What Inspires Us To Create? (Part Deux)

"Canadian Sunset" (Collection of Jeff Gritsavage)

I took a class from Caryl Bryer Fallert in which she taught us as many techniques as she could squeeze into four days.  One of the mornings was devoted to creating a fabric image from a picture in a magazine.  The twist was that we were to take strips of fabric and rotary-cut them into little bits and then use these small pieces to compose at least part of the image.  I chose a photograph of a beautiful sunset along a shore and produced the quilt you see above (I no longer have the inspirational picture, which is a good thing, because then I won't have to reveal just how much I deviated from the original).  

The important thing, however, (I tell myself) is that I had fun.  Thanks to the generosity of my tablemates at the workshop, I was able to borrow nylon tulle to hold the bits of sky in place, and I experimented with 30-weight rayon to secure the parts as I quilted over the tulle.  I left some of the edges of the appliqued elements slightly frayed, and there is free-motion quilting in the border using a wonderful variegated rayon thread by Sulky that contains all the colors of the piece.  Talk about enjoying the process as much as the product!  I'm looking forward to trying this again soon.

The ever-so-slightly warmer weather is returning -- may it re-ignite the creativity in all of us.