Trust Your Crazy Ideas

The past few years have shown up with some very interesting challenges for my design work. Sometimes just pondering what we want to accomplish results in answers all on its own. As a textile addict, I found myself responding to a request to design a quilt as a fundraiser for the local guild. 

And so I began the design work.  Geometric design has always been a strong interest of mine, but then so is mosaic, celtic, ethnic, floral, tropical, dot and stripes, and on it goes. Thanks to technology, a presentation of various possible color ways of my quilt design nailed down just the right color choices. Problem was that the search for those colors, textures, and designs in bolt fabrics took another journey all of its own.

That’s where begin at the beginning started. Not only was there this colorful quilt to be stitched, quilted, embellished and completed with a due date, but I wanted more than I could find in commercially available quilting fabrics. Long story short, I acquired what was necessary in the colors that were needed to match my quilt design, but I was very definitely being pulled to learn just what was involved in designing fabric. Like the quilt design itself was screaming at me to go beyond just making a quilt. With gratitude to my inner circle of quilting friends, each of us completed a phase of that quilt. The quilt has traveled locally and it recently was awarded a blue ribbon.

As my involvement in design for quiltmaking continues, I have also ventured into the world of surface pattern design. I will be blogging about this in the next few weeks.  Surface pattern design is a fascinating creative energetic specialty.  Check back again for more on surface pattern design and the direction it has mapped out here at Studio LuLu.