Shopping for Inspiration

Three of my close friends are having birthdays this month and so I needed to do a little shopping for gifts this past weekend. I'm still feeling a little creatively blocked and just cannot get going on that quilt I need to make for the Retreat in a couple of weeks. It would be nice if I had something to show when I teach it LOL. 

A trip to some stores was in order to accomplish the buying of gifts and also to feed my soul a little I think. Author Julia Cameron calls it Filling the Well. When you seem to have no inspiration left inside yourself to create, she suggests going out and filling yourself up with images that nourish the process. When the creative pond is empty because it has just been drained by a large creative project, it needs to be filled again and restocked. My husband laughs but sometimes a simple shopping trip fills me up enough so that I become inspired without breaking the bank so to speak. And I've found that it doesn't always need to be quilting-related. Sometimes it's almost better if it's not. I often get sidetracked by what other quilters are making and need a break from it all to create something that's my own.

Look at those colors! Fall is almost here.

I so need to make a quilt using these colors.

Ahhh, dishes! Keep moving, Kathy.

Last year we bought a new sofa and loveseat in a sort of tan/taupe fabric. After years of living with busy blue prints or florals on our sofas, we needed a change from that  - so we bought something completely different and bland. Something I could accessorize with color. We could never go with white because of the dogs and my husband wanted something a little darker. He's accommodated my choices and lived with blue all these years so we compromised and bought a very neutral sofa with no real color I like to say. 

I was so thrilled to be able to buy a colorful area rug (with little touches of blue and applique-looking patterns) that didn't clash with the sofa for a change but the problem is that lots of things now clash with the rug LOL. I still have not found time to make a nice colorful quilted throw but that is on my list. It will have to be simple to go with the rug, don't you think? The one you see here is store-bought and striped and usually is in my son's room. But he's gone now and doesn't miss it. It's fine for now but doesn't really match. I'd like to make pillows too because the ones I bought clash a bit since I bought them before I fell in love with the rug. I wish I could just buy some colorful ones like these - but no, they wouldn't work at all.

So pretty though!

Love the blue floral! If only I didn't have that rug . . .

But, oh, the colors in the pillows at the store were so inspiring.

Not my style at all but they sure looked cute and fresh here  . . . Why does it all have to be so darn hard? Wonder what I'll eventually come up with for a sofa throw? And -  will I finish it?