QDAD: My Week Of Sparks

This week, I have been the Creative Spark maker for the Quilt Design A Day group. This means that I took a photo, used the Palette Builder by Play-Crafts to create a colour palette, and shared it in the group each day for the other members to use the photo and colours as inspiration for a quilt design. I used a selection of photos I’ve taken in Japan, and then created a quilt design myself to go with each photo. As with all these challenges, I have pushed myself to step outside my comfort zone and while I may not be 100% happy with the final result, I’ve left them alone. Part of the philosophy of this group is to only spend about 15 minutes on each design as a creative exercise, not as creative perfection!

Note – Here I’m sharing the Kona colour palette, but I did also make the hex values palettes as per normal. I’ve downloaded the Kona swatches for EQ7 so that it’s more “realistic” when I’m designing, and the Kona palette lest me know what solids I’d need to get or match to prints if I were to make the designs.

For Day 1, we’ve taken the train to Harajuku – this is the main street leading from the train station. And it is craaaazy busy on weekends!

I was inspired by the stripes on the building, as well as the perspective of looking down the street to create this quilt design.

For Day 2, I couldn’t go past this photo of a kimono at the Edo Museum in Ryogakko. Such beautiful designs and colours!

This quilt is actually a little bit of a cheat… I drew upon the kimono as well as my Tea For Two quilt pattern! It’s not exactly the same, obviously, but the similarities are there. Using the dark purple background was also a step outside the comfort zone for me, but I do like it!

Day 3’s photo of Nijo Castle in Kyoto was one that I took just over 5 years ago when on holiday from Australia. I actually revisited this very spot last week and it was so cool to see it again, knowing I had this photo all ready for the sparks!

This quilt was one the I actually struggled with the most. I wanted to play off the sky and greenery reflections, and I must admit, I think I spent about 45 minutes on this one before finally ending up with this design.

Day 4 takes us into the city of Osaka, with fascinating architecture and billboards galore to inspire shapes and colours in a quilt design.

I had two quilt designs saved for this challenge, with this one winning out. The second one didn’t have the corner blocks, but I decided I like the symmetry of them, reminiscent of city blocks.

For Day 5, I’m taking you for a little walk to a side street near our house on the way to my kids’ kindergarten/preschool/yochien (choose your country’s vocab). Such a bright, colourful setting on a sunny day!

This quilt drew it’s inspiration from the hexagon tiles and the wheel on the wall. If I were to actually make this quilt, I think I’d use a light grey background, or maybe even a lighter navy?! but I stuck with the colour palette for this one and used the beautiful sky blue.

Day 6 finds us on the train into Tokyo for a date night, where the sun setting behind the bridge was just stunning.

This quilt is very un-me, with such muted neutral colours! But there’s triangles. I love triangles. Even if they’re not HSTs! This one actually makes me think of Ms Midge each time I look at it, because she does good equilateral triangles.

I saved my absolute favourite for last, with this photo of a box of paper cranes in Hiroshima 5 years ago being an all-time favourite photo of mine, even if it is slightly out of focus.

I am dying to make this as a quilt design, and have for a very long time. Until this challenge, I had never sketched out any designs even though I had bought a Bloc-Loc ruler especially for this project at QuiltCon. So I am extremely grateful that this challenge pushed me to finally put the metaphorical pen to paper (or mouse to EQ7, more accurately!) and finally design something. In fact, when my husband saw it, he asked me to make it… which I’m sure you all know is a rare and highly complimentary thing for a quilt husband to say! So, watch this space…

If you are even at all slightly intrigued by quilt designing, I highly suggest you join the Quilt Design A Day group! You can lurk and watch, or jump on in and try. You definitely do not need any fancy software, with even pen and paper a valid designing option. Hope to see you there!