Where do ideas come from?

This is another question I get asked a lot. I generally answer, everywhere. I find inspiration lurking in all sorts of places. Buildings and cars are particularly likely to catch my eye, but really anything can trigger a quilt design. My students are especially likely to send me off on a design. I guess thinking about quilting makes me more likely to pick up a stray comment (or in some cases just a word) and turn it into a quilt design. It started with one student needing a quick, simple and striking quilt (with the option of quilt as you go). On her lap was one of my other quilt designs. After kicking the ideas about for a few minutes we have a design that will do the job, be quite fun to make and I suspect will one day appear as a pattern.

Then the students moved on to what they would like to be taught. This is how my book 'Ferreting Around' happened. They gave me a list of requirements and I built a quilt from it. This time though they want to learn techniques and make maybe cushions or bags with the samples. OK, I can do that but it leaves me cold. So I start kicking the ideas about. They came up with several good techniques, and then I spotted a theme in them. It wasn't quite there and it wasn't fully formed, but there was a pattern to the subjects (mostly) and I could work from there. By the time I got home I had most of a quilt planned. It will use all the samples to make a lap (ish) quilt. Cool. It will meet their needs and not make me feel like I've been producing samples. Unfortunately this is the sort of design where I need to get some diagrams onto paper to be able to see the sizes, but I'm really busy. I am planning on being at the race track this weekend but both vehicles are playing up. Also having lost a day this week to being ill I've got a lot of catch up work to do. Well what do you know, my internet access was down when I got home, so while I waited for dinner I was forced to make some design notes. I guess the world felt the new quilt idea was more important than all the other stuff waiting for me.