Design.
What is it and how can we use it as quilters? For me, there is no better place than outside to find inspiration for the next quilting or sewing project. Of course, we can all read books, and magazines, go online, and more for inspiration.
Going for a walk with a camera, or a sketchpad and pencils, the world of design is at your fingertips.
Nature
Of course, nature is a brilliant foil for a research project for a future quilt or sewing pattern. The textures, colours, even atmosphere created can be used as inspiration. Many Landscapes are a canvas from the foreground to the distance. This can be replicated in stitch or fabric in a quilt.
Concrete jungle.
Many people don’t access countryside nature in the grand scheme of things because they live in the concrete city. So, find your inspiration here. I was in the lakes recently and looking for design elements for a quilt. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew it would make itself known at the right time.
History.
It was at a historic house, Blackwell, The Arts and Crafts House in Windermere, that I had a wonderful, inspired few hours of discovery. Blackwell was designed by Mackay Hugh Ballie Scott (1865-1945) who continued the work of John Ruskin and William Morris. John Ruskin and William Morris who were the fathers of the Arts and crafts movement.
Range of pattern.
The building revealed a huge amount of inspiration of patterns. This ranged from the interior and exterior of the house, the gardens, even the stone forecourt.
Then there was a manhole cover that gave access to the sewers of the house. Revealing patterns on the cover that were repetitive and to me in first glance looked like a log cabin pattern.
Interior floors were also inspirational. The wooden floors were in the herringbone design, and this can be used in patchwork, quilting and dressmaking.
Windows in the house were of a long wide variety of leaded glass. These could inspire a geometric pattern in a quilt; indeed, a similar window has done just so in one of my quilts. Coverlets on the beds, whilst made with lace could easily be transferred to a piece of work that accomplished trapunto or stuffed quilting. Even the bed frame was a simple design where the head and foot boards were designed in blocks.
The library.
When visiting a library, if yours still exist that is, have you noticed all the books on a shelf? A modern-day library where books of all shapes and sizes are side by side or laid on their covers. The stitching qualities of these design elements can lead a quilter to so many different adventures.
Tiles.
Whilst most floors of the early 17th and 18th C were mainly wooden there were a lot of tiled features for fireplaces.
In this photograph, you can easily see where the design could lead you to a wonderful patchwork design. The furniture of this period was also made simply but beautifully. Was it not William Morris who gave the quote,
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.Taken from.
- “The Beauty of Life,” a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design (19 February 1880), later published in Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham, 1878 – 1881 (1882).[1]
- As with the tiled fireplaces in the house, the next time I saw tiles were in the hotel we were staying at. The Fir Trees on Lake Road, in Windermere. The floor out to the garden had stone slabs with rough-hewed surfaces.
Door panels of the guest house has interesting design features as does the main hall floor. I had only seen it with a sumptuous deep pile red carpet but underneath it all was an original 18th C tiled floor.
Even coffee cups can have interesting designs to them.
Hard times
Here is a walkway in the grounds of Bowes Museum. How many times have people walked past and over this floor and not thought about everything that this has to offer in design or historical terms. Bowes museum can reveal a huge amount of inspiration of patterns. This ranged from the interior and exterior of the house, the gardens, even the stone forecourt. Shadows would pass over stone floors and these hard shadows revealed the pattern of stone slabs. Intricate ribbons of mortar in between revealed a satisfying pattern.
Headstones throughout the ages are prime design inspiration for many people. Take for instance this Headstone to show where John Ruskin is buried. Beautiful intricate Celtic knots where a quilter, textile artist or dressmaker could interperate the John Ruskin’s headstone. (JR’s Headstone photo) into a work of art.
Historic or current inspiration
Taking history as an inspiration for 21st Century works of art could be a problem if you prescribe to the wokism that is destroying today’s society. John Ruskin’s headstone has a swastika on it. Does that mean John Ruskin’s was a Nazi even though he died more than a decade before the first use of the swastika for the Aryan race[2] idea?[3].
[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Morris
[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/man-who-brought-swastika-germany-and-how-nazis-stole-it-180962812/