Design Inspirations from all over

Warning: if you’re not into crafts or designing stuff, feel free to stop reading now. You will be bored. ;-)

Every city I've gone to recently has inspired me in some way to create. Sometimes I buy a really awesome piece of fabric, which leads to a new project. Other times, the museums inspire me with their art, which moves ideas around in my head.

It does take a while to put these projects into motion. I know now I need time to formulate the idea and think through my plan of attack before I feel like I can get started. That's not to say my mind is organized and the project all laid out when I start a new project, but I have a fairly good idea of my end goal. I don't always get to the end result I imagined, but usually I get pretty close. Here's a recap of my projects that sprouted from recent trips:



dress inspired by NYC

I saw a beautiful dress in a shop in New York. I drew a quick sketch at a café and that became my guide for this dress. I’m hoping for more summery days this year because I’ve barely gotten to wear it. Munich had a horrible summer last year.

*********************************************************************************

My cousin in Israel has a belt like this and it inspired me to try to make my own. I basically measured her belt in terms of how long the different parts were compared to my arm and went off of that when creating it. I also created the shirt from a lilac sheet. Quite comfy!

**********************************************************************************

This project wasn’t really inspired by Berlin. When we were there though, I woke up one morning and knew what I wanted to do with an old skirt of mine. I guess I had been thinking about subconsciously for a few days. The skirt was made of fantastic fabric, but didn’t fit right anymore. So I decided I would turn it into a sweater vest top. My favorite detail is the buttons in the back.

**********************************************************************************

The details on the buildings in Croatia made up a lot of our photos on this trip so this project was a natural fit. They didn’t turn out great, but we will definitely be trying them again. We took our favorite photos from Croatia, gave them a sepia tone, printed them and attached them to newspaper-covered pieces of foam (although wood would have been much better!).

**********************************************************************************

I had been thinking about tunic dresses a lot and found this fun grey polka-dotted fabric and black velvet ribbon while in a London fabric store. It was meant to be! This was my first project sewing a zipper (and I did it without a zipper foot on my machine – pretty daring!)

**********************************************************************************

I created this doll for a friend’s baby based on a doll I saw in a very cute shop in Grand Central Station. This was the first time I had created a doll (or any baby stuff in general) so it was great fun.

**********************************************************************************

I fell in love with this blue-flowered fabric in London and have great memories of hunting down a trimmings shop with a newfound friend to get this lace. So this holds special meaning for me. It started out as a scarf, but eventually became a gorgeous table runner.
 

 **********************************************************************************

The Victoria and Albert museum in London was so huge and wonderful. It took me a whole day to see everything I wanted to. I was especially attracted to the ironworks section of the museum and took a ton of pictures there. I came home thinking about experimenting with a fabric pen and silk scarf my mother-in-law, Priscilla, gave to me this summer. This is what resulted, although it’s hard to see because it’s basically a white scarf on white wall. You get the gist, I’m sure.

Ok, this post is already very long so I hope you enjoyed it. If you’re on Facebook, you can check out my crafts album for more projects I’ve completed while in Munich.

Istanbul Art Inspirations

I hope you all are getting a good (if not somewhat roundabout) idea of what our trip was like in Istanbul. One thing I was surprised about was how much I felt inspired as a craftster by the artwork we saw everyday in Istanbul. I took these photos from objects that inspired me in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. I plan to use them in my latest crafty endeavors--embroidery! I think the interlocking geometric shapes and complex designs could have some really cool uses in hand stitching. I'll make sure to showcase some of my completed projects here in the next few weeks.

And here's my favorite take-home inspiration of all--the beautiful embroidered teal scarf I picked up.