Quilting Bugs and Gardens

From the Sewing Room: free-motion Bugs in my Garden quilting motif

Welcome back! Today we are looking at bug and garden free-motion quilt motifs you can use to quilt a relaxed and friendly child’s quilt. You can use these motifs in almost endless combinations to personalise all sorts of projects. It will be fun! 🙂

At our house, we like bugs and slugs, and most things creepy crawly. Not actually in our house…. outside, thanks! However, we do have half a dozen buggy residents who are welcome in our house. (If you hate insects, look away now!! Please don’t unfollow…. I’m not likely to post them again!) Otherwise, if you’re game, meet “the girls”…..

This is one of our Spiny Leaf Insects. They are Australian natives and very low care pets. This old girl is well past her expected life span and is mum or aunty to all our other girls. She is about 15 cm long, stretched out.

Insects and other garden dwellers are a regular feature in family discussions around here. Accordingly, I have quilted bugs on quite a few projects in the last few years. So when I received a colourful bug and flower-themed quilt sandwich to quilt for a charity group, for once I knew exactly what to do with it!

Bugs in my Garden FMQ

I only quilt friendly bugs. Nothing that bites, and no spiders to date. And I always quilt the bugs a place to live. So my go-to “Bugs in my Garden” free-motion set consists of caterpillars, snails, dragonflies, butterflies, leaves, flowers and suns. I have also added hearts to this particular quilt. All the motifs are linked with a simple loop-de-loop. This collection is fast to quilt, and results in a nice amount of quilting that leaves the quilt snuggly soft. It is also fun for children to hunt the motifs on their quilts. After the formal trapunto project with feathers and micro stippling last week, quilting Bugs in my Garden felt like dancing!

Here is the finished quilt. Now it goes off to another charity quilter to be bound.

Bugs in my Garden quit — Simple and cheerful. I wanted it to stay that way after quilting.

More about the Bugs in my Garden FMQ motifs

Here are some close-ups of the quilting:

Bugs in my garden quilting — Bugs in my Garden: sun, dragonfly and heart shapes

Here are some even closer views of the critters in my garden:

Bugs in the Garden: Caterpillar — Caterpillar

Bugs in the Garden: dragonfly — Dragonfly

Bugs in my Garden: Butterfly — Butterfly

And some of the garden motifs too:

Bugs in the Garden: Daisy flower — Daisy Flower

Want to try “Bugs in the Garden”?

I’m hoping you like Bugs in my Garden and can think of someone who would like to explore a quilt covered in these fun motifs. If you would like to try them yourself, I have put them all the motifs together in a 4-page pdf you can download for free. You don’t have to follow my blog or sell me your soul. Just promise me you’ll pay it forward a little. 🙂
Download here: Bugs in my Garden motifs

This pdf contains line drawings of the motifs with travelling directions marked so you can see how each motif is constructed.

green clever chameleon logo I hope you have caught the quilting bug!

Sorry! My daughter has been learning about puns at school this week 🙂

P.S. This is my second link up with the Quilt Bloggers Festival at Amy’s Creative Side. Come on over to see a huge number of quilt bloggers in one place!

P.P.S. Also linking up with my favourite linky parties as they open:
Free Motion Mavericks
Crazy Mom Quilts
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Busy Hands Quilts

P.P.P.S. I always always have other stuff I am busting to tell you….. for instance, yesterday I was looking through my Pinterest feed and I found a very cool hexagon ladybird quilt. And, then when I visited the source page, it turns out the post was written for one of Amy’s early Quilt Blogger Festivals in 2010! If you want to see the quilt I stumbled on, visit this archive of Personalized Sketches and Sentiments. I have to say I was a little amazed at the coincidence, being in the process of writing a buggy post for Amy’s festival in 2017 and all! For more amazing and weirdly relevant quilt finds on the internet be sure to follow the clever chameleon where ever she goes…… soon I’ll be posting from Vanuatu!

September 20, 2017January 19, 2024

Dream Big Trapunto Mini Quilt Finished

How do you Hang your Mini Quilts?

Howdy……. Normally I do not post on a Wednesday. But today, I want to show off my finish from last week (I was going to show you in my usual end of week post, but that draft is getting too long already). So I have split my ravings into two doses this week. I hope you don’t mind…..

Anyway, do you remember last week I was madly trying out some trapunto as homework for my local Handi Quilter club? Well, I was. I chose to play with a free design from Geta’s Quilting Studio, that you can access too if you wish. Then I added a heap of FMQ as decoration and practice. And then I ran out of time. But it is now trimmed and bound and hung. Voila!

Dream Big mini quilt stuck directly on the wall

I bound it by machine and it was a bit of a rush job. I probably will refrain from doing that again. But I have just found out we need to head overseas for work for a couple of weeks and I have committed to a fair few too many things between now and then. So, in the belief that finished is better than perfect, it is done. Apart from NOT needing any more UFOs, there are two other reasons why I wanted this finished. The first is, that I wanted to try hanging a quilt with these:

Command hooks — Just so you know, I have no relationship with 3M/Command. I’m just exploring my world and sharing with you as I see fit.

These are adhesive velcro-like strips that clip together and stick to your wall and your picture. I have used 3M brand hooks for a long time, and always have found them to perform very well, so when someone mentioned to me that they use them to hang quilts, I was intrigued. To be honest, also a little bit skeptical. I was not sure that the adhesive strips would hold that well to fabric…. and what of the long term consequences to the quilt? Best to test it out on something not too precious.

Hanging the “Dream Big” mini

So “Dream Big” was always going to be my test piece for this experiment. I added one strip to each corner. In theory, the weight of this quilt probably only needs 1 or 2 strips, but one in each corner will keep it flush to the wall. And I want to pin my show ribbons to it as a display. So over time it should increase in weight! How’s that for optimism!! hahahaha. Please don’t think I am being conceited…… I am currently laughing quite hard….. 🙂 Accumulation of dust is likely the bigger hazard! “Dream Big” is a reminder to myself about sticking with this blog, and believing in my husband’s humanitarian goals, not show quilting.

Anyway, to begin with, the adhesive didn’t seem to bond very well with the Dream Big quilt. But the strips have been on there for four days now, and I have to admit, they are feeling pretty firmly stuck now. I have even become game enough to add two ribbons… the one I got from the local show this year and a second place I won in 2014.

Dream Big with ribbons — Dream Big is now my ribbon display quilt.

Dream big sitting flush — No hanging gap.

I’ll let you know if it comes crashing down. In which case, I will be opting to use hanging corner pockets on my mini quilts instead. But I do like how this hanging method leaves the quilt completely flush against the wall. And the instant gratification of quilt onto wall works for me as well!

Have you ever tried these hooks, or a similar product on a quilt? How do they perform over time?

I am linking this post up with Amy’s Creative Side for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival. It’s the first time I have participated in this and I’m quite excited….. this is the upside of being a brand new blogger (and easily amused…)! There are a lot of prizes up for grabs for just participating, so if you blog about your quilts, head on over and join us. Link ups finish the end of this week. Good luck!

If you are a blogger having arrived here from Amy’s quilt festival, welcome and please leave a comment – it would be a pleasure to “meet” you.

purple Clever Chameleon logo How do you hang your mini quilts? I’d love to hear from you. Comments make my day, and I’m always amazed at the plethora of ideas out there when quilters start sharing tips!!

I hope I will catch you again in a day or two with my main post. We are going to be quilting garden motifs. Until then, Happy Quilting!!

P.S I have also shared this post on Finish it Up Friday. Boy, the quilters are out in force this week – lots of great ideas here!

September 19, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Strawberry Vines

Strawberry Vines color scheme by Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Weekly Inspiration and Colour Happiness for your Quilting Mental Fitness!

Hi! Welcome back to Tuesday! Doesn’t it roll around quickly!? Today we are going to exercise the little grey cells and treat them to some beautiful colours along the way.

Mental exercise is good for your mind. Luckily for us, mental exercise can be waaaaay more fun than the physical sort! Keeping your mind active can be as fun as learning a new sewing technique. Resizing a quilt pattern. Or exploring new colour combinations. Anything that takes you out of your mental comfort zone and requires you to do some actual thinking rather than just consuming information or watching TV.

This week I have been stretching my mind by learning new techniques (playing with trapunto), and thinking about what to explore next for Colour Inspiration Tuesday. I finally settled on some strawberry flowers. These flowers remind me of the time when I was a country teen and had a huge patch of strawberry plants that I grew from a few runners my maternal grandmother gave me. I used to water them, mulch them and even feed them with cow dung that I collected and pre-soaked in buckets of water! And the little fruits were ohhhhh soooo sweet. Accessing happy memories is good for your mental health too!

Strawberry Vines colour scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Strawberry Vines

In honour of happy memories and mental exercise, today we have the “Strawberry Vines” colour scheme and an accompanying free-motion quilting motif to try. “Strawberry Vines” is a green, yellow and pale grey-blue colour palette. The blue is so subtle it looks white unless there is real white up against it. Go on, have another look at the photo. The main colour captured on the strawberry flower is not really pure white is it?

Anyway, I decided against designing us another quilt idea this week. The truth is that there are many good ideas floating around in Colour Inspiration Tuesday already. And I would like to have an honest go at some of them. Without the weight of new ideas to cause drag or distraction. But I did want to still give you something…… I am ever so grateful to you my readers and especially to my growing list of regular followers for coming by.

So, this week’s idea for personalising your quilts is….

How to Quilt the strawberry vines motif from Clever Chameleon blog

Looking at the strawberry flower picture and remembering my garden with the hundreds of plants and gently tending the runners until the new plants had roots and planting them too, made me think of quilting strawberries, strawberry leaves and flowers on a continuous line. Strawberry Vines. Wouldn’t this be a lovely finishing touch for a quilt in summer colours or pastel tones? Or on reds, pinks and greens on a girl’s quilt? Do you remember the Strawberry Shortcake character from the 1980’s? A quilt in her colours!

Strawberry Shortcake figurine — Strawberry Shortcake…. 35 years old(ish) and still scented! This little darling now belongs to my daughter.

Strawberry Vines Quilting Motif

So I started doodling on paper and came up with my first go at such a design. Followed by a quick experiment on a fat quarter left over from Jewel Tone Diamonds and some waste cotton batting.

Strawberry Vines quilting motif

The three elements I used were leaf triplet, a small flower with the characteristic star in the centre between the petals, and of course, strawberries. As you can see, I tried the strawberries with and without seeds.

One of the things I like about my new impromptu design is that any gaps that get missed or are too hard to fill in with continuous quilting can be filled in with a curly “strawberry runner”. How good is that?!?

On my next try, I think I will round out the leaves a bit more. I know that strawberry leaves also have zigzagged edges, but that level of detail doesn’t interest me for quilting. The flowers were a bit tricky, I went through several methods to try to quilt them neatly. Here is the path that worked best for me. Start by travelling into the flower centre, and add the petals second:

strawberry flower quilting design — A strawberry flower quilting path. Note, I have added gaps where lines would normally touch or overlay each other, so that you can easily see the pathway.

Don’t worry if you need to place more than 5 petals around the centre to finish the flower. Strawberry flowers can have 5, 6 or 7 petals. It’s the flat shape of the petals with the triangle gaps between them that make them so distinctive.

How to shape strawberries

The other important thing to remember is to round off the tops of your strawberries where they meet the leaves. And don’t make the berries too symmetrical…. otherwise they look like acorns with the wrong caps instead. Or maybe persimmons. At least to me.

Next time I play with this motif I want to add flower buds as well. I have a UFO in colours not unlike “Lily Pad Glow” that might look nice quilted with this motif. What would you use it on?

Don’t need strawberry vines quilting motifs this week?

Bored sleeping cat — “Strawberries! How dull. Wake me up when you are quilting something interesting… like flies! Flies are cool!”

Don’t worry kitty! We are looking at quilting bugs later on this week. Remember the child’s charity quilt with the cute bug fabrics that I stabilised a while back? I have just about finished quilting it now, and I’ll show you how to quilt the various bug motifs I used (no flies though). Stay tuned via email or Bloglovin’ so you don’t forget to come back!

Credits

Today’s photo of strawberry flowers is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. Credit is not required, but I’m sure you’d love to know who is being so generous with their talent. Accordingly, this photo was provided by John-Mark Kuznietsov. Be sure to check out his collection of photos on Unsplash.
John-Mark Kuznietsov

green clever chameleon logo

I hope you have fun trying out this strawberry vines quilting motif. See you next time for more quilting fun!

P.S. If you would like to use John-Mark’s photo or another Colour Inspiration Tuesday photo for your own projects, you can easily find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.

The Linky parties I have invited myself to this week:
Monday: Cooking up Quilts,, Love, Laugh, Quilt, Sew Can Do
Tuesday: Quilting Room with Mel, Free Motion by the River
Wednesday: Quilt Fabrication, Sew Fresh Quilts

You are invited too. Come and see what lots of craft-loving people are sharing on the net this week!! Here’s one of my favourites from the parties so far:
Project Sew a Jellyroll by Patchwork Sampler

September 14, 2017January 19, 2024

Trapunto Homework and FMQ Practice

Doing My Handiquilter Group Trapunto Homework

If you have been following for a little while, you may remember that I have been attending monthly local Handiquilter group meetings at the Adelaide Sewing Centre. I really like these meetings because they expose me to different techniques and give me a semi-hard-deadline to try them before the next meeting. This past two months we have been looking at trapunto.

The meeting before last, Heather talked about trapunto in general. Then last month she upped the ante by talking about shadow trapunto. This is fantastic, because I first discovered shadow trapunto on the internet years ago, and put it on my to-do list. Where it sadly stayed ever since. Until now.

I was pretty pleased that the next month or two’s worth of homework is something I have always wanted to try. But of course, time slips away and the next meeting is looming very large, so today and yesterday I have been madly going trapunto! 🙂

Dream Big Trapunto

Researching my Trapunto Homework

A few months ago, I also discovered an amazing quilting blog by Geta Grama. If you are not familiar with this blog, you are definitely missing out. I highly recommend that you check it out (Hey, not just yet! – when you are finished here!! ;)).

What’s more, I discovered Geta Grama about the same time Heather announced that we were going to be looking at trapunto for the next few months. And, guess what Geta does a lot of? That’s right! Trapunto! So ever since, I have had one of Geta’s tutorials earmarked. Now I am having a crack at it, and here’s how it went….

Where to get this Trapunto Pattern

The first thing you need to know is where to find the patterns and tutorials if you would like to try this project. The design is by Geta Grama and is available for free download (it will cost you an email address). She also has a free tutorial on her trapunto method and recommended tools, so even if you aren’t wanting to do this particular project, I would still urge you to take a look.

How I made Geta’s Trapunto Mini-Quilt.

After downloading Geta’s “Dream Big” file, I printed the pdf (4 pages) and stuck them together…. this went without a hitch. Now, here’s where I started to deviate from the script. I don’t currently own a working wash-out marking pen, and they make me nervous anyway. So, I traced the lettering onto greaseproof paper and layered this over white cotton quilting fabric and 200gsm (30mm) polyester wadding. I immediately wished I had opted for the thinner polyester batting, as the fat wadding didn’t fit very well under my sewing machine foot. It probably wouldn’t have been such an issue if I had just marked the fabric rather than trying to use baking paper, so perhaps I shall have to remember to buy a washout pen next time I am shopping.

Anyway, with a little care, I managed to sew around the lettering without losing the baking paper. I used soluble thread on the top and ordinary bobbin thread underneath.

Dream Big on paper sewn to batting — “Dream Big” sewn onto fabric and polyester batting

Dream Big from the back — “Dream Big” sewn into polyester batting (from the back)

Then came the bit that has always put me off trapunto. The cutting away of the excess polyester batting. I hate the thought of nicking the top fabric or the stitching holding it all together. Just to cut out this little project took me an hour, and I did accidentally cut the stitching once. It promptly started coming undone quite badly, so I re-sewed the loose part straight away. Thankfully I didn’t nick the top fabric at any point. At this point I was pretty sure that trapunto is not for me. Too stressful for a hobby!!!

Dream Big trapunto cut out — “Dream Big” trapunto cut away from excess batting.

I will note here that I should have read Geta’s tutorial more thoroughly before I started. She says starching your fabric really stiff helps keep the fabric from getting accidentally snipped. I’ll have to try that next time. If there is a next time….. see, I am warming to the idea.

Putting the Quilt Together

Once I had the trapunto prepared, I layered it over another two layers of bamboo/cotton blend batting (that’s what I had at hand) and put white fabric on the back. I used two layers because I read on Karen’s quilt blog that this will give you better quilting definition and more texture. I wanted to give this a go, and there’s nothing like killing two birds with one stone.

Then I traced the innermost heart shape onto more greaseproof paper and positioned it over the quilt sandwich using the lettering as a guide to placement. I stitched the outline of the heart in white thread and removed the paper.

heart stitched around trapunto — Marking the boundary of the innermost heart with stitching.

Then I filled in the heart around the lettering with micro stippling and finished off the letters and heart outlines by going around them twice. I used variegated Wonderfill cotton thread for the micro stippling and Robison-Anton rayon for the outlines. The Robison-Anton shreds too easily in my Sweet 16, although I never had any problems with it in my domestic machine. I personally prefer Madeira rayon in my Sweet 16. However, the colour was the decider from the threads I had on hand, so I just persisted through the inevitable broken thread episodes.

Dream Big heart finished — Micro-stippling allows the trapunto to really pop out.

Quilting the background

The original pattern from Geta Grama was finished off with some simple echo quilting. But never one to stick to a pattern, I had to mess with it. Besides, I am always looking for ways to increase my quilting practice without increasing my number of projects. So, I drew up a slightly altered echo quilting plan and filled in the first concentric heart with half feathers. By this stage I was having fun. There will probably be a next time after all.

Dream Big with echo quilting — “Dream Big” trapunto with echo quilting.

Then I decided to complete the feathers rather than repeating the half feathers and alternate the feathers with other designs. I started with pebbles, but my bobbin ran out. Which was fortuitous because I decided I didn’t like the pebbles after all and ripped them out.

Quilting the Dream big trapunto — Here are the pebbles I started before ripping them out.

In the end, I decided to fill in the gaps between the feathers with micro-stippling. It seemed better to keep the number of design elements to a minimum.

Micro-stippling and feathers — Micro-stippling combined with feathers between the echo quilting.

Finally I decided that I liked the extra white space left at this point, so I actually didn’t fill in the last few sections with dense quilting. So the project finally ended up looking like this:

Dream big quilt, quilting finished

Blue Clever Chameleon logo

When I get this mini-quilt bound I will show you. I have also been playing with some shadow trapunto with felt on a cushion that I will post soon, possibly with a tutorial. Remember, if you’d like to give this Dream Big trapunto project a go, visit Geta’s Quilting Studio.

Don’t forget to follow this blog for regular quilt inspiration and tips. You can follow me by email, RSS feed or on Bloglovin’.

I’d love to see how you personalise this project. If you make it, let us know, and tell Geta how much you appreciate the pattern.

P.S. Here are my recommended finds on the internet this week:
Geta’s Quilting Studio blog
Karen’s Quilts: 2016 Free Motion Quilt Along
Create a Card Project on C&T Publishing blog – I am teaching my 9yo daughter to sew at the moment, so all relevant ideas are on my radar lately! Visit for a chance to win a copy of The Best of Sewing Machine Fun for Kids, 2nd Ed.

P.P.S. Also, don’t forget to check out the upcoming Art with Fabric blog at Tweety Loves Quilting.

Art with Fabric blog hop @ tweloquilting.blogspot.com

P.P.P.S And finally, linking up with these favourite Linky Parties this week:
Free Motion Mavericks, Free Motion by the River
Quilt Fabrication, Sew Fresh Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, The Inquiring Quilter,
Crazy Mom Quilts, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Don’t forget to check out these links for this weeks quilt happenings around the web!

September 12, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection 2

Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection Number 2

Welcome to the second collection of Colour Inspiration Tuesday mood boards. Twelve more colour boards to inspire, and to get you planning your next quilt project! If you missed the first 12 Colour Inspiration Tuesday colour schemes, you can find them here.

Well, what a few weeks of Colour Inspired Tuesdays it’s been! We’ve had another quilt design, a series of matching fabric to colours in photos, and the beginnings of a cheeky parrot appliqué.

hazy days color scheme by Clever Chameleon — Hazy Days fabric mood board featured in the ten finalists for the Summer Crush mosaic contest at Stitched in Color blog.

Cat on a wall design from Clever Chameleon — Cat on a wall quilt idea from Sunset Wall colour scheme, and re-coloured to Another World Blue colour palette.

Dancing Macaw appliqué from Clever Chameleon — Dancing Macaw appliqué from Dancing Macaw Colour Inspiration Tuesday.

And, if that wasn’t enough, I have some extra news! Now we’ve been invited to participate in an art-inspired quilt blog hop. What fun!! Alida at Tweety Loves Quilting blog is holding the fourth Art with Fabric blog hop, starting 9th October. Five days of artworks re-interpreted as quilted items. And Clever Chameleon will feature on Friday the 13th! Lucky for some! Head on over and have a pre-view of the line up.

The second Colour Inspiration Tuesday Collection

To access the colour palettes of the second Colour Inspiration Tuesday collection, click on the thumbnails below.

Follow along and be the first with the free inspiration!

clever chameleon logo

At Clever Chameleon we explore at least one potential quilt colour scheme every week. I also share my own creations and tutorials regularly. Follow Clever Chameleon Quilting on Bloglovin’ to stay abreast of all the fun quilty things I do and find on the internet. Or subscribe to receive regular Clever Chameleon emails that will Colour Your Mood and Brighten Your World.

Colour Inspiration Tuesday is also easily accessible through Pinterest. Follow my Understanding Color for Quilts board for regular quilt colour inspiration.

P.S. If you are an art quilter (or want to start now!), there is still a small window of opportunity to join the Art with Fabric blog hop. Head over to Tweety Loves Quilting for all the details.

P.PS. Linking up with my favourite parties this week:
The Quilting Room with Mel
Crazy Mom Quilts
Be sure to visit these links for lots of great quilt inspiration in one place.