E63 Transcript
There’s a moment most serious fabric and fiber creators recognize immediately.
You can see exactly what you want the work to be.
You can picture it clearly.
You know the line, the structure, the finish, the feeling.
And then you sit down to make it…
and what comes out of your hands doesn’t match what’s in your head.
It’s not terrible.
But it’s not it.
And that disconnect can be deeply frustrating.
It can make you second-guess your ability, your judgment, even whether you’re cut out for this work.
So let me say this clearly, right out of the gate.
This experience has a name.
And it is not imposter syndrome.
It is not a confidence problem.
And it is not a sign that you’re doing something wrong.
It’s called the gap.
The gap is the distance between what you can envision and what you can execute.
Between the work you can see in your mind and what your hands can reliably produce.
Every serious maker encounters this.
Every one.
What matters is not whether you feel it —
but how you respond to it.
Some people turn away from the work at this point.
Some soften their standards.
Some stay stuck in planning, collecting, or imagining instead of making.
Others learn how to work through the gap.
And that’s what this episode is about.
Today, I’m going to explain why the gap exists.
Why it often gets wider before it gets smaller.
And what actually closes it — and what absolutely does not.
This is not an episode about feeling better.
It’s about becoming more capable, more precise, and more grounded in your work —
even when your feelings are complicated.
Let’s talk about the gap.
At some point, usually after you’ve been making for a while, something shifts.
Early on, beginners often feel surprisingly confident.
They’re learning new tools. They’re following instructions. Progress feels visible.
Then one day, that confidence evaporates.
Suddenly the work feels harder.
More frustrating.
More disappointing.
You look at what you’ve made and think,
“This should be better by now.”
And that thought can feel alarming.
But here’s what’s actually happening.
You’re not getting worse.
You’re seeing more. You’re seeing better.
This is the moment when your eye starts to sharpen faster than your hands can keep up.
You can spot when something’s off almost immediately.
Proportion. Balance. Finish.
You notice tension where there shouldn’t be any.
You see where a choice weakened the whole piece.
Other people might say, “It looks great.”
But you know exactly where it doesn’t.
This is your ‘eye.’ You are now recognizing things you couldn’t before. Those things you missed before through inexperience but now see like a blinding light.
You might find that, all of a sudden, you seem to hesitate a little more before starting.
You might ask, “Where is that coming from? I know what I’m doing.”
But that hesitation you feel — the pause before you start — often comes because NOW you already knowing what won’t work.
It’s helpful to note-
Vision develops faster than execution.
Another way to say that is that the Seeing improves before doing.
Your taste and discernment may evolve faster than your techniques.
This is true across disciplines — not just textiles.
The gap opens the moment your insight, your ability to think through things, outpaces your skill.
And that moment is unavoidable.
It’s not regression.
It’s not failure.
It’s not proof that you don’t have what it takes.
It’s evidence that your perception has advanced.
The gap doesn’t mean you’ve hit a wall.
It means you’ve progressed far enough to notice.
And that distinction matters — because how you interpret this moment determines whether you grow or stall.
Make no mistake, this gap feels rather uncomfortable.
And here’s why it can feel so personal.
It doesn’t show up as a neutral problem you can troubleshoot and move on from.
It shows up as irritation.
As hesitation.
As that tight feeling where you want to work… and somehow can’t bring yourself to start.
And it feels personal.
Because the gap doesn’t announce itself as, “Here’s a skill you haven’t learned yet.”
It shows up as frustration.
As second-guessing.
As avoidance that you don’t quite recognize as avoidance.
This is where you begin restarting projects instead of advancing them.
Where you over-plan instead of begin.
Where you abandon work that’s almost good because it isn’t quite what you saw in your head.
Or — and this one is very common — you go looking for that one missing piece of the puzzle.
One more reference.
One more tip.
Not because you don’t know enough.
But because applying what you already know feels risky.
There’s a very specific tension here, and the brain does not like it.
You can see what’s off.
You can spot the imbalance, the awkward proportion, the finish that doesn’t quite resolve.
You can often articulate why something isn’t working — at least partially.
And at the same time, you can’t yet execute the correction cleanly.
That creates a mental conflict that sounds like this:
“I know what good looks like.”
“I’ve done good work before.”
“So why can’t I make this work right now?”
That pressure doesn’t resolve on its own.
So people look for relief.
Some soften their standards — maybe not consciously, but subtly.
They tell themselves, “It’s fine. No one will notice.”
Some distract themselves — reorganizing, cleaning, switching projects, switching mediums.
Anything that creates movement without confrontation.
Some decide they’ve lost interest.
They label it boredom, when it’s actually friction.
And some simply stop making just by slowly putting less and less of themselves into the work.
This is where a lot of creative lives stall, because the discomfort gets misread as a warning.
As if something has gone wrong.
But that discomfort is not a threat.
It’s a fork in the road.
One direction leads away toward comfort, distraction, or lowered expectations.
The other direction leads straight into the work.
And the makers who lean in aren’t doing it because it feels good. It doesn’t!
They’re doing it because they understand what the discomfort actually represents.
Discomfort here is not a red flag.
It’s the price of developing judgment.
And judgment is not optional.
Judgment is what allows you to advance.
To choose more accurately.
To stop guessing and start responding to the work in front of you.
If you want your work to improve, you have to pay that price.
There is no version of mastery that skips it.
Once you’re inside this gap, most of the advice you’ll hear will sound reasonable — and still be wrong for this moment.
Not because the advice itself is bad.
But because it’s aimed at a different stage of the process.
You’ll be told to find more inspiration.
To make bigger plans.
To wait until you feel more confident.
And in practice, that advice turns into very specific behaviors.
You watch tutorials — but you don’t apply them.
You save references — but you don’t commit to decisions.
You rewrite plans — but you don’t test anything.
All of this feels productive.
And that’s the danger.
Because participating in these activities just avoids the risk.
They protect your identity as a capable maker without challenging your actual ability.
You still get to feel engaged.
You still get to say, “I’m working on it.”
But you don’t have to confront the edge of your current skill.
This is why this phase can last years.
The gap does not close through imagining better work.
It does not close through consuming more information.
And it definitely does not close by waiting to feel ready.
In fact, all of those things can actually widen the gap.
Because the more clearly you can see what’s possible — without increasing your ability to execute — the more frustrating the gap becomes.
Here’s the hard truth that we serious makers eventually come to accept:
The gap closes only when we confront the limits of our current skill and do something concrete about them. Let me say that again:
The gap closes only when we confront the limits of our current skill and do something concrete about them.
That might mean isolating a problem and working on a solution instead of powering through it.
It might mean testing a technique over and over again until it comes naturally.
It might mean slowing down in one specific area instead of rushing toward completion.
But it always involves risk.
Avoidance disguised as preparation still delays mastery.
And no amount of inspiration compensates for unresolved technique.
If you stay in the gap long enough, this becomes very clear.
You can’t think your way out of it.
You can’t plan your way out of it.
You have to work your way out — deliberately, specifically, and with full awareness of what you don’t yet know how to do.
So, What Actually Closes the Gap?
This is where things either change — or they don’t.
The gap between your vision and your execution doesn’t close through motivation.
It doesn’t close through ambition.
And it doesn’t close because you care deeply about your work — although you probably do.
It closes through a very specific kind of effort.
Not fast. Not glamorous. But reliable.
There are three forces that consistently narrow the gap — and every serious creative I’ve ever worked with ends up encountering all three, whether they name can them or not.
First: Targeted Skill
Not general practice.
Not “I’ll just make more things and hope it evens out.”
Targeted skill means practicing the specific thing that’s limiting your work — not the part that feels satisfying to do.
This is where a lot of capable makers lose time.
If the issue is structure, adding surface detail won’t fix it.
If the issue is proportion, starting a brand-new project won’t fix it.
If the issue is construction integrity, redesigning the concept won’t fix it.
Those moves feel productive, but they dodge the real problem.
Targeted skill means you isolate the weak point.
You don’t power through and hope it resolves downstream.
You stop and work the specific decision that isn’t holding.
That might mean stitching the same seam three different ways and pulling it apart.
Testing one interfacing with multiple heat and pressure variations.
Sampling finishes on the actual fabric — not a polite stand-in.
Or yes, making dozens or hundreds of the same hand-bound buttonhole until your hands finally understand what your eye already sees.
This kind of practice is narrow by design.
Because when the practice is narrow, the feedback is unmistakable.
You’re no longer guessing what improved — you can see it.
That’s how skill actually grows.
Not through volume.
Through precision.
Second: Informed Decisions
This one matters more than people realize.
Now you don’t stop guessing and start making decisions through confidence or force of will.
You decide because you understand consequences.
A real decision is grounded in knowledge.
Fabric choice isn’t just aesthetic — it determines structure, wear, and behavior over time.
Seam finishes aren’t decorative — they determine durability, flexibility, and stress response.
Design details either reinforce the form or actively work against it.
Going with your gut works when your gut has been trained. Otherwise, it’s just a guess you haven’t named yet.
And that’s not a character flaw — it’s a knowledge gap.
The gap narrows when you can look at two options and say,
“This one strengthens the work — and this one introduces a weakness I’m not willing to include and manage.”
That understanding doesn’t come from trying harder.
It comes from watching cause and effect play out — again and again — in your own work.
You make a choice.
You live with the result.
You remember what it cost.
Over time, fewer decisions are guesses.
They become earned judgment.
And earned judgment is what lets your hands catch up to your eye.
Third: Smarter Practice
This is not about more hours.
And it’s not even necessarily about fewer projects.
It’s about continuity.
Smarter practice means you can stop restarting from zero every time.
You don’t improve fit by making ten unrelated garments.
You improve fit by working the same issue until your head and hands remember it.
You don’t develop structural confidence by constantly changing materials.
You develop it by returning to the same challenge across different contexts.
This kind of practice can feel repetitive — and that’s the point.
Because repetition is where patterns become visible.
And pattern recognition is the foundation of earned judgment.
Now for me, Judgment didn’t arrive as a breakthrough moment. It never does.
It built quietly — by trying something, seeing what worked, fixing what didn’t, and coming back to it again…and again.
That’s why chasing novelty slows progress.
And why staying with a problem accelerates it.
The gap closes when your thinking becomes embedded in your hands — not because you’ve lowered your standards, but because you’ve built the capacity to meet them.
And here’s the common thread underneath all of this.
Targeted skill. Informed decisions. Smarter practice…
They all require the same thing: staying in the work.
Not bouncing out when it gets uncomfortable.
Not restarting every time uncertainty shows up.
Not replacing engagement with planning or inspiration or a new idea.
The gap doesn’t close because you do more.
It closes because you stay with the same problem long enough for understanding to become second nature.
You don’t outrun the gap.
You outlast it.
And that’s the part most people underestimate — not the difficulty, but the duration.
Now I want to be clear about the standard I’m pointing to here.
Inspiration is unreliable. It comes and goes.
It responds to mood, energy, novelty, and external conditions.
Capability is different. Capability is earned.
If you wait to feel ready, you will always be late to your own work.
Because readiness doesn’t arrive first — it follows competence.
What actually carries serious creators forward is not motivation, or confidence, or even belief in themselves.
It’s structure.
It’s having a way of working that makes coming back to it inevitable, even when the work is difficult and the gap is wide.
External motivation asks, Do I feel like this today?
Internal structure asks, What does the creative work require next?
That difference matters. Build capability over inspiration every time.
Serious creators don’t wait for confidence to show up so they can begin.
They stay in the work long enough for confidence to become irrelevant.
And this is the part that often gets missed:
competence doesn’t come from talent or intensity or inspiration.
It comes from repeated contact with the same kinds of problems — long enough for your hands to learn what your mind already knows intuitively.
Staying in the work is not about discipline for discipline’s sake.
It’s about giving yourself enough exposure to the problem that good judgment can form.
And once judgment forms, the gap begins to close.
Because you are, quite simply, more capable than you were before.
If you’re feeling the gap right now — that space between what you can see in your head and what you can execute — that is not a failure of confidence or commitment on your part.
It’s the signal that your eye has sharpened faster than your hands.
That happens to every serious maker.
The gap widens before it closes.
It shows up as frustration, hesitation, and second-guessing.
And it only closes one way — not through more dreaming, or more planning, or more waiting — but by staying with the work long enough to understand it.
You close the gap by naming what’s actually difficult.
By practicing the specific skills the work demands.
By making informed decisions instead of hoping for the best.
By returning to the same problems until your execution catches up to your vision.
That’s what capability looks like.
Very Quiet. Earned. Built over time.
So, as you head back into your studio, I want you to hold just a few questions-
Where do you feel the gap most clearly right now?
What are you avoiding because it exposes your current limits?
And what single skill, if strengthened, would narrow that gap the fastest?
They don’t need full answers right now – just keep your eyes open and notice what comes up.
You just need to stay in the work long enough for the answers to become visible.
Because the goal isn’t to feel inspired.
The goal is to become capable.
The goal is to close the gap between your vision and your execution.
