Staying inspired is vital for my creative work. Inspiration can come from many sources in life. Sometimes the sources are obvious, like a great layout in a magazine, and sometimes the sources are not so obvious. Like my hobbies.

To stay inspired, I try to keep a creative hobby in my life that has nothing to do with work so I have something creative to do that isn’t tied to making a living. This take the pressure off and helps keep my mind open, discovering, and productive. An inspiration for me lately has been sewing. Sewing (so far) is something that takes me away from the worries of work and the glare and flatness of the computer I sit in front of all day, and puts me in a space with new endless creative possibilities.

Just one of the many inspirations I get from sewing is the incredibly varied tactile beauty of fabric. It is an endless source of inspiration! The colours, textures and patterns, not to mention the huge variety of fibers used to make fabric (natural and synthetic) are all food for my creative brain.

My inspiration of the day is fabric I’m using for a project I’m planning to do for my fall wardrobe. It uses a combination of 2 fabrics: 1) a beautiful, dark, thin, woven wool that has hints of tan and dark blue in it and 2) a shiny, soft, luxurious, satiny, olive-like green fabric that has a little stretch to it. Yum.

Playing with the colours and textures of fabric are a great inspiration to my work in media. Maybe one of my next graphic designs will work well with these colours…

-Petra