Where do you look for inspiration?

I don't go anywhere, Morag!! They just come (sometimes I wish they didn't, if they are going to be difficult!) But, seriously, I found that after a little while, I began to see 'quilts' all around me. Many I have done; many are still waiting. This is perhaps because I tend not to do a multi-block quilt. There are one or two blocks which tempt me though, and these have started from fabric - I have some lovely fabric that I don't want to cut too much; and, when I saw the Warm Wishes pattern, I knew I would use that for these two fabrics in particular - with other treasures in the outer border.

Sometimes the purpose for a quilt will help dictate the style/pattern.

Don't take too much notice of the 'I could never do that' thought. Step by step most things are very do-able - they just look magnificent.

What I think is a good idea, is to try to eliminate styles that you don't like. So that, if you see a lovely quilt, but realise it is a method that you really don't like, dismiss it. For example, I love Baltimore Album quilts and the like, but I know they are not for me.

The more you look at books and magazines, the more you will get a feeling for things that you will love making, as well as loving the result - not always the same thing. If you want to try something, make a placemat!! A pair of mats always makes an acceptable gift, too >g< Just keep on looking and absorbing. I have kept a little notebook in my handbag for years (not the same one!), just 3" x 3", to make quick sketches of something I see that might be useful. Think of Kris Bishop's manhole covers, for instance. Floors are my most fertile ground!

There are probably as many answers to your question as there are people who will answer it. But, it is such an interesting journey. Thanks for asking the question. . In message , Morag in Oxford writes

I get my inspiration from the fabric and playing with,and things just pop in to my head, Probably from something I've seen in the dark and distant past!!

I got to thinking about looking in my past for quilt ideas. Things that I did as a kid growing up in Cincinnati.

Visits to Krohn's Conservatory make me think of orchids then Asian fabric and other flower fabrics.

Elvis arrived on the scene when I was in 3rd grade, and Elvis fabric arrived this year. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were popular on TV. And my mom sent me a photo of me in my cowgirl outfit. I'll print it out on fabric and have me and Roy and Dale in the quilt. McDonald's also started back then. In my Cincinnati neighborhood, the fast food hamburger place was Sandy's. There's nice fabric with french fries out there!

I went to the University of Cincinnati, so I'm using red-white-black in a quilt.

My Dad taught me how to watch sports, so someday there will be a quilt with football, baseball, and basketball fabrics. I'm a Cincinnati Bengals fan, so I bought some tiger fabric.

Sitting on the sidewalk playing jacks (there is repro fabric with jacks!), jumping doubledutch (rope fabric or fabric with a texture of roap), living in the city (fabrics with cityscapes).

But someday I don't plan to be so literal.

Kay Ahr in Reno/Sparks, Nevada

I buy patterns I want to do someday and keep a collection of photos from mags and the web. I also have a pretty huge library of quilt books I can go through when I am looking for a particular thing. Classes and challenges and swaps have started some of my projects.

I have actually never experienced the need to go looking for inspiration anywhere. My inspirations are lined up anywhere from 2 to 10 deep, patiently waiting their turn to become quilts. I will soon reach FABLE, I do believe. Fun Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy!

Karen, Queen of Squishies who is totally goal oriented in life

I think of the person who will use it, then look through quilting books or look through fabric (only online, I tend to buy without a plan). Once I have "found" just the right one, then I go to the store.

I use all of those. Sometimes I start with the fabric and look for pattern and others I start with the pattern and look for fabric. I often have 2-3 planned ahead at any one time. Right now I have fabric pulled for 2 and the focus fabric for a third.

I just keep buying fat quarters in styles and colors I like. I love flowers, bugs, critters, brights, batiks and novelties the most. I wash, iron and fold them and place in the cubbies. When I need inspiration, I start pulling pieces out of their little hidey holes and eventually a combination will jump out at me. It may be a couple of funky florals that all of a sudden look great with the dragonflies and the bright stripes, or the moose and bears look great with the brown leaves batik, or it could be that an unrelated stack of scraps that I got at a yard sale look really nice in a scrappy if I mix in some of my demented squirrel fabric (I have a couple yards of super bright neon colored squirrels I bought at a church sale years before I started quilting).

I don't look at a beautiful quilt in a LQS or magazine and then find the material to make that particular quilt, I do the opposite. I find a pattern that will work with my chosen material and my stash is extremely ecclectic so that's not always easy to do.

I'm still looking for inspiration for 6 fat quarter batiks in red, blue, green, purple, and yellow backgrounds with 1 inch multicolored irrigular circles on them. I had to buy them 'cause they just made me smile every time I looked at them, I tried to walk away but they kept pulling me back. I also have a fat quarter pack of prints from India waiting for a purpose.

Sometimes I'm inspired by the person for whom the quilt is being made, such as the one I recently made for my son. He abhors man made materials, so I dug out my wools in deep red, charcoal gray, and tan solids and mixed it with a red, gray, and tan multi colored plaid (all of which was purchased at yard sales for pennies or donated to me by a client from the food pantry) As he travels a lot and usually prefers to be hiking in the woods, I did an Around the World pattern with appliqued pine trees in 4 corners and an appliqued paw print of a Lynx in the middle. We have a picture of a full-sized Lynx over our fireplace so it represents that no matter where he travels, the hearth of our home will always be there to welcome him back.

Denise

Gosh, Morag, sometimes inspiration comes from some fabrics, sometimes from a pattern/magazine/book I see, sometimes from a memory -- and sometimes I'm stuck! LOL! I have a pretty decent llibrary of quilt books I can go to, as well as far too many magazines; but I think lately it's mostly been fabric that "gets" me. I see a fabric I just have to have and then come up with a way to use it, though sometimes that doesn't happen for quite a long time. ;) Can you say "stash"?

I think it depends on what 'need' quilting fills for me at the time. When I started, it was the need to find a hobby that meshed with what I had time to do and what I liked doing, which was decorating/homemaking, and that assuaged the homesickness from moving away from family. I would be inspired by pics of quilts and patterns in magazines, since I didn't know anyone who quilted. (That was back in '85' and Georgia Bonesteel came to the rescue). After awhile, it was a way to enjoy fabrics and colors and just play. I found that I would be inspired by color combinations at that point more than patterns. Right now, (having lost my Mother last July), my inspiration is coming from the need to look back and have comforting reminders of the past. To that end, the 30's-50's repros have really been a cheerful distraction, and I've been looking for patterns that would show those fabrics to advantage. I've been more drawn to simple/mindless sewing patterns, because I need to just de-stress and I don't want anything that encourages hotflashes, if you get my flaming drift! (I may just have to get those blue snowflakes out and play with them some.) Also, Teri's 'yourpick swap' has been inspiring, (thank you Terbear and all the ladies who participated!), because it has been an encouragement to wake up my dulled sense of creativity. I think that going through the trauma of losing someone to illness requires a focus and determination just to get through it, that shuts down other emotional pathways. Right now I'm trying to coax some feeling back besides heartbreak...(April 6th was our first celebration of my brother's and mother's shared birthday...these milestones are really painful! :(

Of course, it's always lovely to see pics of what this group has going on because of the creativity and enthusiasm, and the different tastes and styles displayed. How could that NOT be inspiring?

chipper :)

"Morag in Oxford" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@bt.com...

Hallo Morag, and Hallo to all!! Since my teacher learned me patchwork, there is no day without patch... I mean.. Even if I can't quilt, I look for quilts photos on internet.. And so i "steal" ideas... Then I stay hours and hours and leaf through magazines and book .. I love so much thimbleberries, and Alex Anderson' styles, but now, I begin to think that Thimble projects are too simplified now for me.. I'm not a virtuous, but I think If I don't make something a little difficult, i will never learn more.. (I hope you can understand me... ) And now i begin to find inspiration from the landscape, even if I don't like too much pictorial quilts.. .=2E. I mean: last year we've been in Bretagne and Normandy (north France) and I stopped to admire cliff on the sea ...and those colours were incredible... Green, yellow, purple, of flowers, and blue,dark blue, grey of cliffs, and the sky... and the red of sunset... and the lighthouse... ohhh If I think, I want to return there... Well.. I think I have been maybe for at least one hour... Once at home, I looked for the "right fabric" and only for luck I found it!! Now that fabric is waiting the "right project" to remember Normandy..... but not a pictorial, I would like a traditional quilt, maybe in appliqu=E8, or I dont' know yet.. but still I have not find the "right" one.. I wait.

As always.. sorry because I know You work hard to understand me!!! :0) ciao Nicoletta.

Whenever I come across a quilt I like I put it in my My Pictures folder called 'pretty pictures'- may be the colours I like, something I had not thought would go together, may be the arrangement of blocks, the border, or even a pattern I like but not the colours. May even just be a photo of a tree or rocks with pretty colours.

If the picture is actually part of something larger, I put where to find it as the picture title.

Then every now and then I have a look though and remind myself what I have liked and collected. Then I have a starting point, even if just a colour. Never have those 'saw something, somewhere' moments any more

-- Sally at the Seaside ~~~~~~~~~~ (uk)

When thinking about a new quilt, where do you go to be inspired? Do you

Howdy!

Answer to your questions: yes. All of these and more.

Miss Julia is the baby I sit with once or twice a week at church; her mom is one of our assoc. ministers who hoped to get a quilt from me last year, but I don't work that way . Julia will turn 1 in August; the quilt starts today. I was rootling the stash this morning for pink & purple fabric; I don't collect much purple so I went thru' some swap squares. In the Baseball Swap collection there are some

1/2 square triangles left over from other projects. That's it! This is going to be a HST pattern of some kind, and as each HST has a matching half, we now have an I-Spy quilt for a youngster. In pinks and purples. And that's how most of my inspiration happens, it comes looking for me.

Ragmop/Sandy--who looks at most quilts and figures "I can make that... but do I want to?" ;-)

Not hard work to understand you at all, Nicoletta. Your English is so good. If you want to make a quilt to remind you of Normandy, but not pictorial, have you thought perhaps of Storm at Sea? You could make pieces of colour represent the cliffs, the sea and the sky, the flowers and the sunset - all by placement of colour. The pattern looks complicated, but with clear instructions, and doing it step by step, it really isn't difficult - and you did say you wanted to try something just a little harder now >g< You could look up the name and see what examples you can find online. Just a thought. . In message , pomodoro writes

From the newsgroup! ;)

Books, magazines, catalogues, fabrics... All of 'em.

-- Anita --

Inspiration usually finds me....I have wayyyy too many ideas for one lifetime already!=20

-Irene

-------------- You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.=20

--Mae West=20

--------------

Thanks Patti... Mmmm interesting ... storm at sea.. Yes, I know the block. It's a great idea!! Maybe with several tones of blue,...

Grazie e ciao Nicoletta (tomata)

Several years ago, my husband and I visited Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. While we were in that part of the U.S., I shopped for fabrics in colors that reminded me of the scenery in those places. I used them to make a quilt in the Jewel Box pattern. My background fabric looks a bit like sand. There is a picture of my quilt at You can see the block, the directions, and some examples at

Julia in MN

Howdy! Lovely! I like the way your site is set up, plenty of info and great pics.

Btw, except for that mirror, we had a waterbed like that. (still have many more flat sheets than fitted )

Ragmop/Sandy--touring the background in the pics, too ;-)