Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4

Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4 from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday, 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration Finale and October 2017 Roundup, all in one!!!

Well!

Today is the last day of the 2017 Write 31 Days bloggers’ challenge! I’m actually not sure how I feel about that! A little sad…. A little joyous! Lost….. Free….. Excited…. Tired. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

I learned a lot. About myself, about quilting, about the world around me, about blogging. I noticed things I normally pass by and learned more about those things so that I could write about them. I found others’ blog posts on related topics. My blog post writing speed is now faster; and for better or worse, my posts are probably sounding more like the unedited me. I really hope you enjoyed the series and got something out of it. If you have been reading along – faithfully or sporadically – Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 31

It seems fitting that today being both a Colour Inspiration Tuesday and the last day of my 31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series, that we should be due for another Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection. Another set of 12 mood boards to inspire your crafts and quilts.

Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4

A quick summary of the ideas behind Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4…..

Since the last Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection we have used colour boards as a springboard to talk about getting the colours you want from your photos, how the contrast between a silhouette and a sunset makes the colours more brilliant, and how magnifying the things around you can give you a whole new perspective.

There was a new quilt design and a revisit of an old one.

Revisit: Sunset Wall quilt design, coloured three ways

There was also one quilting design in the mix: Bougainvillea Surprise.

The Fourth Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection

To access the colour palettes and complete posts of Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4, click on the thumbnails below.

Beyond mood boards and their associated posts

But October 2017 was so much more than just mood boards! We had a tutorial on Shadow Trapunto, joined in the Art with Fabric Blog Hop and met my great aunt.

Pacific Cleaner Shrimp art quilt — Art with Fabric blog hop

We looked at lots of quilt design ideas. In addition to the two from Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 4, there were 5 others of note.

There were two discussions about appliqué inspiration, including a free downloadable file of 6 gecko shapes.

Hermit crab appliqué — Hermit crab design

And we also explored the ideas that have inspired some of my quilts in the past. Here are two of my favourites.

Children's Drawings — Children’s Drawings

fabric scrap quilt — Other People’s Scraps

Even after all of these, there were still plenty more ideas…. For more colours from October visit Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 3. For the entire 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration series, start here. This latter post contains the complete list of links to the whole series.

Staying Connected

I hope you had a wonderful October. I sure did, although I hope you managed to fit in more quilting or sewing than me. And I also wish you all the best for a November full of blessings.

This coming month I will be sharing tutorials for two Christmas tree decorations made primarily of fabric and other scraps from my quilting adventures. One of these will be part of a much bigger project – the 2017 Ornament Exchange, with tutorials from 47 different bloggers. If you don’t want to miss these, sign up for email reminders on the sidebar or follow along on Bloglovin’. We will also be revisiting the Splash of Color Quilt Along at some point soon.

If you like colour inspiration, you can find all my previous mood boards anytime in one easy location on the main menu. Or keep an eye on my Pinterest account.

So that was October. November awaits, ready or not! See you there!

P.S. Now that I have finished my own 31 day blog series, I will have more time to catch up with some of the other writers who participated. Have you read any of the other Write 31 Days series from this year? Would you recommend any?

I can recommend an excellent series to you. My blog friend Joy from “Days Filled with Joy” wrote a fantastic series on 31 Days of Earning from Sewing and Quilting! It’s all about how to turn your quilt hobby into cash and it’s very thoughtfully written. Joy is also an extremely lovely individual and has a nice community of quilt friends that interact regularly around her blog. Pop over, say hi and tell her I sent you. 🙂

P.P.S. Linky parties I enjoyed this week:
Cooking up Quilts, Love, Laugh, Quilt, The Quilting Room with Mel, FreeMotion by the River, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Crazy Mom Quilts.

October 30, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Magnification

White Cedar color scheme from Clever Chameleon

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

There are so many things that we fail to see in life. And sometimes it’s not even our fault. Some things are just too small to appreciate fully without special effort. There is a world of inspiration in the tiny, the minuscule and the molecular. All you need is a means of magnification.

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 30

My train of though started today with the flowers on a tree growing on our council strip. This tree was tiny when we moved here, but was growing well until it was attacked by a vandal. Pretty much ever since, my young daughter has been cheering this tree on. This year it matured and flowered for the first time, so I am finally able to easily identify it. It is a White Cedar (Melia azedarach, also known as China Berry), one of the very few deciduous Australian natives. The berries are toxic (good to know) to humans and most animals but not birds. Apparently cockatoos like them, so I hope the cockatoos in our area find it. Otherwise the berries are going to make an almighty mess on the pavement and hubby is not too pleased about the prospect of that.

White Cedar flower, many times magnification

The flowers of this tree are insignificant on their own but they bloom in impressive bunches. However, if you magnify the flowers, you can see that they are really quite pretty and almost orchid like. It is the purple stamen tube with the yellow stamens sticking out that has the most visual impact, but without magnification you are unlikely to notice this….. each tube is only 1/4″ long.

And this got me thinking back to my days as a molecular biologist and geneticist. In that life, looking down a microscope was an everyday experience for me. And I often marvelled at the hidden structure of things.

Contemplating Magnification as Quilt Inspiration

These days I am reliant on a magnifying glass I stole from one of my kids and my camera for looking more closely at things. These are tools you can probably access too. Magnifying glasses are available pretty widely, and a basic one is just a few dollars. So the real question is: where to look?

butterfly wing under magnification — A butterfly wing in detail from a photo I took in Singapore airport

Biology is an amazing place to start for pleasing designs. Flowers obviously. But there are so many other things that also become even more interesting with magnification. Feathers. Bugs (have you ever considered the beauty of the compound eye?). Shells. Leaves. Ferns. Skin. Fossils. Microscopic creatures. Cells. I could keep listing here for hours, but I won’t. Grab a magnifying glass or a camera with a zoom function and just start looking around you.

Try taking photos, magnifying and then cropping them. Sometimes destroying the context of an object or only showing a portion of it adds enormously to its artistic appeal. That’s the brilliant thing about digital cameras. No limits to the number of photos you can take, and no limits to the alterations you can make to them.

Butterfly under magnification — Another cropped butterfly photo from Singapore airport

Many, many amazing abstract art pieces have had their start in magnified nature. This is certainly not a new idea for art or quilt inspiration. But it is an idea that will probably never be exhausted. There is no copyright on the feather you found at the park. And no limit to the ways you can interpret it either. That is between you, your imagination and your sewing machine.

If you’ve done something like this and you’d like to share your quilts and/or ideas here, I’d love to hear about them. Don’t forget to comment below. 🙂

And if you’ve enjoyed this, don’t forget to check out previous posts in my 31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series. Tomorrow is the last day!

P.S.

Just before I leave you today, I want to share an interesting example of taking this concept to the extreme. Beverly St Clair likes to quilt representations of DNA. She has done a few helix quilts. But the ones that caught my fancy a few years back are those where she has assigned each of the four main chemical components of DNA an orientation of the half square triangle. She has then turned various DNA sequences into quilts by piecing half square triangles to match the code. Go take a look, it’s a fascinating idea!

October 29, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Someone Else’s Scraps

scrap quilt

31 Days of Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

If you like to quilt, there are few things that are more everyday than a growing pile of scraps too big to throw away and too random to fit most patterns. In theory, making a scrap quilt is a great way to get another quilt made with little further outlay. But what if you don’t have enough scraps? Can’t work out how to work them into another quilt? Or worse? Are you Bored with your scraps?! What if your scraps are just not inspiring?!!

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 29

Create your own free-form quilts book

When I first started quilting, I didn’t have many fabrics or many scraps yet. But I’d bought a book with a technique I wanted to try. So when my friend (Romana – who got me hooked on quilting) said she needed to clear out some space, and did anyone want her (considerable) pile of very random scraps, I said “Yes!”.

That was when I discovered that it is much more fun to work with someone else’s scraps than your own! So if you are uninspired by your scrap pile, consider asking around. It may be that someone you know will happily send their scraps to a good home. Or swap scraps with you.

Improv quilt made of scraps

How was I inspired by Romana’s scraps?

The book I had bought was “Create your own free-form quilts” by Rayna Gillman of Studio 78 Notes blog. If you are looking for some improv quilting inspiration, you should definitely pop over and have a look at her blog. Coincidentally, she is releasing a new book really soon that is a follow up to “Create your own free-form quilts”, called “Create your own improv quilts” (this is not an affiliate link, and I don’t know Rayna, I just thought you might be interested).

improv scraps quilt block

Anyway, the quilt project from the book that inspired me was a nine patch set out in a wonky fashion. I loved it at once. So I set out to make something similar. I took a scrap I liked from Romana’s pile and built up an improv block around it. Rinse, repeat 8 times and…. blahhhh!

improv scraps quilt block

I loved every block individually, but together they just didn’t work. So, I made some more, with the intention of swapping some out. But eventually I got to 16 blocks and discovered that I loved them all as a set. So the quilt just ended up considerably larger than intended.

improv scraps quilt block

Then I showed my quilt to a mutual friend, Susan. And it turns out that a good portion of the scraps that I had gleaned from Romana had actually originated with Susan. Susan makes her all own trouser pants, and often makes them out of batiks.

improv scraps quilt block

So we were sitting there, with Susan pointing at fabrics on the quilt, going “That’s pants. That’s pants. That’s pants”. Until she got the giggles. Turns out that Susan had lived in the UK for a while, and there the phrase “That’s pants” means “That’s rubbish!” We laughed until we cried. And then I named the quilt “That’s Pants”. It was indeed made of other people’s rubbish. What else could I do?!

improv scraps quilt block

Not long after, “That’s Pants” was gifted to Romana for a birthday and now it hangs at Flinders University. One day I would love to make another “That’s Pants” quilt. I certainly have enough scraps to give it another go!

improv scraps quilt block

How about you? How do you find inspiration in your fabric scrap bin? Have you ever had the privilege of playing with someone else’s scraps? What did you make?

Do you have scraps you’d like to send me? hahahaha ….. of course not. You’ll be wanting to rush off and make your own scrap quilt now! But how interesting would it be to generate quilts from readers’ scraps and blog about all the stories that go along with them!? All those quilt stories from around the world, all come together in Australia to continue their journey….. mind blowing idea!

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. There are only two days left in my Write 31 Days challenge! Where did October go?!!

P.S. If you are looking for scrap quilt inspiration and improv is not your thing, you might find what you are looking for on my scrappy quilt boards on Pinterest:
Scrappy Quilts – Amazing Quilts made from Scraps
More Scrappy Quilts – Amazing Quilts made from Scraps
String Quilts, Crumb Quilts, Selvage Quilts

Or, of course, you can follow all of Clever Chameleon on Pinterest for a broader range of quilt ideas. 🙂

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts, Busy Hands Quilts.

October 28, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Quangdong Christmas

Quangdong Christmas color scheme from Clever Chameleon

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

Do you know what the picture above is?!

It’s a ripe quangdong. An Australian native fruit. I took this photo in Arkaroola (a desert oasis in South Australia) in early October, two years ago. Isn’t the fruit glorious looking? And doesn’t it scream Christmas?!!!

cracked quangdong seed — The kernel inside

Quangdongs have a thin dry flesh surrounding a large dimpled seed.

The kernel inside the quangdong seed is known as a candle nut. The seed has a high enough oil content that you can light it and it will burn like a candle. Candles also make me think of Christmas. Especially after spending last Christmas in Europe.

quangdong seed burning — Quangdong seed candle

Quangdong flesh is awful to eat raw. However, if you dry quangdong, it magically becomes delicious. You can eat it just as it is, or turn it into jam or pie or whatever you desire. It tastes a little like rhubarb, but less sour. Mmmmm.

Quangdong Pie — Quangdong pie from a café in Quorn

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 28

I found my quangdong photos while still looking for the quilt photos I mentioned yesterday. It turns out that looking through old photos is a great way to find quilt inspiration. It happened to me yesterday as well!

Finding these shots is fortuitous. I needed an easy post today, because I have spent all my blogging time playing with ideas for a new Christmas tree decoration instead! I am going to be joining in the Ornament Exchange blog hop in November and I’ve been trying a few things out. So it seems apt that I tell you about my Christmasy quangdong inspiration today.

How was I inspired by the quangdong?

The reason why I took a whole set of photos of quangdongs two years ago was because I thought they would make amazing quilted postcard designs to use as Christmas cards. Especially for my overseas friends.

Appliqué the fruit and leaf shapes onto postcard sized quilts and then do a stack of fun thread painting over them. Or maybe draw them with Inktense and then thread paint. Sadly I haven’t got around to making the postcards yet, but time has not diminished the desire too. Every time I see these photos I think I must do this project one day.

Do you make quilted postcards? Where do you find your inspiration for them?

Or have you accidentally been inspired to make a quilt while looking through old photos? I would love to hear your stories. 🙂

P..S. If you are new to the 31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration series you can now binge read it…. access it through the first post, or follow me on Bloglovin’ to catch up on 4 weeks of everyday quilt inspiration.

P.P..S. You’ll be glad to know, I finally found the quilt photos I was after. I hope to tell you about them tomorrow. Take care until then!

October 27, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Children’s Drawings

Monster cake made from a child's drawings

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

I was actually looking for a photo of a quilt I want to tell you about, when I found this picture of a cake I decorated for my boy’s 4th birthday. I had forgotten all about this! Suddenly I knew what the next instalment in my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration series should be.

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 27

Today’s quilt inspiration source is probably the most simple of all. If you want to know what someone wants on their quilt, just ask! Especially if that someone is a child. You might be surprised by the answer you get!

When I asked my young son what he wanted on his birthday cake, he gave me a very detailed answer about the monster that he wanted. I didn’t understand a word of it. But it was obvious he had a very clear vision in his head.

So I asked him to draw it. And this is what I got:

A child's monster drawing

All I had to do then was adapt the drawing to fit on the cake, ask him what colour icing he wanted (purple!) and the rest was relatively easy. And he was stoked! Absolutely rapt in the perfect cake he had designed himself. Especially after he had helped stick on the lollies.

monster cake inspired by my son's drawings

It strikes me that I could have just as easily adapted this drawing into an appliqué and made a cushion. Or got him to draw me a few more monsters and made up a quilt. He still routinely draws lots of detailed fantasy creatures. I probably could still get him to participate in such a project.

Quilts from Children’s Drawings

Appliqué is one way you can transfer a child’s drawings to fabric. Some other ways I know that you can incorporate children’s artwork into quilts are:

iron fabric onto freezer paper for stiffness and get the child to draw on it with wax crayons. Iron the piece over paper towel to absorb out the wax and leave behind the colours.
My daughter’s crayon drawings on fabric (wax removed)
have the child paint you a picture on fabric with fabric paint or acrylic paints mixed with fabric medium.
use fabrics paints to print the child’s handprints or footprints onto fabric.
scan the child’s paper artwork and print it onto printable fabric
copy the child’s drawings onto fabric with free-motion stitching
have the child draw you a picture on fabric with Inktense pencils or crayons.
get your child to decorate some fabric with puff paints.

This is not an exhaustive list. I bet you could tell me more methods – let us know in the comments.

And do you know who else would love a quilt with a child’s artwork on? Their mum or their grandparents. This is not an exhaustive list either…..

So maybe next time you are looking for a quilt project, all you need to do is enlist the help of your nearest enthusiastic little helper(s). I guarantee it will be unique, if nothing else! 🙂

P.S. Hopefully I will find that quilt photo for you tomorrow!

P.P.S. Linking up this Friday with Busy Hands Quilts, FreeMotion by the River and Crazy Mom Quilts.