Inspiration: Nashville

My husband and I took a long weekend trip to Nashville last weekend. I had been a couple of times before in my corporate event planning days, but this was the first one that wasn't filled with early wake-up times, insides of convention centers and client entertaining!

We had an incredible time (I'll give you our "perfect" itinerary if you want!) filled with music, food, vintage shopping, SLEEPING and fabric shop prowling.

He's a good sport for putting up with fabric shop adventures!

First up was Craft South in the 12 South neighborhood (my favorite). Not going to lie... I had a major fan girl moment when I realized that this was Anna Maria Horner's shop (for the uninitiated, she is a fabulous fabric designer with Free Spirit). She just opened at the end of May after 2 years of pop-up classes and workshops and her store is swoon-worthy for a sewing junkie like me. Her assistant was wonderful and spent a good half hour talking "shop" with me. I have so many new ideas for all of you! After touching almost every bolt and skein in there, I settled on a bag of her scraps (I do love scraps).


And THEN I got to have ice cream from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. I love ice cream as much as I love fabric and Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream is my go to recipe book. Fabric, ice cream and some live music-- I was in heaven!

Ok, but this post is about inspiration!

My 3 year old loves postcards. It seriously makes buying him gifts when we travel so easy because he's over-the-moon happy with a 50cent postcard. I buy 2 to make it seem like I'm a big spender. These things are treasured and get beyond ratty so I keep filling his stash.

I figured a guitar might appeal to a 3 year old more than Elvis, so I picked up these neon filtered ones. When I got home the colors just jumped at me and I scrambled to my stash to find some fabrics to go with it. (No joke: got home late last night, woke up, unpacked, found cards, went to stash-- some may say it's a problem!)

I'm not sure if I'm going to make anything with this pull, but I love taking something ordinary and figuring out how to make it textile.

Starting with an inspiration piece like a postcard is also good to help me get out of my color comfort zone. When I'm dreaming up colors for a project, especially quilts, my default is always turquoises and yellows/oranges. I don't know why. I ALWAYS start there and then have to remind myself there's only so many turquoise and yellow quilts I can own. I love different color combinations but sometimes it's hard to break out of our default. I love these fabrics together but probably wouldn't have pulled them on my own in a million years!

What inspires you??

Happy Stitching!
Laura