Sources of inspiration

I've been picking away at projects. Many weeks, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pass in a blur of long days - meetings and stuff Monday night, piano late afternoon Tuesday, youth group Wednesday.

Still, I have knit a bit on the gift-socks, and started sewing together the Backyard Baby fabrics quilt. While waiting for my old iron to heat up each time I have to press the seams on a row of the quilt, I've been pulling quilt magazines off the shelf and glancing at them again. And also, at times when I'm too tired and "meh" to actually do stuff, I've been going through some of the back issues. I now have a bunch of quilt magazines turned open to pages of quilts I want to make.

And I got thinking about sources of inspiration. For quilting, usually I start with the fabric: I see a fabric I like and want to use, or I see one that goes nicely with one I already have in my stash. And then I buy some. Or I see a fabric line I like and buy a set of fat quarters/jelly roll/layer cake of the fabrics.

And then I try to find a pattern to use with the fabrics. In some cases, that means I wind up choosing a different pattern than what I first thought - because maybe the pattern I wanted to use calls for 2 1/2 yards of the focus fabric, and I only bought two, and the way I am with fabric I often get around to using a fabric LONG after the line has gone out of print. (Most fabric lines are only printed for three month runs and when they're gone, they're gone. A few popular ones - like some of the Aunt Grace 1930s reproduction line, and now I see that Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market line as well - are reprinted, sometimes multiple times). I know, it's possible to "make do" and substitute, but I don't always want to do that.

For me, choosing a pattern for fabric can be tricky...because I tend to like novelty fabrics, I have to find patterns that show off the fabric and either don't go all blendy or use tiny snippets where the pattern of the fabric is lost. And there are some patterns that look better with some fabrics than others.

Now that I have a truly epic stash, and now that new fabric (in most quilt shops) is hovering around $10 a yard, I've decided to do my best to work from stash, at least for now. So I'm finding mostly-scrappy quilt patterns I can use. One of them is a Ringle-Kerr (the "Modern Quilts" people) design...I can't remember the name now, but it uses many small pieces (they recommend eighth yards if you're buying new fabric) in irregularly sized blocks set off with narrow sashing. It is kind of like that "County Lines" quilt I've made a couple versions of (The poppy quilt and the Ooh La La quilt). This one, I think I'm going to use plain white sashing and use all the pinky-magentaey bits I have used up. Probably throw in a few of some other colors - maybe a leaf green - for contrast. Parts of this quilt will be a real blast from the past, because I know in one of my tubs I have some fabric in those colors from back when I first started quilting, back in the late 80s.

With knitting - and I admit I'm in a bit of a knitting slump right now, it might be the hot weather we've had lately - I'm much more likely to be inspired by a pattern, and then have to try and find yarn for the pattern. In a few cases I will use the yarn called for by the pattern, but usually in a different color or colorway. In other cases, I'll try to find a comparable yarn and use it. (Usually a cheaper yarn; anymore, it can cost close to $200 for an adult woman's sweater in even low-end-luxury yarns). Substitutions do not always work, but I've gotten better at them over the years. So I may have a pattern in mind and go searching for yarn for it. I actually have a little booklet where I wrote down the required yardages for patterns I want to make, and if and when I happen to find myself at a yarn shop, then I can consult my booklet if I see something that would work for what I want to make. I have a vague idea of how much yarn it takes to make a sweater for me, but often, if it's a cabled or other-fancy-stitch sweater, it's going to take more. (Quite a lot more, in the case of some of, for example, the Kathy Zimmerman designs that are really loaded with cables).

The one exception to this is sockyarn. I can and will and have bought sockyarn without a pattern in mind for it. But there are a lot of reasons for this. First, sockyarn is comparatively cheap. You can still find many nice, even hand-dyed, sockyarns for around $20 per 100 grams of yarn (or about 400-450 yards). And there are a great many things you can make with that quantity of yarn. It's enough for a pair of largeish socks. Or for a hat. Or for a couple pairs of wristwarmers, if you're careful in your choices of pattern. Or a small lace scarf. Or a "shawlette." There have been cases where I had yarn destined for socks that wound up becoming something else, because I found a pattern I liked for the yarn.

I'm not big on doing colorwork but I do know many people use smaller quantities of yarn to do striped or colorblocked or mock Fair Isle type sweaters. Perhaps that would work better for situations where a person only wanted to buy a skein or two of a pretty worsted-weight yarn, or where they wound up with a lot of leftovers. Or if you made lots of projects for babies, but then, buying yarn for baby stuff generally carries some restrictions on it (easily washable, unless the parents are real sticklers; something that won't scratch; nothing likely to promote allergies).