I collect patterns and ideas for fiber art work from all over. In order to keep things organized, I found I needed one single place to corral all the information. For me that evolved into the project binder.

My project binder is a 3" thick 3-ring binder...with pockets front and back. Friends have told me no way could they fit everything they want to do in one binder! The trick is to only pick the more recent projects you are working on or intend to pick up next. Just because I have a pattern doesn't mean it goes in my project binder. But if it evolves into a photograph for inspiration, some math calculations and rough sketches, well into the project binder it all goes!

What does it look like? My project binder? Here are a few photos to stimulate your creative juices...


The front pocket holds miscellaneous stuff to be filed. I inserted some business card sleeves to hold business cards relating to my crafts/hobbies/interests.


I use tabbed divider pages to separate out distinct types of fibre work I do. Though, truth be told, these are bound to overlap occasionally!


I include free patterns such as this one from Walmart for a kimono. But only if it includes something more...like the following. A photo of a friend in a kimono at my wedding years ago.


The two of these will form my inspiration for a kimono quilt. I'll use the pattern, but draw the colour and fabric ideas from the actual kimono.

My project binder also includes any doodles and sketches I've done related to my work...


And it includes free patterns off the Internet and from friends.  Patterns that have no other place to live in my home.  Ones I plan to use in the immediate future.  Those single sheets of paper that seem to always be lost.


The project binder is a great tool that works wonderfully for me!

Here are the fabrics I was planning on using.




The green corduroy was a find. Four metres for $2 at a garage sale...54" wide! Lots and lots of it. I bought it because I liked the bright colour and it was cheap. This photo doesn't do it justice. It's really a bright kelly green. At the time I had no idea I was going to use it for this quilt. Though I must admit I was thinking about crazy quilting it.

Most of the pinks were picked up at a fabric store going out of business. They were $3/m at 75% off. The solid white (with pink cast) is an old shirt of my brother-in-law's. The solid pink is a cotton dye job I did at a workshop at Olds College Fibre Week one year. And the green multicoloured print is a Northcott fabric I picked up at the Bargain Fabric Outlet on vacation for $7.99/m.

Whether I use all these fabrics remains to be seen. It depends how they look put together.

To be continued...

I at first thought I'd make two quilts: one an English medallion style quilt, and the other an impressionist quilt using the honeysuckle as a colour guide. I set up my design pages in my project book accordingly. While the basics are here, you can see, if you can read my messy handwriting, that I was planning an impressionist quilt originally.

Here are the photos that inspired the quilt colours...


And here is another photo, with my notes and sketch of what I was originally planning.


Towards the end of the notes, you can see the word medallion...I'd changed my mind! A close-up of my notes reads thus:

"Quilt - honeysuckle - pink (secondary), green (primary), gray (fourth), yellow (tertiary)
- teardrop shapes, long narrow shapes
- simple leaves
- straight lines - well, curved but interrupted
- wallhanging
- impressionistic style?
- medallion? with the green cord? appliqued center?
- "Wigglesworth" from "Classic English Medallion Style Quilts" by Bettina Havig
- picnic cloth - 44x44" - backing and theme fabric green cord."

The sketch in the upper right corner is for an impressionist wallhanging.

These notes were not all written in one day, but rather over a span of time, as the idea developed in my mind.  Basically, my notes are simply a brainstorming session on what I see in the plant that I like, and ideas on how it might transform into a quilt design. The defining characteristics. Whether they show up in the quilt or not is yet to be decided. In the end I decided just to take the colour scheme from the honeysuckle and run with it.

To be continued...