No rhyme or reason

Where does inspiration come from?  In a recent interview with Rachelle Blondel, Mollie Makes magazine asked Blondel this same question -- and her response was spot-on:

"In everything, every moment of every day. It could be a scrap of lace, a picture online or how the garden looks after a downpour . . . I think the key is to just keep looking at everything and stashing it away in your mind's eye and then drag it out when it's needed."

Well, I totally agree with Rachelle -- tidbits and even littler bits, snatches of something glimpsed for a moment, then gone . . . an image that one passes in the daily comings and goings, perhaps even a bit of a song or a smell that whisks us back in time . . .

I'm not a very organized quilter, a much more haphazard one.  I tend to do hand-stitching and quilting in waves, usually in the summer and especially when on vacation at the Cape.  Sometimes these bits and pieces can take a few years to come together into something that vaguely resembles a quilt or a wall-hanging.

Several years ago there was an article about Annie Williams, a British watercolor artist, in one of the art magazines I subscribed to.  Her works were simple yet complex, and the more I gazed at these paintings, the more I thought about how wonderful they would be if they were quilts -- and perhaps they were.  The article did mention that she used 'textiles' in her backgrounds. 

I researched Williams further and found that Katherine Tyrell, of Making a Mark, profiled Williams' process, and once again it was amazing how small her scale was and yet how Williams was able to capture the complexities of fiber and textiles, as well as the intricacies of the still life objects.

I fell in love with her combination of colors and calligraphic marks.  But on further consideration, it was also the simple willy-nilly randomness of these shapes and patterns that attracted me the most. 

So where does inspiration come from?

What we observe, 
soak in, 
digest, 
stash away 
and then re-interpret . . . a process of 
uncover,
discover . . . recover?

This is "No Rhyme or Reason," my random piecings that came together over the past few years. A bit of a mish-mosh but sometimes it's great to be able to wander across the fabric, stitching here, stitching there, seeing where you end up -- or better yet, where it leads you next . . .

No Rhyme or Reason