Day off - or hard at work

When people ask me where I get my inspiration my inclination is to say I don't get it, it just happens. Even so I have started paying attention to how it happens. It seems to happen when I am not working on quilting. I can hear the shouts of derision already. Anyone who knows me has probably accused me of never being off duty, but that's just it. When I am not working I do my best design work.

Saturday I took the day off. We were going drag racing, and I hadn't even prepared any hand sewing to take, or my notebook. This was a real day off. Honest! Leaving home at 5.30 am is never a good start to a day for me but off we went up the M1. What amazing colours, the trees were more green and the sky both more and less blue. Amazing, out came the camera. I have to make a quilt of that sky. Tall and thin, almost white at the bottom and this amazing rich blue at the top. With soft fluffy clouds. Less than an hour into the day off, one design sorted.

Last time we went to the drag strip there had been poppies in all the hedges, but the camera was in the boot of the car. Obviously this time the poppies were gone. Still another project for the future. We parked up in our pit facing a mobile home, with a really cool front grill. Kind of a trellis, hmm the challenge block that wasn't looking inspiring could make a trellis and I could put a climbing plant up it. Quilt 2 designed. Oooh and the engine quilt I am working on a plan for I could make the engine as one layer and hang a second quilt in front of it just like this grill. Yes that will work, quilt 3.

We had to wait for scrutineering and the start of racing, which meant sitting doing nothing for a couple of hours and some how I started thinking about eyes. Maybe because mine really hadn't woken up and were sore, who knows. Anyway happy hour was spent planning an eyeball quilt 'Here's looking at you' I've already started working on the pattern for that one, I love it. I make that 4 quilts before 9 on a day when I am not working.

The rest of the day turned up more ideas but I think you get the idea, and I think I know where inspiration comes from. Boredom, ideally when a bit sleepy. Letting your mind wander wherever it will however unpromising it might seem. After all eyeballs aren't the most obvious inspiration but I think it was probably the best one I came up with. So if you want more ideas, do nothing more often.
Oh but do take some way of recording your ideas. I did wish for my notebook several times but had to rely on my mobile phone and camera to record everything I thought of. Maybe this is also why so many people have good ideas in the bath of shower, they have let their mind do it's own thing.