Unfortunately for those of us who live in New York, the subway system is not in the very best of repair. Fortunately for me, the layers of old paint mixed with rust make for beautiful abstract designs. 
1) Fruit stand in Paris (even fruit looks better in French!)
Landscape-like scenes carved into beaten sidewalks. Some of them strike me as the perfect inspiration for random square/rectangle quilts. 
1) Storefront in Paris
I made my friends wedding cake! After many, many trial runs and force-feeding friends samples of frosting, it's finished! I used the book Wedding Cakes You Can Make by Dede Wilson; although in retrospect I think it was a bit too detailed for what I needed. Aka, this cake, and particularly the frosting, were built to withstand extreme temperatures, but the wedding was in the Fall in Brooklyn, so perhaps not necessary. I made white and dark chocolate leaves interspersed with the roses for decoration. 
View of the city and the Manhattan Bridge photographed from the Brooklyn Bridge. This was a glorious day for walking.
The little pond in Madison Square Park near my office.
View of the Empire State buidling
This is a little knitting needle case that I made, using a pattern from the book Stitch and B*tch. It allows you to customize the pockets so they fit your needles exactly. I used Japanese fabric for the interior and soft as butter, turquoise suede fabric (recycled from a dress I never wore) for the outside, so it's very durable.
Here are a few notecards with their coordinating envelopes made from fabric scraps and paper, a variation on a project in Denise Schmidt's book Quilts. I used Claire Fontaine note paper for the card because I loved the color. The gorgeous colors helped to inspire different fabric combinations. 
This quilt was made from the same pattern as my black & white quilt, by Denise Schmidt. This is actually the very first quilt I ever made. I later learned (in quilting class taught by Joelle Holverson of Purl Patchwork) that "solids allow your quilt to breath", an important lesson, as I was imagining a sophisticated quilt when I'd picked out my fabrics. This ended up with a more tropical, fun feel to it.
This is a crazy log cabin quilt, inspired by another adorable baby in my life, Maxwell. I simple cut small strips of various fabrics and sewed them onto fondation squares. This was a fun, creative process, although a bit tedious as I'd cut very tiny pieces of fabric, but I think that added something to the finished piece.
Here is a close up shot of one of the squares.
Another small quilt, designed for a baby, inspired by my cousin's daughter Riley. Making this was a fun process, as I just used fabrics I had on hand and allowed my idea/vision to evolve as I went along. I'm finding that method works best for me (at times I do run out of fabric, but I view it as one of the hazards of creativity). 
