Over the holidays and the last couple of weekends I had a bit of spare time, so went for a wander around a well known stuff shop. In our home it’s actually known as Stuff Shop, even though it sells clothing too. Mostly we shop for the stuff.
It struck me as I was wandering around, for once without one of the grandchildren with me or husband wanting to look at jackets .. none of which he ever buys, about the abundance of colour and pattern. [He claims he is not keen on shopping but is a devil to drag away from the shops when he does. And, whilst I think about it, manages to come away with something for him whilst claiming I am always shopping! What’s all that about.]
Anyway, enough of the moaning [how many of us find this is the case though]. What struck me was the influence our hobby has on current fashions. Or is it the other way around? Like this cushion .. I can see a lovely scrappy style quilt in the pattern and the colours are great too.
This got me thinking, especially when these two doormats popped up. I took part in a block swop a couple of years past, and I imagine many reading this will have joined in, to create the cross in shades of blue. I helped collating them for Juliet and sent them all out – a happy afternoon spent with two friends and a rather nice bottle of wine. We were actually surprised any of the blocks reached their new homes at the time.
I changed mine and made a non-swop block swop quilt out of it, adding other colours and using it to practice FMQ, but this doormat reminds me very much of it. I have always called it the non-swop block swop quilt as I could not bring myself to part with the blocks once I had made them so kept them myself. Do you name your own quilts?
The other mat seems very much a clamshell design — which relates back to both quilting and piecing in different guises doesn’t it and in fact there are templates for cutting these out, so I would say it’s the craft that’s influencing the design here.
By now I had quite forgotten the reason I was in the shop! Salt! .. that’s what I had forgotten to pick up in my main supermarket shop earlier, and I knew they often had the seasalt twisty things here which I did manage to pick up, plus a new catbed for Tilly, which she spends most of her time now peering out of. For no reason whatsover here she is, but then, look at the pattern. Could that be a stitch guide maybe? Or am I taking this too far now?
Moving along I started to notice the way in which Eastern fashions are influencing patterns, Japan and India for example, and starting to wonder whether the things we know in fabric, like the Moda design Shibori for example, influenced the crockery and other things I was seeing on the shelves. Maybe it’s just today’s fashion and next week will be totally different. By the way, the thread there in the dish was nothing to do with me, but I did remove it as I walked past!
Designs were now leaping out at me down every aisle
There are so many patterns, both patchwork and quilting designs, out there in our everyday life – and I have seen several giraffes and other African animal panels too. The booklet at the bottom is now in my handbag to record things I like .. after all, there’s not much point in visiting a shop and coming away without something pretty for yourself is there?
What influences your design ideas?
Thank goodness the weather was so bad…or I would have been off down the “stuff shop” fast as lightning after seeing all these lovely patterns.