What Inspired You to Quilt?

Sleepy BearsSleepy Bears

The Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side  is well under way, with over 470 quilts from all around the world. With so many quilters, there are hundreds of sources of inspiration. I'll share one of mine, and I'd love to hear yours.

[For the Bloggers Quilt Festival quilt, see my previous post]

When my Bug was tiny, each night I would read him Mem Fox's Sleepy Bears. This lovely lilting rhyme about a bear family's bedtime stories is brought to life by Kerry Argent's illustrations. They all snuggle into their soft feather bed under a beautiful patchwork quilt. You can see it here, draped over the moon on the book's cover.

The quilt is almost a character in its own right, appearing on nearly every page. It is composed of simple squares of clear, bright colours, with plains and patterns falling into soft, organic folds. It looked so soft and inviting that it made me want to make a patchwork quilt for my son.

Kerry Argent's illustration also inspired the Denton Quilt Guild, who made this quilt (left). This is one of over twenty quilts inspired by quilt-themed children's books which the Guild's talented quilters have made to lend to schools, libraries, museums and children's groups. The full list of storybook quilts can be found here.

Kerry's quilt illustrations appear in at least one of her other works, Margaret Wild and Kerry Argent's Ruby Roars, about a little Tasmanian Devil finding her voice.

So...what inspired you to start quilting?

My quilt for the Bloggers Quilt Festival is here, and the full list of exhibitors is here at Amy's Creative Side.