I based the idea of my  blue quilt on a photo I saw on a blog, and then I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. I finally worked out it was Jo's Country Junction, and I found the post in question. Lots of inspiration in those vintage quilts. (Go and visit her blog and read the archives, soo much entertainment there! And check out their new book too)

This is something that we miss out on in Australia, you don't commonly find old quilts anywhere, unless it's at a dealer or a quilt show. We did have at least one quilt in our history- our Mum clearly remembered a yo-yo quilt that her grandmother had made but it wasn't valued and was lost or fell apart. And technically I suppose it wasn't a 'proper' quilt anyway.

I once found a beautiful crazy quilt at a second hand store in the eighties, but they wanted $75 for it and I was too poor to even think about spending that much on a textile I couldn't use because it was so fragile. Keryn and I call these items 'archival' which means that we're rescuing them so they can be preserved, but they can only be stored away, never used. It would be nice to save them all, but we're not a museum, and we have to be selective in what we buy now.

The place where Jo saw those quilts was called Clear Lake, and I somehow started thinking of the sqinsq top as Blue Lake, and that reminded me of the tin paintboxes that we had as children.

 Most of them were quite small, but a friend of our Mum passed on a clearly superior one when her family had finished with it. It was huge, and while some of the pans were empty, the names were still printed underneath, fascinating things like Viridian and Vermillion and Scarlet Lake and Madder Lake.

Keryn and I and our brother used that box until there was nothing left and no doubt Mum just threw it out without a backward glance. I do wish we still had it and I could read those names again, just to relive the tremendous excitement we felt when we opened the lid and saw all those little rectangles waiting. I went on to have a huge obsession with art and painting and that window into the romantic names of colour was one of the earliest memories of my interest.

So I've decided that my top will be Blue Lake and the brown one will be Madder Lake, but beyond that I don't think I'll venture. Unless I find another pattern because I think I've had enough of the large square in squares...