Influence & Inspiration

Last week when I was working on the aqua & teal baby quilt I felt the need to start another project. You know, quilter's ADD and the pull of something new and different. I spent some time playing with my stash and pulled out some fabrics that could maybe be the start of something. Hmm...

The stripes are precut ~8" pieces. They came from the stash of a late friend several years ago. I always liked the stripe, but never did anything with these pieces. The yellow paisley came from a shop in Arizona when I was out there visiting several years ago. It's only a fat quarter, but I like the way it complements the stripe. The black floral, 1/2 yard also from a few years ago, has all the same colors and the same "mood" so it harmonizes with the others. Hmm...

At a guild meeting last week we were talking about "who or what has most influenced your quilting." Many people mentioned their mother or grandmother, a lot mentioned the guild or quilter groups, and a few including me also mentioned blogs. (This is an older group, traditional, mostly not as connected with the on-line quiltiverse.) I am definitely inspired by what I see from the blogs I follow, modern, traditional, in between, or whatever.

One of the blogs I follow is Wanda over at Exuberant Color. She works in batiks, Kaffe Fasset and similar prints, and hand-dyes. Her eye for color and design is unique and well developed, and she shows a lot of in-progress design wall photos where she moves colors or blocks around to get the effect she wants, Her results are amazing. Lush, beautiful, full of color and movement. Her blog is well named.

Wanda is currently working on a Bento Box variation. Hmm, could my fabric group work in a Bento Box design?

My friend Lois is known for her bold and colorful quilts - a riot of color. She mixes a lot of black & white prints with all her color, too. She says some people tell her they can't look at her quilts, they're so busy & colorful. I love her quilts. They're always so cheerful and energetic! She doesn't have a blog so I can't show you. Anyway, what if I take a page from Lois's book and add some black & white prints to the fabrics I've pulled, and bring in some of the colors from the prints? 

Let's give this a try. It's only fabric and it's all from stash so I might as well use it. I'll need some starter blocks that read mostly light, and some that read mostly dark. Here are the light ones.

Now for some dark ones. Here they are in work, ready for the outside rounds to be added.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, no particular size or recipient in mind. I'll finish the dark starter blocks, then figure it out from there. I'm sure someone or something will influence or inspire me.

I want to send a big thank you to all the bloggers who share their work. Thank you for all the inspiration and for opening my eyes to all the possibilities for design. Thank you for the effort you put into blogging so others can see what you're creating. Thanks also for the entertainment as I sip my coffee each morning!

(I'm not on Instagram but I'm sure there's plenty more inspiration there, too)

Linking up with Patchwork Times and Em's Scrapbag