation keep things interesting for the audience and the business owner?

Writing has also become one of my biggest creative outlets in this work. I never thought I'd enjoy writing - it was torturous to write in high school and a little less so in college. However, taking something I’ve lived, learned, or observed in my business and shaping it into something a reader can actually use - that has been feeding my creativity. Structure, details, where the story turns, and what the reader needs to understand before they get to the lesson. It feels so similar to experimenting with color and fabric.

My writing started in blogs and turned into a book: Workshops Unleashed!

Creativity in business systems: they're just patterns

One of the things I love most in this work is what I’d describe as finding the pattern (aka a system) inside someone’s business. Every entrepreneur has a way they naturally communicate, a kind of content that lights them up, and an audience that responds to them. My job is to find the shape of that and help them build a system around it - something repeatable that still leaves room for them to be themselves.

That is creative work. It requires the same kind of spatial thinking as laying out a quilt block - what goes where, what creates cohesion, what creates interest. And then, just like any good pattern, the real test is whether someone else can pick it up and make it their own.

There’s also the ongoing creativity of new things in digital marketing. Markets shift, and platforms change. What captured attention six months ago has been scrolled past ten thousand times since. Staying on top of things means staying curious, which means the work never actually gets stale if you’re paying attention.

Hey Tori! Podcast was a recent marketing experiment that went really well! Click the picture to sign up and listen.

Sometimes it literally comes back around.

I’m currently preparing for h+h Chicago, and for the first time, I’m designing a physical booth space for digital marketing. I feel like I'm taking the intangible and doing my best to make it tangible - and I have to say, it’s been one of the more challenging and joyful creative projects I’ve taken on in years.

I noticed that the marketing booths at previous shows tended to be minimal and cold. I wanted mine to feel like a living room - warm, inviting, the kind of space where you stop walking and stay for a minute. I designed a quilted version of my Ohio Star logo (it’s not finished yet, but I cannot wait to show you!). I built a bookshelf to display books by authors I’ve worked with through my Self-Publishing Incubator Program. I created a wall for my Digital Marketing Magic Coaching Program members - their photos, their words, their businesses - so that the booth becomes a place to make introductions, have a discussion, and not just a place to talk about what I do. I even crocheted light strings to hang in the space. I haven't crocheted in more than a decade!

Hey Tori logo quilt top in progress!

Pulling all of those elements together into something cohesive has pushed my creativity. It’s also the most excited I’ve felt making something with my hands in a long time. The burnout that kept me from touching fabric for 3 years has slowly eased and it taught me something. It taught me that creativity isn’t tied to a medium. Creativity is a way of being and truly is something that can be continuously practiced, not just in fabric but in other places in my business.

The more I use it, the more there is.

Here’s what I’ve noticed over the past few years: the more creative I allow myself to be outside of the business, the more creative I am everywhere else - in my marketing, in my life, in how I solve problems with my kids, and definitely in how I think about problems for my clients. It compounds, getting stronger like a muscle I exercise regularly.

So yeah, I don’t write quilt patterns anymore, and I don’t teach quilting techniques and color theory, but I am absolutely still a creative person running a creative business.

I’d love to hear from you:

Where does your creativity show up in your business in ways you don’t always give yourself credit for? Drop it in the comments - I’m genuinely curious.

About the Author: Tori McElwain of Hey, Tori!

Tori McElwain is a quilter, educator, and digital marketing strategist passionate about helping creatives grow their businesses online - without the burnout. She’s the author of Workshops Unleashed and founder of the Digital Marketing Magic Coaching Program (DMMC), where she teaches quilters and craft educators how to simplify content, boost engagement, and sell their offers with confidence. From Facebook ads to Reels hooks, she brings an educator’s heart to every tech tool she teaches. Learn more at HeyTori.tech.

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