Where do you find your inspiration for quilts? There are so many places around to find inspiration – magazines, pictures, experiences, nature, feelings, songs, stories, poems, literature, art. Then there are the places to store such inspiration – Facebook groups, websites, UKQU, Instagram, Pinterest, computer, screenshots, folders. I have a feeling that it is impossible to create all the ideas that we have. I have notebooks filled with ideas, and I would love to get round to realising these ideas. I hope that this will be the first of a series of blog posts about inspiration for quilts, and how to realise these ideas.
Magazines are a great source of inspiration – we see pictures of quilts, and want to make them. Some of us can see the pattern and then visualise the pattern in the colours we want to use. There are times when following a pattern is not enough for us – we want more, we are inspired to create something truly original – something that is more than using different fabrics, or changing the size.
This month I want to tell you about a pair of quilts (wall hangings really) that I made, and the inspiration for them. I found the inspiration in the Quilting Arts magazine – it was in 2006, Winter Issue #24. There was an article on p62, called “The Making of an Art Quilt” which was followed by “What’s in a name?” a Creative Art Quilt Challenge on p67. The challenge was posed to take a well-known saying, and make a quilt from it. The article gave four sayings to choose from:
“The Eye of The Storm” , “A Leap of Faith” , “Seeing is Believing” , “The Devil is in the Details”, and then continued to give guidance as to how to approach the design process.
The next stage was to list all the thoughts and ideas that occur to you when thinking of the saying – the words, the colours, textures. I chose the phrase “Seeing is Believing” – as I had more ideas about this saying than I had about any others. My ideas fell into two main groups – one being that of faith, and the other being all the things that we believe but can’t see. This second group included the other senses, and also about the loss of sight, how our other senses can be enhanced. I came up with a list of many words: taste, sight, sound, music, feel, touch, smell, radiation, love, biohazard, wind, faith, optical illusions, can we believe all we see? I then did some research into different religions – finding the religious symbols that are used by different faiths, and the names that are used for God / the Supreme Being of the different faiths and religions. I wrote about these quilts soon after I made them, in a blog I created to share my quilting works with others – you can find more about these quilt on the blog by clicking here. Do have a look at the blog, because it gives more details about the reasons I chose the symbols I did.
I had so many ideas, I had to split the ideas into two groups, having Faith in the form of Religion as one quilt, and then the other quilt encompassing the other ideas. The background for both quilts was my attempt to replicate an optical illusion: the illusion is that the wall appears to have wonky rows. I’m not sure that I entirely managed to re-create this, but I had a go – but not by making the rows deliberately wonky! the reason for having an optical illusion as a background is that it is something that you can see – but can you trust what your eyes are showing you? Optical illusions are your eyes playing tricks on you, so you can’t believe all you can see.
The Faith in Religion quilt was easier to add symbols to, as there are (and were) numerous pictures to use from the internet. The challenge was in the cutting of the applique pieces, and not ruining the shape. The hardest part of the other quilt was realising the ideas. Would I be able to make an eye that looked like an eye? How would I represent music? Luckily, the internet came to my rescue once again. I searched for pictures of eyes, a tongue, hands, ears – and used them to create the images. I traced the images, and used fabric pens to put in details for the ears, tongue and hand.
These two quilts challenged me in quite different ways. I extended my knowledge of different faiths, religions and their symbols. I learned about the different names that are used for the Supreme Being, and I also learned how to use fabric marker pens to enhance my applique pieces. I experimented with ‘destroying’ part of the quilt (as can be seen in the photo above with the stigmata – and that is directly linked to Thomas, who doubted, and had to see to believe) and I had lots of fun in using Angelina and Crystallina fibres to create the eyes – and using machine embroidery to add details to the eyes. If you are wondering why there are two eyes – one represents those people with eyesight problems, who experience their world through their other senses, and the other represents those who have good eyesight, but don’t really ‘see’ things. I was also challenged by the quilting of the quilts – trying to show the wind was not easy, and I was a newbie at free machine quilting at the time.
These are two quilts I am proud of (I am proud of most of my creations, but I feel that these two really have something to say) – I took a phrase and made two quilts to depict the phrase – calling into question the veracity of the saying. I challenged myself in so many aspects of the construction, and I was even approached by someone in America to use a picture of one of these quilts in some promotional material for an exhibition (I don’t know if it ever happened – but I was thrilled to be asked!) – the comment can be seen on the blog post that I have mentioned above.
I thought that I may end this post by talking of a few other places I had found ideas, but I’ve decided to leave this for another post. Instead, I would like readers to add their own ideas for phrases or sayings that inspire you, and even to share the works that you have created from these phrases or sayings. I look forward to seeing what you some up with!
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