Inspiration is everywhere

 I follow several quilting (and genealogy) bloggers, and they are such sources of inspiration for me.  One of the quilting blogs I read nearly every day is Mary Quilts.  She mostly makes donation quilts, or quilts for family, and I love that she so generously shares her ideas, including where she gets her own inspiration.  A few days ago she posted a picture of a quilt top she had just finished called Brick Street.  And luckily for me she also shared the book where she found the pattern - Fast & Fun 3-Yard Quilts.

I kept thinking about that book, and after a very brief search I realized that I had it.  Oh my goodness, there are some fun and easy patterns in this book!!  And each pattern takes 1 yard each of 3 fabrics.

The picture in the book shows a couple of pink prints - and it suddenly came to me that I have some pink print fabrics in my stash.  Remember that little collection of forgotten fabrics I recently came across?  I'm very excited, because there is enough of the bottom 2 fabrics to use for the bigger block sections.  And in my drawer full of neutrals there was a very pretty cream piece that will work with them as the sashing.  All of the remaining fabrics were fat quarters, which are now back in the stash.

I'm hoping to get this project kitted up over the weekend.  The blocks are done with width of fabric strip sets. So it won't take long to cut those strips and get them organized.  I think this will make a very pretty lap quilt for a future donation project AND it makes good use of fabric that has been neglected and forgotten for way too long. 

Since I was looking at Mary's blog for inspiration, I also remembered one of her free instruction sheets that I had printed and hung on my bulletin board recently. Rectangles!!  This will be the ideal design for another PIG project.  The PIGS are "projects in grocery sacks", and just means I have a kit or collection of fabric hanging out waiting. I'm very determined to work on reducing the PIGS this year as well as the UFOs - because they are calling to me.  

One of my project boxes held this bright 1/2 jelly roll and a couple of yards of a black print for a background, but I wasn't sure what pattern I was going to use them to make.  I just knew they made a good combination.  Well, now the Rectangles pattern in tucked in the project box.  This quilt is also made with strip sets - 18 of them.  And since this jelly roll has 20 strips it's going to work perfectly.  Another project to kit up over the weekend, simply by cutting the black strips.  

Thank you for the inspiration, Mary!!