Recent ideas from old notes

I am always on the lookout for I spy possibilities.  Any time I go to a quilt shop or a quilt show, while I'm enjoying the day I'm also looking for I spy ideas.  As I flip through a catalog I look for quilts that might work with novelty fabric.  As I'm browsing the internet, my eye is always peeled.  How do I keep track of what I find?  Well technology is a help.  If it's an electronic form, I take a snip then stick it in One Note, a nifty little app from microsoft that my daughter told me about.  The new Cloud version is very handy in that I can see it on my phone as well as my computer.  I also take pictures with my phone, which backs up to google photos (easy to pull them into a blog that way).  And if it's a catalog, I just tear the page out and throw it in a folder.
Then periodically when I'm trying to think what I'd like to work on next, I'll flip through one of these sources.  Sometimes the ideas may sit there for months or even years before I decide to make a quilt.  These 2 ideas have been in the box a couple of years and now they get to be quilts.

This particular idea was from a presentation made at least 3 years ago at a quilt retreat I go to each February.  Thank you lumberyard ladies.  I like it but boy did it take a long time to pull all those different fabrics.  I was worried at first that I might not have 96 different blank novelties - ha, I needn't have worried.  It needs a border but I think I'll wait until I know where it's going.

So from extremely BUSY, we now have very simple and dramatic.  This idea was from an old Connecting Threads book, though they used grey background and smaller blocks (these are 6" finished).  I like how graphic this turned out.

The idea for this "Zipper quilt" was from a friend on the delphi quilt forum I frequent.  She makes a lot of donation quilts and we have shared many ideas over the years.  This used up a lot of the left over 2x4 rectangles from fussy cutting.  I've done something similar without the sashing but I like this layout, and no matching corners, even better.

What to work on next, I need to go back to the idea pile and see what else interesting is in there.