Someone else is making my quilts!!!!

A while ago there was a lot of web-based discussion around 'When is an original quilt original?' With the use of digital cameras and the internet opportunities for plagiarism are rife, but it also happens that two people can come up with the same basic idea at much the same time.

My problem is that I've had the ideas, then seen that they have been made up by other people!

This first happened earlier this year when I decided to make a yellow quilt. I love making 'new fabric' by stitching together similarly coloured commercial fabrics like this:



I was beginning to feel confident enough with my use of acryllic paint and printing to think that I could create a larger piece in a more difficult colour. I even made a start:





O.K. so it is more a statement of intent, this piece of fabric is about 5" squares, but there is a yellow prayer flag in one of the shoe boxes and I'd lots of image on the computer to print out - just waiting for a new yellow ink cartridge. But whilst I was prevaricating, or maybe working, I came across this work in progress on Cathy Kleeman's blog -

http://fiberstudio.blogspot.com/2008/06/qsds-report-2.html

My idea, on her blog :-) and not a hope of me coming up to this standard. But undefeated I moved on. And as I continued to work on other pieces another idea popped into my head - I've started to use handwriting on my JQ's and would like to try something larger, but still on a pieced monochrome background. I wanted a mid-tone so that I could vary the colour of the text and still do some printing, so a warm green seemed a good way forward. Then yesterday my Quilting Arts magazine arrived and lo and behold included, bottom left of their contents page, is (not quite) my quilt -http://www.quiltingarts.com/qamag/toc/TOCqa34.pdf

I guess the answer is to quilt more and think less, but just imagine if I did - maybe I could rustle up a show stopper before the show stopping quilter made it!