Hotel Inspirations

This weekend we have been in Abilene, Texas for my sweet Mother-In-Law’s funeral. We always stay at the same hotel…..a Holiday Inn Express and, once again, I was struck with inspiration while I was there.

When we were here 2 years ago, I took a photo of this wallpaper and mused how much fun I could have with this design…..

On this trip, they had changed some of the artwork and I was impressed to find these two photos in our room……

Did they know that a quilter was staying here???

In the dining area they had this picture…..

Can you say English Paper Piecing????

Finally, they had this fun wood piece……

SO much inspiration and not a piece of fabric in sight…..

Woodpile Inspirations…..

Before I get to the inspiration, I have made a decision to GIVE AWAY the “Crumbs for the Geese” pattern to anyone who subscribes to my mailing list. You can do that on the right column of this post or by clicking HERE.

NOW……onto the design……

Back in December, I shared a photo of a Cord of Wood and the quilt design that had spring from that photo…..

Then earlier this month, I described an amazing set of hand-dyed fabrics that I bought.

Now it was time to merge these two!!

As I was ironing all of the hand-dyed fabrics, I kept thinking about this pattern and decided that it might be gorgeous to do in blues with touches of yellow!!

I started out by cutting a LOT of 1.5-inch strips…..

Have you ever used a barbell to keep your ruler from sliding?? Try it some time….it really works and you get some exercise at the same time!!

Next I did a lot of sewing, sub-cutting and re-sewing to get it to this stage…..

WOW… I REALLY like those colors!!

Next was making the accent blocks, using paper piecing…..

….and then laying the whole thing out……

I tried flipping some of the triangle sets around……

But all I could see here were Gator mouths!!

I added an orange-ish border…..the only fabric that is not hand-dyed……

…..and voila….this idea has moved from paper to fabric!!!

I am contemplating what type of quilting to add and can’t wait to see it finished.

I am also debating about turning this into a pattern but haven’t made that decision for sure. What do you think…..is this pattern worthy???

An Old Inspiration

Back in the olden days…maybe the 1990’s…… we didn’t have instant access to all of these wonderful patterns, designs and ideas. And the thought of writing a guild newsletter and having it appear only online was out of the question!!

So, back then I was in charge of our guild’s monthly newsletter which was pasted up, photocopied and mailed each month. I was always looking for fun designs and photos that I could use as fillers or to just jazz the content up a bit.

To that end, I spent a great amount of time combing books, newspapers, and websites looking for these simple designs. I have NO idea where this particular design came from but it has always appealed to me for a quilt pattern…..

When I look at it, I see shades of the Southwest US and also of Italy or another exotic country. Could I possibly want more?

I love the mixture of architecture, birds and sunshine….who knows, maybe I will add it to my growing “to do someday” list!!

Hope you are having a wonderful creative Tuesday!!

Hand-dyed Heaven

These past two weeks have put me in “hand-dyed Heaven”!!

One of my friends has a reputation for making marvelous hand-dyes!! Due to health reasons, she decided to get rid of most of her fabric and I was excited to be able to purchase the majority of her hand-dyes.

After I had washed and dried them, I started wondering exactly WHAT HAD I DONE…..