From Inspiration to a Quilt

More Stop Than Go

Here's my More Stop Than Go Quilt.  This quilt was inspired by a set of Orla Kiely luggage I own. So I thought I'd share really quickly how I got from my luggage to this quilt.  Here is the inspiration piece:

Orla Kiely Luggage

Obviously, I really liked the design, I bought it right, and it hit me one day that I could make a quilt like that.  So the first step was to stop and think about what I liked about the design.  For this piece it was the uniform repetition of the cars and the limited high contrast color palette.  After determining what I liked I started with a simple design then added some fancy boarders.

Intermediate Design

I posted this design on Instagram and got some very good feedback along with several comments say "it looks like Orla Kiely!"  At that point I knew I needed to change up the look in order to make the design an inspiration and not a copy.

Final Design

I added some different cars but it just didn't get far enough away from the inspiration piece so I changed the cars to chevrons.  By doing that it accomplished few things: it made the design mine, maintained the look of cars without being cars and it gave the illusion of tire tread.  Even though that sounds pretty simple I probably spent 8-10 hours playing in Photoshop before I arrived at my final design.

More Stop Than Go

Because the traffic theme was established at the beginning of this design I tried to create quilting that fought against the forward progress of the cars.

Quilting

Quilting

Finally, I took pictures and my dog Anne, who have been featured on this blog in the past, was less than thrilled with the whole thing.

Oh Bea!

I've done quite a few very structured-geometric quilts lately for my next project I'm planning on something a little more organic and in shot cotton, I'm very excited!!