What inspires you??

What inspires you to quilt?? is it the fabric, the person you are creating for? a pattern seen ? a color desired? a need to be fulfilled?? for me I would say that all are true. This past weekend it was a pair of linen/cotton curtains. Strange but true.

On Friday I went yardsaling and for $3 I bought a pair of tan and white striped linen curtains. They were the launching point for me- backers for skirts that I wanted to repurpose into quilts. I loved the print on the fabric yet the skirts that they formed no longer fit. I have deconstructed the skirts and they were awaiting more linen to use to turn them into quilt. This weekend's find was the starting point.

The first quilt I began was made up as I went- I found co-ordinating fabric, measured the stripes, planning to match them front and back and began to cut. After all the wide stripes were cut out I randomly cut lengths and stitched them together. Only then did i realize that I failed to notice that the ruler i was using was a 5" not a6" ruler, so the stripes were 4 3/4 not 5 3/4. Oops. opportunity for design adaption- thus entered the green stripes- I think an improvement.

After finishing this top I thought about how the other linen fabric should be used. I have been enjoying creating geometic based quilts and then softening them with quilting lines, so I decided to do that again. This time I drew up my plan on paper with pencil and markers. Then detailed it on graph paper, measured out the pieces, made a cutting chart and began to construct the squares. In the midst of all this I realized that my main fabric is not of great quality and if I am going to do the work to make this a good quilt I needed to shop for another selection- today's task.

This weekend I was restitching my son's 17 yr old blanket. It has been covered once and is again threadbare- oh that I had vision 17 yrs ago of the love that would be attached to t his gift of love. NOTE- use the best fabric you can, because the quilts may get more attention than you ever can imagine. The difference in the fabric's ability to endure is the starting quality.

Here are some starter pictures of what is in the works.