This Fall, quilting friend Victoria Findlay Wolfe has released her first book, 15 Minutes of PLAY: Improvisational Quilts. The book is filled with colourful inspiration, project ideas and challenges. I have been admiring Victoria’s quilts and her fabulous use of colour for a few years now, and am thrilled she asked me to be a part of the blog tour for her book.
In the beginning of the book, Victoria talks about PLAY and how to overcome some common fears or roadblocks we quilters and artists all experience at some time in our creative journey.
The next section of the book focuses on “made-fabric”. To quote, “Made-Fabric is created by taking bits of otherwise useless scraps and sewing them together to make a usable piece of fabric that can then be utilized to make a variety of blocks and quilts. It’s a chance to make something from nothing that might otherwise not have found a home in a quilt.”
Here are a couple of the quilts from the book completed with “made-fabric”. Since I absolutely adore scrappy quilts, this style of quilting is definitely a favourite.
Victoria includes four techniques for creating your “made-fabric”, all based on 15 Minutes of Play. She’s included 16 traditional quilt blocks to inspire you and 11 challenges to get you playing with your fabric and creating. The book is filled with gorgeous quilts that will are sure to inspire everyone.
If you find yourself in a creative rut, love scrappy quilts, have bins of scraps but no idea how to use them, or just want to step outside of your own creative box, then I highly recommend this book. You will be inspired!
Be sure to visit Victoria’s 15 Minutes of Play blog for daily inspiration!
My Questions
Victoria sent us a couple of FUN questions to answer as part of the tour.
Do you have a favorite color to use and why?
Purple is my favourite colour, but that is not necessarily reflected in my quilts. I don’t really have any one go-to colour that I use. The past year, I have been mainly working on scrappy quilts with wild colours. I do like to use a neutral or strong solid colour to help balance with the scrappy goodness (my postage stamp quilt below is a good example). I do think every quilt can benefit from a hint of yellow, orange or red.
If you are not PLAYING in fabric, what else do you PLAY in?
Since September, I’ve been taking a very intense dog training certification course to become a pet dog trainer. Unfortunately, this has left me with little time to play, except with Milo. Here he is after school tonight:
I do love to needlepoint and crochet too, but it’s quilting and playing with fabric that really feeds my creative soul.
Give-Away
C&T Publishing is giving away a copy of Victoria’s book to one of my lucky readers. US winners receive a hard copy of the book and international winners receive an electronic copy. To enter the give-away, leave a comment below answering: What feeds your creative soul?
The winner will be chosen randomly on December 12, 2012.
Blog Tour
Increase your chances of winning a copy of Victoria’s book by visiting the other participants in the blog tour and entering their give-aways too.
Nov 26: Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Nov 27: Bonnie K Hunter
Nov 28: Alissa Haight Carlton
Nov 29: Pat Sloan
Nov 30: Fat Quarter Shop
Dec 1st: Karen Griska
Dec 2nd: Angela Walters
Dec 3rd: Generation Q
Dec 4th: Tonya Ricucci
Dec 5th: Michele Foster – you’re here!
Dec 6th: Scott Hansen
Dec 7th: Amy Ellis
Dec 8th: Rachaeldaisy
Dec 9th: Jackie Kunkel
Dec. 10th: C&T Publishing
And the winner is…
Congratulations to #200 Sandy. Check your inbox for an email from Victoria.
Shapes and colors have a lot to do with what I create. It is always a learn process. Thanks for the chance to win!
blogs, pinterest
I get inspiration from websites, books and magazines- the more the merrier! Thankyou.
On a daily basis, the blogs I read inspire me, and on a monthly basis I look forward to my quilt magazines.
My creative inspiration usually comes from nature. My intuition tells me that I cannot go wrong with color combinations and geometric shapes from nature. I also absorb ideas from magazines, blogs, books, and catalogs. Doodles on the back of envelopes abound in our house.
pinterest, fabric store, But scrapbooking has heavily influence my quilting since I did a LOT of scrapbooking prior to quilting….I learned about color and composition
It’s all about the color for me. I love to be inspired by color combinations I see in art, nature, my scrap bins, etc.
What feeds my creative soul? Everything around me! For instance, I was just thru the San Deigo airport and they have these wonderful mosics on the wall where you enter the restrooms. Every restroom had different patterns and used different colors and I was stopping to take pictures of them. I can’t wait to study them and use them for inspiration!
Color, nature just about anything can feed my creative soul if I take the time to slow down and see what’s around me.
fabric, color, hand stitching and quilt blogs. Love them all!
Love those blogs! So much to do, so little time.
Especially when I don’t have a chance to actually make anything, just reading blogs and looking at the pictures satisfies my creativity need. Looking forward to more ideas from Victoria’s book. I have a U.S. mailing address. Thanks!
Blogs for sure, and sitting in my room surrounded by my stash.
Someone on a charity quillt Yahoo list posted a link to Victoria’s blog, so I became familiar with her scrap quilting, much to my delight. Thanks for the opportunity to receive a copy of her book.
Color and pattern really feed my creative soul and get my design juices flowing. That’s why this idea is something I’d like to try. Mixing lots of color with lots of pattern to create even more pattern.
I am inspired by the blogs I read and subscribe to, my quilting magazines and my quilting friends who continually amaze me with what they’ve done. If I’m feeling sad or blue I can go to a quilt shop, pet fabric and feel all better.
All the blogs certainly inspires me!
I am drawn to blues but it is not necessarily my favorite color – when i am not making quilts I am reading or enjoying traveling in our small motorhome
The color red and looking at my stash gets my creative juices flowing. Quilt blogs and magazines also help. Thanks for the chance to win the great book!
What feeds my creative soul is just about anything but mostly color and design where ever I go. Thank you for a chance to win this most interesting book.
Have a super great sewing and stitching day!
I seem to look at color and pattern wherever I see it!
Definitely Pinterest and Blogs!
I love fabric and playing with friends who love it too!! Best color are red and yellow to make me happy.
I’m new to quilting, so I have been staying with traditional patterns. I seem to have lots of greens and blues in my stash!!
Fabrics, art, handmade..I love pinterest and google image.. just to see what people are making. I see quilts everywhere, even in ordinary everyday items.
Colour & pattern–I see quilt potential everywhere! Thanks for the chance to win.
Would love to have this book. It might help my out of my traditional rut.
These days I am inspired by my morning blogroll… I love seeing the mix of modern & traditional quilting. I find both are wonderful and am so glad to see the art of quilting grow in new ways.
Color! It all has to do with color. :-)
Right now I favor red and oranges in all of their splendid hues. For play besides quilting – reading would top the list.
This book looks like it would helm me loosen up! Such a fun book.
Black is a favorite go to fabric for me. It makes all the other colors pop. The book looks like a good one. I’d love to have it for inspiration I do use even the smallest crumbs of leftover fabrics.
The person getting the quilt is my inspiration – color, fabric, shapes, hobby – that is them. Patterns can cover emotions too, playful to serious and comforting so that is also a consideration. This book looks great for playful. Thanks for the give away.
Some of my best ideas come from fabrics haphazardly lying side by side and looking good
Color and conversations with like minded women. You go girl!
I get inspiration from lots of places. My favorite website is Marcia Hohn’s Quilterscache.com.
Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks volumes are amazing!
I love my Quilt Pro software with the great library of blocks and add-ons. If I see something I like, I often draw it into the QuiltPro so that I can include it in a quilt I want to make.
And of course, nature! I want to make a glorious autumn leaves quilt that reflects the mountainsides around me in the autumn colors. I live star blocks and snowflakes. On my trip to Mexico, a year before I started quilting, I took pictures of the mosaic tiles in the fireplaces and tables and streets around my hotel. Recently, I attended an art show in the BYU Museum of Art, spotlighting art and religion in the Arabic culture. Oh wow–the mosaics and graceful designs, the architecture and embellishment, both fabric and thread and building materials, are amazing!
Looks like my kind of book – I have tons of scraps and an attention span of about 15 minutes!
As a landscape/art quilter, I find inspiration in nature and photographs of nature. That inspiration is a seed that is fed by so many things: rainy days, books, and time with a quilting friend feed my soul.
books and magazines feed my soul!
Gunilla in Sweden
The joy that people receive from my creation helps to feed my creative soul. The thought of others receiving is great.
Challenges feed my soul. I love trying to resolve challenges and the results that happen. This book looks like a new dimension for innovation.
I forgot to say I am in the US.
All the colors, shapes and smells in nature are truly great inspiration.
I have bags and bags of scraps that are crying out for this book. And I’m making lots of new scraps by sewing fabric gift bags for Christmas.
Quilts, quilts and more quilts. Every one that I see inspires me to make more. Sometimes, it is just a piece of fabric that calls to me…
Quilting feeds my creative soul! I also love knitting and crochet and dabbling in other crafts but none feed my soul like quilting. This book is just what I need to overcome my fear of improvisational quilting…something I love and want to master (or at least feel comfortable creating.) Thanks!
The multiple quilt scraps with their many colors, make me so happy, plus they offer a way to use many of my scrappy pieces I hate to throw away.
Quilting, both piecing and longarming, feed my creative soul and I get inspiration from everything! I spend too much time LAing for customers and not enough on whittling down my stash, including tons of strings, WOFs, triangles and squares of every size!
I lvoe getting inspiration from other quilters – gardeners too (another of my passions). I’ve used greens and blues in all of my beginner’s quilts but love most lively colors.
The serenity … it’s feeding my creative soul and it’s never enough time , fabric, thread to “born” all the ideas that grow…