Inspiring books

I've been building away at my towers of owls &, because I am a fickle quilter, getting a little bored with them.

I looked around my sewing room & pulled out a pair of my favorite books by Cherie House: City Quilts & Urban Quilts.

They are both pattern books, but Ms. House also writes about the process that went into creating her quilts. They are simple, elegant & really speak to me -- I love their graphic nature. She encourages looking at our surroundings & using the things we see everyday as inspiration for our patchwork.  I am pretty sure it was her voice in my head when I made my Downtown Foley's quilt. On this particular trip through her books, City Sky caught my eye. It looked like the perfect thing for all those early 1990s strips that had recently bubbled to the surface.

So, shifting gears, off I went, making a brand-new, 20-year-old quilt!

Let me be the first to say it -- this quilt is a little muddy & dull. The sky in my Gathering Storm quilt is what you might see before a hurricane -- the perfect thing as we are just a week away from the beginning of this year's season.

A confluence of inspiration

Inspiration 1:
Were you lucky enough to see the Folk Art Museum's exhibit of red & white quilts? I was not so fortunate, but I pored over the internet images of those who did see it & shared their images online. It was called "Infinite Variety", was held at the Armory in New York City & represented one woman's collection of 650 (!) red & white quilts.

Inspiration 2:
I was poking around in my stash & pulled out several red prints. Then I pulled out a few more, was thinking, hmmm, red & white quilt, Infinite Variety-style. But I had quite a few quilt balls in the air, so I stashed the reds back in my stash.

Inspiration 3:
The International Quilt Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary this year -- their *Ruby* Anniversary. So they put out a call for red & white quilts -- old & new -- for display.

Hey, I'm going to make a red & white quilt!

I pulled a wide age range of cherry-red prints -- old calicos, novelties, gingham, dots, contemporary prints -- then got out my Idea Book & found a sketch I made of sparse & randomly placed bowtie blocks. I decided I wanted the look of the traditional block, with one piece of fabric making up the knot -- but without having to set in seams, so I made a dimensional bowtie using this tutorial. I quilted it with my fave wiggly walking foot stitch (last time, I promise (at least for a while)). I really love this quilt, it is so cheery!

I am concerned that after the first wash, I'll have a red & pink quilt. I'll use hands-full of Color Catchers, but do you have any other suggestions? I've read of using Dawn dish soap to set dye.

Wither inspiration?

From where might my next quilt come? Not that I need to add to my Play Load, but I always keep my eyes open for new ideas.

There is the wall at a public restroom,



a garage door,






a silver and brown tree trunk,






the fence around a playground,



leaded windows in a church,



or irrigated fields in West Texas.



Then I heard a mockingbird singing his spring song--how might that be interpreted in fabric!?!

Fluid Dynamics

I know we have all seen this. Whenever we sew a long strip of something, anything--a pant leg, a curtain panel, any kind of strip piecing--the fabric falls from the sewing machine in these accordion folds. I am never not delighted by them! Perhaps there is a physicist or a materials engineer or a fluid dynamisist out there who can explain it to me.