Finding inspiration ....

Many of us look at other quilts, art quilts, fabrics etc for inspiration, but have you ever considered looking at other craft mediums for the same inspiration.

On occasion I end up taking a journey through someone’s Flickr favourites, Etsy favourites or Pinterest boards, because something they have saved just has that something extra that draws me in. 

Now that little extra thing could be colour, pattern, shape or style an it gets my imagination thinking.  So taking a slightly different step from Lynne’s Friday Flickr Favs, here’s a mosaic of polymer clay pieces that inspire me.

mosiac and links here

• Ma-belett’s ‘Pearl Mosaic’ – I can see the pieced spirals with the thin pieced black/white curvy strips and love that vertical division and the simple pieced section to one side that could be beautifully enhanced by FMQ’ing
• Beadingver ‘African Spirit’ – The leaf shape are so easy to form in fabric but the shape fillers are so simple and different here that it opens the possibility to numerous formats of quilt blocks
• Page’s Creations ‘The City’ – this could be a great scrappy quilt project – a pieced background with fabric scraps positioned over the background and quilted down.  Giving an extra dimensional / textural element to the quilt, which could be enhanced further with hand stitching, (Boo Diddly style).
• Ghost Shift’s ‘Tree of Life’ – this could be a lovely little art quilt.  An appliqué tree with some delicious hand dyed fabric for the background and simple appliqué features added to the background
• Claynine’s ‘Succession’ necklace – this is the piece that really got my creative juices flowing this week.  I see pieced circles of varying sizes with one of the pattern shown on a bead actually taken and pieced into the background fabric of the quilt.
• E.H.design ‘bracelet’ – this is a lovely organic piece.  There would be varying hand ombre dyed fabrics pieced for the background with the black ‘vein’ appliquéd over the seam
• E.H.design bracelet from the Scandinavian Collection – lots and lots of simple curved piecing here.  Using a minimal colour palette sew curved pieced strips and trim and curve piece the strips together.
• Pips Jewellery Creation ‘sheet of stropple cane’ - This is so like a stained glass window.  Lots of fabric scraps sewn into strips and pieced together with black fabric.  No keeping to straight lines or equal thicknesses of ‘leadwork’ though, keep it open and free.
• Lasidi ‘brooches’ – a fantastic range of brooches, that could easily be a modern sampler quilt.  I love the brooches that extend beyond the limits of the square which could extend into a neutral background fabric.

I hope you find inspiration yourself from these images and that you look a little further a field next time you want to challenge yourself on your next project.  If you've found inspiration from an alternative medium please share with us all.