Quilt Inspiration - from clip art!



This is the altar cloth that resulted from clip art inspiration - shown here in my living room!  



This little thumbnail sketch was a piece of clip art, seen in a church bulletin years ago.  We were back home in Minnesota, in my tiny home church - one of those cute little white churches, with a green steeple, like on a Christmas card? Yes, that's my home church - where we were married, actually.  If you use every inch, you can seat maybe 120 people.

St. Paul's United Church of Christ
Delano Minnesota

Anyway, I loved the beauty and simplicity of this sketch, and thought it would make a great design for a quilted altar cloth - and planned then and there to make an entire matching set for the church, as a memorial for my parents.  They were long-time, very active members, and I thought it would be a fitting tribute.  You see the altar cloth above.



Companion piece made for the pulpit.  I also made a matching stole for the minister.

Then I decided to make a similar set of paraments for my current church, First United Methodist of Downers Grove, IL (below).

An artist friend, Janine Johnson, modified the original design a bit, making it more appropriate for our church.  I pieced the background in a brick design, using different beige fabrics, to suggest the bricks on our church. Sorry I don't have a close-up shot.

Pulpit and altar pieces - don't the autumn floral arrangements look stunning alongside them?

Georgia Inspiration, Easter Dinner

Quilt inspiration comes from a variety of sources - and what's more gorgeous than a Georgia O'Keefe painting?
This is a notecard that I received a long time ago, from my aunt Phyllis.  I loved the color scheme, and thought it would be fun to try to create a quilt with this scheme.

This is the result - I used the bowtie block, with black ties, and Georgia's colors for the background.  Gives an old-fashioned black a modern, clean look.

Easter dinner was pretty traditional this year - spiral-sliced ham, glazed carrots, crescent rolls (better not skip them!), and a new recipe this year - the star of the show - 

Four cheese scalloped potatoes!  You can find the recipe here.  This is a fabulous, but pretty easy recipe - my favorite kind. You start them on the stove top and finish them in the oven.  These were a huge hit, and will definitely make a repeat appearance.  Enjoy!

Quilt Inspiration in a Kleenex Box?

I've been preparing for a quilt talk on the topic of Inspiration, and how you never know where it comes from.  

Have you ever noticed the beautiful designs found on...Kleenex boxes???

Not only did I notice - and designed a quilt's color scheme around it - 

 but I am so nerdy, I actually saved the box! how nerdy am I?!

 Did you see "You've Got Mail"?  And didn't you love Kathleen Kelly's apartment? I of course noticed the lovely pieced quilt on her bed - I especially loved the on-point setting, and the soft-toned pastel color scheme.

The result? Voila - a lovely pieced single-wedding ring quilt, inspired by a movie quilt prop and a Kleenex box!

Single Wedding Ring, made for Hannah, and now residing on our guest room bed. 

What inspires me?

The amazing and talented Victoria, over at 15 Minutes Play has dubbed this as Inspiration Week. All week long, fellow quilters have been posting what it is that inspires them to create!

As a matter of fact, I posted about one of my projects yesterday!

A big source of inspiration for me is people - people that I know and love. This is about our friend, John.

John calls himself Gypsy John when he is performing at open mics around the area. Word has it that he might even be thinking about making a cd soon - cool!

Well, over a year ago, John had a terrible motorcycle accident. He was in the hospital a long time, and his road to recovery was looking difficult.

John did recover - fully! He has been at home for over a year, he is back at work, and performing too!

We were given these t-shirts at his recent backyard music festival/birthday party. As soon as I felt the shirt in my hands, I knew I wanted to make a quilt out of it.

I went to pull fabrics that said "John" to me, something like shirting plaids and the like. I was surprised to have quite a few in my stash! But then, what to do with them?


Enter another wonderful quilter who I have met in blogland - Mary over at fiberliscious.
She was posting about one of her projects, and I just LOVED all of her stripped fabric rectangles. I knew instantly I wanted to use this techique for my Gypsy John quilt.

Stay tuned for the outcome!