One of the questions I’m most often asked is “Where do you get your inspiration?”

My short answer?  ”Everywhere.”

That’s usually not the answer people are looking for.  They want specifics, like publication name, date, and page number, so they can see it too.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

I don’t rely on any one source for inspiration, as I don’t want to be too heavily influenced by any one artist, quiltmaker, or writer.  I want my work to be uniquely my own, taking inspiration from the corner bakery, blooming Tulip Magnolia, sunset over the Appalachians, and smiles on my beautiful children’s faces, as only I see them.  My quilts are an expression of the beauty I see in everyday life.

I do capture much of that beauty in my journals, so I can refer back to it later.  That’s where photographs, magazine images, fabric swatch exercises, and sketches come to live and gather and multiply into stunning quilts.

I’m truly amazed every time I sit down to design a quilt.  I never run out of ideas, color palettes, or possibilities.  I’ve heard other writers complain of writer’s block, but that was never a luxury I allowed myself.  I continued writing, pushing through the fear of “this sounds awful” to some really great stuff.  That doesn’t happen when I design a quilt.  It’s all joy.  Playing with color, shape, and fabric is as good as it gets.

Inspired by the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War in 2011, this table runner gets its name from a battlefield near my home in north Georgia. The red-violet, mustard-yellow, and yellow-green reproduction fabrics give an historical feel to blocks that look like they’d be right at home in Civil War times. I’m not a quilt history expert; rather, I’m inspired by that period of history to create a project that commemorates our history in a muted, dull color palette.

Kennesaw Mountain Pattern Update:  $5.95 (free to subscribers – keep reading!) Add to Cart

If you can’t get to the quilt shop to select your own fabrics, no worries.  I’m offering a Kennesaw Mountain kit as well.  It’s best to choose your own fabrics for your color palettes, but we all have those times when life gets too busy and we just can’t get to it.  I’d rather you be able to do the lesson with a kit than not at all.

Kennesaw Mountain Kit:  $21.95 Add to Cart

Learn by Doing

March’s featured color is red-violet, and while most people think of fuschia, magenta, and raspberry, I chose a more elegant and historical palette.

The key to contributing a mood to a quilt is by orchestrating the intensity, or how bright, the colors are.  A child’s quilt relies on high-intensity, bright fabrics to convey an energetic, playful mood; reproduction quilts rely on duller, muted intensity fabrics to create an aged, historical feel.

Learn New Techniques

You’ll learn how to identify the dull fabrics in your stash by making your own intensity wheel, and selecting just the right fabrics for Kennesaw Mountain.

Forget quilt as desired!  I’ve included quilting designs, the very ones I used in my own project, based on simple quilting women of Civil War times would have included in their own quilt.  Color-0f-the-Month subscribers are also enjoying our weekly chats and videos, and are looking forward to a new video on how to do freemotion quilting next month.

Subscribe to the Pattern Series

Kennesaw Mountain pattern update is $5.95, and includes all instructions for making the Simple Blessings and Games, Music, & Knitting blocks.  You’ll need the master January Winter Bird pattern for instructions and dimensions on making the whole table runner.

If you’d like to subscribe to the table runner pattern series for the entire year, I’m offering a special price of $$18.95.  Here’s what’s included:

• save 55% off the full price
• get 12 original table runner designs
• learn a new color palette and quilting technique each month
• receive early access to the patterns, automatically delivered to your inbox, before I publish it on my website
• get member’s-only access to a special forum where we’ll chat online and by video about color and the pattern series

This is a special introductory price, so buy today!

Color-of-the-Month Pattern Series:  $18.95  Add to Cart

A couple more peeks at pink.  I’ve shared this quilt before but wanted to do so again, as I don’t make many pink projects.  This quilt was for a baby adopted by friends, and I had so much fun basking in toiles, paisleys, and pastels.  It truly was a joy to make.

Here’s one of several blocks I made to makeover a Log Cabin quilt that was my very first.  You can see both here in my Extreme Makeover Quilt Edition video:

Great art often inspires great art, and I’ve been inspired by my Color-of-the-Month table runner patterns to capture them in watercolor.  I’m delighted to create in both media, as they complement each other.  Quilting is a precise, geometric discipline, whereas watercolor is a loose and often uncontrolled process.  Watercolor has a mind of its own, but I can make an exact 12″ block for my runners.

While the fabric version of a quilt and its watercolor counterpart both present the same colors, achieving them couldn’t be more different.  As a quilter, I go into the fabric shop and select exactly the colors I want, and plan my quilt from those unchanging swatches.  As a painter, I create my own versions of those colors by mixing different pure hues:  Aliziran Crimson, French Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre.  They even sound beautiful, don’t they?

I had intended for this watercolor series to be my own private playtime, a creative exercise just for me.  But I just have to share!  So, I’m making these watercolors available on note cards, a set of 10, with envelopes, in my store.  Look for them here in the online store.