What Inspires Me

To Start A New Quilt?

My quilting career began with this quilt, Young Reader. When I started this quilt, other than being confident that I could learn how, I knew nothing about sewing. And it shows.









I started quilting about 10 years ago. How did that happen? What inspired me to start quilting? That's a good question but not one I'm going to answer today. Instead I'd like to consider why I'm still a quilter. What inspires me, or anyone else for that matter, to start yet another quilt?

There are a lot of reasons to start a quilt. I'm only going to write about 3 of them.

SEEING SOMETHING WONDERFUL

It can happen any time. It might be at a quilt show, or while I'm reading a quilt magazine, or when I'm surfing quilt blogs on the internet. I see a quilt that sends a thrill of delight through me. I am inspired. I want to make something as good as that. I want something just as beautiful, just as wonderful. Something that I made and that I can call my own.

My wife showed me a quilt block that made secondary patterns and I was inspired. I wanted to design blocks that would do that. The result was my Alberta series of quilts. This is one of them, Patricia/Ribbons.








SEEING SOMETHING AWFUL

Awful is too strong a word for what I really mean but it will have to do until I think of a better one. There are times when I see a quilt and I think - I can do better than that. It may or may not be true. But that doesn't matter. Having thought that I can do better, I need to prove it. I need to test myself. I am inspired to try something new.

After I finished Young Reader, I knew I could do better so I made a second quilt, Cliff Swallow.












HAVING A DEADLINE

Sometimes I need a deadline staring me in the face before I get started. This is not the most glamorous of inspirations, but I'll bet that it's a common one. And it can't be a soft deadline. It can't be that I would like to get this sewn by a week from Friday, but if it's not done, then Monday will do, or even the next Friday. It has to be that I must get this done by a week from Friday or it will be too late and the world as it is presently constituted will cease to exist.

I contracted with C&T Publishing to write my book Designing Quilts Is Easy! That meant I had to design and sew a lot of quilts in a hurry. Lac Des Arcs was one of them.










How about you? What inspires you to start a quilt? You can leave a comment below. Or if you'd rather write in your blog, let me know and I'll link to it; my email is tuxedoparkdesign@shaw.ca.

More Inspirations

If you want to know more about what inspires quilters to start quilts, go to any of the following blogs:

Judy Butcher of Virtual Quilter

"I work away at a design, and realise that I have fabrics in my stash which have been waiting for this design."

Angie Padilla

"I actually live off my designs, I would have to say the driving force behind most of them is an attempt to delight our subscribers."


Tonya of Hillbilly Handiworks

"I love to make quilts that I can learn from."

Caroll Drudy of Attic Window Quilt Shop

"I needed to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t eat cookies from the time I got home from work until I went to bed."

Tennye of Little Star Quilts

"I like surprising people and doing something new."

Elsie Montgomery of Elsie Quilts

"It seems that most quilts begin because of a challenge."