Our topic this week is whether we use patterns and follow them exactly or if we prefer to go with the flow.
I am definitely a FLOW girl! I love to go through books and patterns and magazines to get inspiration, but I don't think I have followed a pattern exactly since my very first quilt. I've never been one to do something just like everyone else. Thus it is difficult for me when I admire someones work and they offer to let me borrow the pattern. To say, "No I'd rather make my own" sound kind of snotty to me, and though I'm really quite good at being snotty, it has to be in the right context. The quilt I'm showing here is an example, I loved the main idea of this pattern, and it was neat learning to make the half square triangle blocks with the makers directions, but I didn't care for the borders she used, and I thought there should be more clouds, and a sun, instead of two moons, and I didn't want the background/sky to be all the same, so I gathered lots of starry prints, and then I didn't want all the stars to be the same, so I gathered lots of gold prints, then I started noticing different white prints......... Well, that's the way it went. I'm either creative or I just have a bad case of ADD.
The second quilt, is one that was just sewn together any which way, I used scraps nabbed from the garbage at a camp quilt and bits that the quilters "traded" to my daughter in return for stickers she was giving out. This is an older picture, it actually has binding and has been used and loved for years. I threw in a bunch of my scraps to make it big enough for a twin size bed, and after it was finished we found out the cow fabric glows in the dark!
I made several wall-hanging size quilts from their cast offs that weekend! My motto-- one quilters trash is another quilters stash! ;-)
6 comments:
That really is such a fun quilt. I am not very creative - so I love to see what others create.
I can nearly assure you that if I went to a quilters retreat, I would position myself next to the trash can for sure! I am the crazy lady that sews cotton batting together by butting clean cut edges and then sewing them together with a zig zag stitch! Then I use that batting to make anything from bibs to potholders! I don't throw out anything!
I'm with you. I love patterns and I read them, but I usually tweak them in some way or another. Now, there are exceptions (my current post shows one) but they are becoming fewer and more far between.
LOVE what you did with those "leftovers" -- I bet all of those other quilters had no idea their "trash" would even make another quilt!
Both of those quilts are great. We are alike. Patterns to me are only suggestions.
I think I recognize that moon and sky pattern! I agree, I like your border idea much better than hers!
I use quilt patterns as "guidelines" and NOT as absolutes! I like to change: quilt sizes, add my colored accents, and soemtimes change the borders. It all depends on my inspiration at the time. LOL!
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