Capturing Inspiration


Just because I was on vacation, it doesn't mean I wasn't thinking about quilts. 

Confession: I brought some hand sewing with me, but it never left the bag.

When you are open to it, inspiration is everywhere. Even my daughters were getting in on it. They pointed out textures and colours that would make a good quilt. 

I try to capture all inspiration one way or another when I see something interesting. Sometimes I sketch it out. Just a rough doodle and a few notes. I put date and location on the sketch that act as a trigger for my memory. Quite often I take a picture. It doesn't have to be a perfect picture, if the colour is what matters then who cares if the focus isn't perfect. My cell phone - which does not have a good camera on it - is filled with images that serve as inspiration scrap book.

It is pretty much impossible that I will make all the quilts that these inspiration images conjure, but it is nice to have a bank of concepts. You never know when the right fabric will appear for one idea, or you need a quick quilt and can't decide what to make. Then there are the times where you just HAVE to make something because the inspiration is too strong. I don't know anything about that...

Here are the images from my trip that may or may not get translated into a quilt one day.


Texture, all about texture.


Colour and stripes! Plus that age and fraying.


Light and texture. This is the sun through my hat.


My daughter loved the woven effect of this palm. Me too.


Blue.


Energy and colour contrasts.


This may be the start of a mild pink and white colour obsession.


Shape and line.


Curves. Simplicity.

Vacation Books (Weekend Reads)



Time for a bit of a vacation. In my perfect world I would stay at home - a clean home - and sew for weeks on end with only myself to feed. This would indeed be a break. But my Hubby wants us, and rightly so, to take a real vacation from our lives. That means no sewing and writing for me and no Blackberry for him.

(Yeah, we'll see how long either of us last.)

So I've collected a few books for some uninterrupted afternoons. Maybe I'll actually finish a novel or two, instead of it taking me 6 months of reading five minutes a day before I fall asleep, book in hand and drool on the corner of my mouth.

If you've got any favourite vacation read suggestions, I'll take them.


In other news, today we tackled the first project in my new basement studio. It isn't quite done yet, but it is clean and is now home to a cutting table and sofa bed. The girls and I made a Christmas present and everything about it was perfect, right down to their erratic hand stitches. Just perfect.

And ready for a vacation.

Happy Holidays to all of you, we'll see you in January!

They Never Stop


Gee, maybe I should write a book about scrap quilts?


(This is the top of a queen size bed, for reference.)

I started looking through my bags of scraps this morning, all in search of one particular fabric for a stocking I started. After getting through 2 unsorted bags from recent work (yes, I don't always listen to my own advice) I remembered that I'd used it. Sigh.

Well, no time like the present to enlist my 4 year old in a colour game.