June Gloom is officially over and it’s too hot to cook in the kitchen, so pour yourself a nice tall glass of iced tea and snoop around in the kitchen cupboards with me to see what kind of quilting inspirations we’ll find there.

These rainbow colored mixing bowls would make a fantastic graphic image for a quilt. Zoom in and crop close for an intriguing composition.

If your mixing bowls are more subdued, that’s OK, you can still quilt them any color you like. I won’t tell.

How about some wooden mixing spoons to go with your bowls? They’ve got great silhouettes and would look fab as appliqués. You could make an artistic quilt to hang in your kitchen. When cooler weather arrives your quilt can then inspire you to cook!

Even plastic forks could inspire a terrific quilt design. If you’ve got a bit of quilting experience under your belt you could probably piece together a row of fabric forks without too much trouble.

And with some careful composition you could even design a traditional-style quilt block with what you find in your silverware drawer.

So tell me, what can you find to quilt in your kitchen?

Ah, thread … such a little thing but so important to quilt-making. Here is the part of my thread collection that resides upon my studio wall. Usually I keep the thread covered with a random length of fabric to protect it from dust and stray sunlight, but I uncover it when I need to appliqué or quilt with different colors or even just to gaze upon their loveliness.
Quilters have actually been inspired by spools of thread for a long time, as evidenced by the traditional Spool block. When you piece the Spool block on a 9-square grid, it is a quick and easy block with no Y-seams, ideal for beginners. Here is the traditional Spool block, usually shown empty (below left). I prefer it filled with “thread” (below right). You could even use striped fabric in the center square to suggest the strands of thread wound around the spool.
Why not get out some graph paper and design some variations on the traditional Spool block to go with the spools of thread in your collection?
Here’s my version of a spool block, “String-pieced Spool” (5″x6″ finished). Got fabric scraps? This would be a fun way to use them up and celebrate your variegated thread stash at the same time. Make all kinds of spools: tall, narrow, short, wide, empty, full. Don’t worry about how they’ll fit together in the end. You can figure out how to puzzle them all together later.
You could also set your favorite threads up for a photo shoot or sketching session. A strong light brings out great highlights and shadows. Study the way that various threads reflect the light in different ways. Notice how that royal blue thread is zig-zagged onto the spool.
Here’s the result of that photo shoot, my first quilt celebrating thread, “Penny for a Spool of Thread”. It’s raw-edge fusible appliqué. Even though it’s small (about 10 or 11 inches) the spools are still monumental in comparison to real-life.
I backed the quilt with white and matched the bobbin thread to the appliqués on top to create a bobbin thread painting on the reverse of this two-sided quilt. Try a plain fabric and some bobbin thread-painting on a little wall hanging some time. It doesn’t even have to be a thread-themed quilt. As a bonus, you’ll get a reversible quilt!
Happy quilting … may your thread stash always be full! =(^_^)=

Here I’ve turned the donut photo upside down and extended a few of the donuts outside the borders of a possible art quilt. It would also be fun to create a donut-themed quilt with actual see-through holes in the centers!

Next I attempted a more traditional quilt layout using all the colored donuts from the art quilt design above on a pieced checkerboard background. After I ran out of whole donuts I decided to use up the “cut” donuts as well, which gave a contemporary feeling to this design.
And lastly, variations on traditional blocks. Add another ring to Drunkard’s Path and you get Dunker’s Path. This block could be pieced in the usual way or appliquéd. These blocks would be fun to play with on the design board.
If curves are not your cup of joe then try this easy pieced block. By rearranging 4 blocks in different ways you can either get “X”s or “O”s (kisses or hugs). Make a quilt of “O”s to represent stylized donuts, or have fun creating your own unique layout. The diagonal lines of this block will bring movement and vitality to your quilt without having to set the blocks on point.

So grab a donut and a pad of paper and sketch yourself some sweet quilt doodles.

“Donuts, is there nothing they can’t do?” —Homer Simpson

Coming tomorrow ~ Tip Tuesday: embellishing art quilts with stone donut beads.

Earlier this month we went to Las Vegas for a little getaway. Even though I didn’t work on any quilts, there was plenty of inspiration all around for future design reference.

There’s always wonderful floor tiles and carpets to look at, although you won’t see me designing a quilt inspired by anybody’s floor coverings any time soon, or probably ever. I still have a plastic baggie full of Bella Bella pieces in my studio to tackle first. This floor below from Mandalay Bay caught my eye because it was a rectangle rather than a square. Gives you some ideas of how you might set a medallion into a rectangular quilt instead of the usual square.
I liked these funky aluminum Coke bottles printed with Chinese art at the Coca Cola Company Store. Aren’t these purses from M&M’s World great? They’re made from recycled M&M’s wrappers woven together by hand. Reminds me I’ve got a Quilt Green challenge to plan for CBQ and a sample quilt to get started on.
And finally the most inspiring of all: the view from our hotel window. With all the fun and sun at Mandalay Beach calling, why not take some time off from all that hard work and just relax! ^_^