A week of creative doodling

There’s never any one factor to explain how or why I come up with different design ideas. Sometimes, like this week, it is just because the rain keeps me indoors and, therefore, spending a lot of time on the computer. And, very often, ideas come to me in dreams. Does that happen to you?

I think that one of the reasons why I enjoy quilting so much is that it changed my way of looking at my surroundings. I think I focus a lot more on colour and patterns than I used to. And I find myself focusing on things that perhaps other people find commonplace or do not even see.

One of the things I am grateful for is that I learned how to draw. Maybe because it came to me later in life than for most people, I am now making up for lost time and design ideas simply seem to pour out. This week is an example. Something will trigger the creative juices… and I start to doodle like crazy. On this occasion it started out with the Club EQ challenge for this month on the Electric Quilt website. I’m often too busy to participate in these challenges, but lately I just haven’t been able to resist… they’re too much fun! And since this month’s challenge is closely related to my passion for EPP, I had to see what I could come up with. These were my two entries:

The days go on and it continues to rain. Ergo… I continue to doodle. I think about how the weather gets a lot of people down and what I could draw to share some cheer. Flowers come to mind… and off I go. I’ve drawn all these… writing up the patterns are something else, but the first of them can be found here.

And, while thinking of what else to offer website visitors, I return to one of my favorite subjects: My Dream House designs. So I start playing around with some of those projects, adapting and adding to the door hangers. Hmm… I guess there’s something to offer here.

I continue to doodle. Don’t ask me why there seems to be no ryhme or reason to the variety of ideas that come to mind. I seem to hop around a lot from appliqué to pieced designs, large quilts and small projects… I start to experiment with Jacobean designs:

And what could these odd blocks be about? Ok, I’m not telling about this one – it’s a sneak peek and will be coming soon!

These last two are quite truly doodles and might never make it to written patterns. Still, it’s fun to experiment!