How do you come up with the designs used for quilting. I stumble on this rather often .. usually with each quilt.

Rhonda, I usually download free quilt patterns I like on the internet. A few of these "graduate" to my "Quilting Bucket List". Looking through these patterns from time-to-time is like walking through a fabric store...lots of "candy".

Try quilterscache.com for loads of free patterns.

I have a lot of patterns for quilt blocks and the actual quilts and like you Theresa, I find inspiration in looking at them. What I have trouble with is deciding how to quilt, as in what designs to use in the quilting process.

There are at least a half dozen quilts I want to get on today. I vowed not to start another one until I finish up a UFO. So, it's a trade off. Finish a UFO, then make something new. At this time it is a financial issue. Someday I will be able to sew whatever I want, whenever I want to. (I sew in my dreams.)

I love quilterscache.

Being a longarm quilter, quilting for others who most often say "you're the expert, quilt whatever you think will look best" ;it is a questions that I ask myself about every day. When the fabrics are beautiful and busy and the quilting stitches are not going to show very much,I usually pick an overall design (panto). Choosing maybe flowers for a woman's quilt, maybe swirls or circles for a man's quilt. I will try to capture an element from the fabrics into the quilting stitches. Outline stitching looks lovely, stitching 1/4 inch from the pieced seams. And it will call attention to the piecing. Sometimes I have no idea what to quilt, until it is loaded and the top just seems to
"speak" to me. It is as if the machine and my hands have a mind of their own and they know better than I. I really can't explain what happens or how I decide, but I usually think about the quilt several days before it gets loaded. I also look at pictures of quilts on Webshots and get ideas from other quilters. If you would like to look at some of the tops I have quilted check out http://community.webshots.com/user/barbara4811

are you asking about the patchwork or applique designs or the quilting (stitching) designs.

This board has helped me a lot. I look at the pictures of the quilts posted. Many have close ups of the quilting. If I see one I like, I use the bookmark button near the top of the page, (right over the author's name). It will bookmark the page and let you put a brief description. If there's something i REALLY like, I bookmark it and print off a picture. I have a file of items I really like. I look at the style of quilt, the fabric and how the quilting enhances it overall.

OK many respondents took this to mean patterns for pieced patchwork. I took this to mean quilting designs for the actual quilting. I call them quilting "motifs"

I go to loads of different sources. I love looking at 18th and 19th century architecture. The decorative elements on these buildings gives me loads of ideas.

Of course there are books. Karen McTavish books give lots of designs that she gives the buyer of the book complete rights to copy and enlarge to put on your quilts. Her designs are beautiful and always go together to form new motifs by mirror imaging them and placing the motif, or element as she calls them, side by side or in a medallion repeat. Any books on hand or machine quilting are usually full of motifs. Look at books by Diane Gaudinski or Harriet Hargrave for some ideas. I love the book The Essential Quilter.

Stencils and pantos are also great sources of inspiration.

Elements of nature such as leaves, ferns, tree bark, seashells, etc. I quilted a quilt using maple leaves I gathered in my yard last fall and put them in a pleasing repeat on tracing paper then transferred them to my quilt top to LA. But there is no reason you couldn't do it with Hand or DSM quilting.

Once you start looking for quilting motifs you will start to see them everywhere.