Inspirations

 Where do you find inspiration for your quilts?

The weekend was filled with preparing four tops to take to Terri Trotter, my favorite machine quilter.  Because I wasn't actually working on a new piece, I spent the evenings looking through Etsy at antique quilts for inspiration.  It's one of my favorite ways to find ideas for using up my quilt stash. 

I'm pretty much a mediocre quilter...I'm very honest about this even when I do speaking engagements.  That comment prompted my neighbor to give me a t-shirt that reads:

World's Okayest Quilter

So I found two quilts that used striped fabric and one with plaid fabric that made me stop and study them.  Fabrics like stripes and plaids tend to stop me in my tracks.  I'm always afraid the direction will be wrong.

I had never thought of using stripes or plaids as an alternative block:

Or using it as a sashing for the whole quilt:

To me the alternate blocks detract from the lemoyne stars.

The striped sashing however, even though it visually pops out at me is more acceptable, I even like it.  Maybe because I'm in love with the fabric?

The quilt I found most interesting was this plaid quilt described as a "cutter quilt".  I won't bore you with my rant on cutting up old quilts.  Let's just be honest and suggest that the "cutter" is actually the vendor.  Still the pieces interested me.

Two plaid fabrics were used to compile the quilt.  Intriguing!  But it works!  The background fabric is a pastel plaid that is barely discernible:

"See," I told myself, "this maker didn't worry about matching up the plaids!"

I did find one quilt that gave me real inspiration!

I'm thinking about reversing the colors on this 19th century quilt and making green stars with a red border for a Christmas quilt.  I've had some green with small red dots reproduction for ever so long and this would be the perfect quilt to make.  This week I will measure how much of the green I have to see what size quilt I can make!

Where do you find inspiration?

Have a safe and happy day!