The Way of Inspiration

When I saw Jayne/Twiggy & Opal's quilt-in-progress pop up in my Instagram feed the other day, I did a double take!! I stopped to take a better look, and oh yeah, it was so reminiscent of my own Monochrome. Being so, of course I loved it, and naively commented, "Love this! I made something similar but different...." Duh. And that's when Jayne told me, "@aquilterstable your quilt was what inspired me! I love what you did!"

Well then! Check out Jayne's post about her now-finished Threads. You need to see it close up! From here you can see some similarity to Monochrome, pictured below, but of course Jayne made it her own by tweaking the improv under the influence technique and adding in bits of color. It's up close, though, that you also see she added color through her quilting. Marvelous.

I came oh so close to adding color in my quilting of Monochrome, but in the end, obviously stuck with the neutrals. And I love it. But even more, I enjoy the two takes, Jayne's and mine, similar but different. I love how inspiration does that - is such a personal thing, and becomes something new.

Of course, my own inspiration for Monochrome came after I made Room Temp during a class with Krista/Poppyprint. I was so taken with the improv under the influence technique, that I finished my version pronto, and then wondered, "what next?"

Here is Krista/Poppyprint's own original Improv Under the Influence quilt. I know I've traveled 'backwards' in this post, but isn't it great how the inspiration flows . . . tweaking as it goes, according to each person's vision, yet having similar elements that tie them together.

 

It really is something, isn't it?

From Whence Inspiration Comes

When I revealed my "Still Swooning" mini last week, there were many comments on the quilting.

The thing is, the quilting was easy-peasy, and as I mentioned then, it was all inspired by this little corner-post.

I find when I think about the quilting for any of my projects, I look first at the project itself to see if it can inspire me. And this one certainly did. Just for fun, I thought I'd share my process on this mini - just to show you how simple it can really be!

This 3x18" ruler and my hera marker were all the tools I needed. I laid my ruler down and marked a line around the ruler as shown.

Then I slid the ruler down to extend that one long line on the right side of the 'U'.

As you can see, I echo-quilted within the 'U', and along the left-hand sides of my original markings, which resulted in a fun zig-zag pattern that filled the left side of the quilt. I liked that so much, I reset my ruler to the right, off-setting it a bit from the original, and marked again.

I filled in the second "U" and then went for a third, this time sliding my ruler up a bit to offset this "U" from the other 2. From there, I just filled in the third "U" and then echo-stitched to the right, to fill in the rest of the quilt with more zig-zag.

See how easy that was? Not too taxing, but something fun and unique for this particular project.

I'm kind of fond of how your eye dances around the movement caused by the quilting. 

So tell me - what inspires you when it comes to quilting designs - ? Inquiring minds want to know.

Inspiration

Want some major patchwork and quilting inspiration? Check out the Patchwork & Quilting Blog List  rpq (Red Pepper Quilts). Feel free to share what inspiration you find there!