31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

Well, here we are two thirds of the way through October and the Write 31 Days challenge. And I have to admit to being a little blogged out this morning. Writing everyday beyond October will not be for me. I long to get back to spending a larger proportion of my time sewing. This attitude probably isn’t being helped by the fact that I am itching to turn some of the ideas that have popped up in this series into real quilts! Where to start!!!?

Anyway, because I am feeling a little done with generating ideas, I paused today and reflected on what other topics are relevant to my challenge. And I think it might be time to turn to some examples of quilts I own and look at the ideas that inspired them. Something less theoretical and more tangible. I can do this now that we are home again and back into routine. Yay!!

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 21

It doesn’t hurt to get jaded sometimes….. jade is a very pretty colour after all! 🙂 And one of the prettiest quilts I have been given is also the only quilt I own made specifically for me, by someone other than me. It is dark jade and rainbow. Here is my birthday gift from a while back from a beautiful friend, Susan.

Susan is one of the friends I have made through quilting, and is an amazing wizard with colour. If I ever need colour advise, Susan will always have an idea tucked away that will help me out.

How one batik inspired a whole quilt

Let me tell you how this quilt came to be…. Susan bought a small piece of the rainbow lotus batik as an impulse purchase simply because she loved it. That seems like a great reason to me!

But she didn’t want it to end up in stash, so she took the dominant lotus shape from the batik pattern and turned it into an appliqué shape.

She secured the appliqués with a small zigzag in clear thread. The stitching is nearly invisible. Some shuffling of the squares, including some sneaky discussions with me about the layout, ensued. And the blocks were stitched together lickety-split.

And she ended up with the quilt that now has pride of place in my dining room.  🙂 This precious quilt of love would be in my sewing room, but there is very little wall space in there with 2 walls that are mostly windows and the third wall actually being mostly double doors.

So that is the story of the inspiration behind the lotus batik quilt. Simple, but enormously effective. Thank you, dear Susan!!

Have you used a fabric as the starting point for a quilt like this? If so, I’d love to know. 

You could also extend this idea to generate quilting designs. Big, edge-to-edge lotuses would be lots of fun. 

And speaking of fun –  if you have missed any of my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration series you can find the up-to-date list of links at the bottom of the first post.

Hope to see you again tomorrow!