Inspirations For Creativity & Finding Your Ugly Fabric!

For me inspirations comes from the fabric and color.
I may have a very very vague idea of what I will create.
Once I start I let the fabric tell me what to do.
This is nothing new for me as I have worked this way since I started sewing clothing way back when. For clothing the hand of the fabric was another very important consideration.
At first my quilts were traditional designs but even then the fabric had to speak to me.
Currently the fabric has to carry on a conversation with the other ones in the project. This has been extremely evident in “And So It Begins” where I had a glimmer of an idea and spent a lot of time playing with the fabrics in my collection of hand dyed fabric, yet nothing gelled until I added a large piece of printed fabric.


I always told my students every quilt needs an ugly....in other words it has to be different enough to add interest to the work. This is my ugly in this quilt.

That was all it took and this ugly fabric was right at hand in my hand dyed options.
Of course this means I go through a lot of fabrics I own and take a lot out of their respective storage places.
The fact that I have a large collection of fabrics is very important to me as it gives me possibilities I could not have with a meager amount of fabrics.
Even the backing fabric has to past muster for me to use it. My recent quilts have facings and casings, rather than bindings, which mean I need a lot more of that backing fabric.
In the few instances where I am binding a quilt the binding fabric also is an important choice.
When I finish creating it means there are a lot of fabrics to put away that didn’t make the cut….unless they are in the running for the next one!