From the Sewing Room: Vanuatu Turtle Quilt Progress
At last check-in
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated you on the quilt that I am doing for the Splash of Color Quilt Along at Busy Hands Quilts. I have been slightly distracted with the homemade ornament blog hop and a few other small projects. They’ve been lots of fun, but I must admit, it’s really nice to get back to quilt making again.
In a nutshell, my plan is to make a quilt with fabrics predominately from Vanuatu. The intention is that this quilt will be a memento of our family’s visit there earlier this year. It will also double as a TV snuggle rug and protection for the couch from the cat. This is roughly what I’m aiming for:
My Vanuatu Turtle Quilt design for the Black and White and Splash of Color QAL
So, the progress report….
Now I have all the components prepared for my quilt top. I have sewn the centre blocks from my last check-in together.
And I have sewn up four border strips.
It would have been quicker and simpler without the assistance……
You can’t prove anything…..
Now all that remains is to combine these pieces with a red strip border to create the flimsy. And then it will be time to add the appliqué. 🙂
Short and sweet this week!
If it’s part of your heritage, I hope you had a special Thanksgiving. And wishing everyone a great week ahead as we enter Advent. My kids are eagerly anticipating the hanging of the Advent quilt (aka the candy-pockets quilt)! Do you have any Advent or Christmas quilts that will be making their seasonal appearance soon? I’d love to hear from you!
Vanuatu Turtle Quilt: Design process, warts and all.
In the last few days I have finally had a chance to get back into the sewing room. And I have to admit it was very therapeutic. I have missed sewing. So has our cat. I swear he is addicted as I am!
My goal this week was to design and sew the blocks for my black, white and red Vanuatu Turtle quilt for the Splash of Color Quilt Along. I started with this basic plan…
And these fabrics…..
If you wish, you can read more about the what and why of my original plans, and see my turtle appliqué pieces all cut, waiting for a quilt top.
So, on Thursday, I started on the quilt top. I looked at my plan. I cut six 6½ squares. And I went off script.
That might be a record, even for me!
Changing my mind….
Firstly, I decided that I wanted to add in a very dark, plain fabric behind the bulk of the turtle appliqué. Plainer than any fabric I have brought home from Vanuatu. I did actually look for a mostly black fabric in Vanuatu, but there wasn’t any to be had.
So, I went hunting among my scraps here at home and found an Australian Aboriginal print in black called Sand Dunes. The Sand Dunes scraps are leftover from the backing of a dear friend’s quilt. It is very soft and colourfast – an amazing piece of fabric to work with. So I added it to the mix. I also found some black 2½” pre-cut strips inherited from another friend. Perfect for extra darkness behind the appliqué.
Dark corner for the turtle appliqué background. Sand Dunes is the black with the dotted wavy lines through it.
Changing my mind, again…
Although I had a 5×5 grid drawn up for my colour gradient in the quick diagram above, I had actually intended to do an 8×8 grid of 6″ squares. Some fussy cut whole squares and some pieced squares to get a black and white gradient. That is why I started by cutting 6½ squares of each Vanuatu fabric.
However, I quickly realised that 6″ squares of pinwheels and HSTs in these prints is going to result in a very. busy. quilt. Which would be fine, except that this was supposed to be the background for my appliquéd turtle. And it was also going to take waaaay too long to construct.
So, I decided that my mockup was trying to tell me something – that I should have 5×5 8″ finished blocks. I cut some new 8½” squares, and recycled the 6½” squares into 8½ squares by adding 2½” strips on two sides. This had the added bonus of being an easy way to graduate through colour values and tie the blocks together visually.
Building up the Vanuatu Turtle Quilt
And again…
As I started on the more intricately pieced blocks, I decided that I needed some more solid or solid-like fabrics. Specifically in the grey range. Somewhere for the eyes to rest from the prints. I had already included a blue-grey hand-dye and a white solid in my original fabric choices. Now I added two grey Shadow Play fabrics from my scraps. I only had enough of the dark grey Shadow Play for 4 pieces. But that is half the fun, making do. 🙂
More progress on the turtle quilt
And again…
At this point it was time for me to head out to the South Australian Quilters’ Guild evening meeting. I’m glad I got this far before I had to go, because I was beginning to heed the little voice that said I needed to add a nearly white fabric. There were no nearly white fabrics in Vanuatu, just as there were no nearly black ones. I had thought that I might get by with fussy cutting. Or using the reverse side of a fabric. But…
At the Guild meetings there is always a shop stall, and in the end I picked up something to round out my fabric choices. Actually I picked up two somethings. One was a white fabric with a fine black print. It had slightly more black than I wanted, but it was the best pick available. I was happy at least that the swirls on the print are consistent with the patterns already in my quilt. 🙂 The second purchase was a fat quarter of a dark blue-grey Grunge that happens to be the exact same colour as the blue grey on two of the Vanuatu fabrics. Score!
Finishing off the design
A little more playing and switching fabrics around and I settled on this layout (with a few more tweaks as I sewed).
Nearly finished. You can probably guess who disturbed my nice tidy layout…..Somebody who thinks he is invisible siiting here…..
And now I have finished sewing up the 8½” blocks for my Vanuatu Turtle quilt. They are ready to be assembled into a quilt top and have borders attached.
Vanuatu Turtle quilt blocks finished and ready for assemblyHappy with my pile of blocks
So, how am I feeling? Well, I really love this quilt top so far. I think the design is actually quite effective as it is. A small part of me even thinks that I should claim the grey-blue as my “Splash of Color” and leave it really simple. Because there is a whisper of a question in my head as to whether it will marry well with my appliqué. Despite all the changes I have made, it is still very busy.
But the whole point of this quilt is the turtle appliqué….. And if I stop now this quilt top will be too small to be particularly useful, and my turtle appliqué will be orphaned. So I will push on. If, in the end, it isn’t as fantastic as I envisioned, then I won’t mind it going on the couch, right?! And there is always something to be learned in quilts that don’t quite make it to awesome. Fingers crossed that I am just over analysing things and it will be just fine!
If you are also participating in the Splash of Color Quilt Along I hope that you are pleased with your progress so far. If you like black and white quilts and haven’t been over and checked out the progress of the other projects yet, be sure to do that. Everyone has chosen their own project, so this QAL is very interesting, even as a spectator sport. 🙂
P.S. Colour Inspiration Tuesday resumes here tomorrow! Yay!
About a month ago I signed up for the Splash of Color quilt along from Busy Hands Quilts. The rules mostly consist of a few deadlines for the quilt stages, and that the colours of the quilt are to be predominately black and white with colour highlights. Apart from that, the direction the quilt takes is up to each quilter.
The fabrics for my Splash of Color quilt inspiration.The colours in our Vanuatu bedroom.
Since that post, we have been back to Vanuatu to continue Paul’s humanitarian telecommunications research. While we were there I acquired more fabrics specifically for this project :). And some more inspiration. I decided to add a little greyed blue or teal to my splash of colour, thanks to the Vanuatu décor in our bedroom.
Here is my final pile of goodies to work from:
The white, grey and teal fabrics are from my stash here at home. The red and black fabrics are all from Vanuatu.
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 25
The next challenge in the Splash of Color quilt along was to choose a quilt pattern. Well, I am not known for working to a quilt pattern. So I have opted to design as I go, as per usual. But I do have a basic idea of where I am headed. I am making a turtle quilt inspired by the tribal turtle motif on two of the original fabrics.
Turtle motif on fabric from Vanuatu
I have now designed my turtle appliqué. It is influenced by the turtle above, but also by a beautiful turtle batik I have in my collection. If you like batiks, you might recognise this fabric, its been around for a while.
Turtle batik fabric from Lunn Studios for Artisan Batiks from Robert Kaufman Fabrics
I actually started a quilt for my nephew two years ago inspired by this turtle batik, that I also intended to put a turtle appliqué on. But he got a monkey quilt instead. Long story for another day. But it s nice to be returning to the turtle idea. Perhaps I can knock off this UFO too.
My Turtle Appliqué Quilt Design Concept
Here is my turtle appliqué design:
My turtle appliqué design on a very basic rendition of a black and white background
It is quite likely that the quilt background will be significantly different from my quick diagram. The basic plan for the background of the quilt is to create 8×6″ finished blocks out of the black and white fabrics. Some blocks will be fussy cut 6″ squares. Some blocks will be created from 4″ and 2″ squares, with possibly some half-square triangles and/or pinwheels thrown in. I will decide on their overall layout at the end. Basically, I am going to give the free die that comes with the Accuquilt GO! cutter a whirl.
Then, the intention is to add a 1″ red border, and then an 8″ piano key border in black and white. It will finish at 66″ square and I will bind it in red. Or teal. Subject to mind changes, of course!
Where am I at?
Well, the sharing link for having the fabrics cut opened 10 days ago or so. So, you can tell I am a little behind schedule as usual. But the link is not closed yet, and I have my appliqué printed, traced and cut out, so all is not lost!
Turtle appliqué templatesHere are my turtle appliqué pieces. The teal fabric will be mostly covered by the red, so I bought a cheap Prima solid for this layer.
I actually have no intention of pre-cutting my black and white fabrics. I will do this as I create blocks. Not efficient if I was producing a quilt from a pattern, for sure. But it is the way I design quilts from scratch. So I am claiming that this QAL stage is done to my satisfaction. And I hope you will find my design process more interesting if I actually report it like it is rather than showing you just the end result.
If you would like to see the other projects in this quilt along, the original ideas links are found here. There were 14 projects joined up from the very beginning – there may be some late comers too if you keep an eye on the progress linkys. There is certainly a great variety, you are sure to see something that inspires you!
One thing that most quilters do is save their scraps for another project down the line. But if those scraps aren’t sufficient for another quilt, yet have strong sentimental value, it can be hard to decide to do with them. So what do you do? Move them on? Throw them away? Or make something entirely different with them?
There once was a fabric off-cut amongst my collection that I didn’t want to part with. It was left over from a project (not actually a quilt) that I did for a friend who now lives overseas and whom I miss very much. I decided that my sewing room needed a clock, and that this special black and white batik should be the background.
There were also a stack of fake flowers left in my mother’s belongings that I couldn’t quite commit to throwing away. I am not a “fake flowers sort of person”, but I know she enjoyed decorating her last residential unit very much. So I pulled the flowers to pieces so I could sew with them.
One of the deconstructed tiger lilies from my Mum with a bell centre.
Sentimental trinkets and real flowers from my love
Also among my mother’s things was a brand new wooden frame. It framed a print I know she loved, but it was never destined to hang in my or my siblings’ homes. It never even got to hang in her home – it was still in it’s wrapper. So I pulled that to pieces too.
In my own things I always have ribbon scraps from flowers my hubby buys me. He knows that if he buys me flowers regularly I don’t immediately get suspicious if he suddenly starts. This avoids questions like “What have you done this time?!”. Hahahaha. High IQ has my hubby.
I echoed the tiger lily with bobbin work and hand embroidery. I think this is my favourite part asthetically.
Acquired supplies and new techniques
Also among my own things was a very heavy blue thread that I bought secondhand from a class instructor because she was downsizing her thread collection. And I had just learned bobbin work….. So I added a ghost tiger lily to the background.
The bright blue button was among my inherited button collections.
More sentimental notions and hoarded items
The bright blue button was languishing in one of the button collections I have inherited along the way. It spoke to me as the new centre for the deconstructed white tiger lily.
There was also a bell among my buttons. It came from one of my previous cats’ collars. My indoors-only cats have no need for bells, so I tend to remove them and stash them away for later. Bit of a magpie, me.
I constructed the clock face with two layers of glass and satin stitched over coloured slivers of fabric to make the numerals and hour marks.
Easing my conscience over unused supplies
Finally, I needed to find a way to mark out the clock face without obscuring the batik fabric that I was trying to honour. In my USOs (un-started objects!!) I (still) have a sample of a fabric called “glass”. It is like an ultra-fine tulle. I bought it to try it in shadow trapunto. That was years ago…. and I only just got around to trying shadow trapunto last month. But not with the glass yet. Anyway, two layers of this, fused over the batik, gave just the right degree of opaqueness.
I bought the clock parts especially for this project and made the clock face size to match.
I agonised how to put all this together for a long time. Shuffled my sentimental scraps and notions around many times. In the end though, I was happy with the result. I know some of my friends think it is a bit odd. But I actually don’t care. This piece is for me. 🙂 They were my sentimental scraps, after all.
See you again tomorrow for another round of Colour Inspiration Tuesday. Thanks for reading!
Well, here we are two thirds of the way through October and the Write 31 Days challenge. And I have to admit to being a little blogged out this morning. Writing everyday beyond October will not be for me. I long to get back to spending a larger proportion of my time sewing. This attitude probably isn’t being helped by the fact that I am itching to turn some of the ideas that have popped up in this series into real quilts! Where to start!!!?
Anyway, because I am feeling a little done with generating ideas, I paused today and reflected on what other topics are relevant to my challenge. And I think it might be time to turn to some examples of quilts I own and look at the ideas that inspired them. Something less theoretical and more tangible. I can do this now that we are home again and back into routine. Yay!!
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 21
It doesn’t hurt to get jaded sometimes….. jade is a very pretty colour after all! 🙂 And one of the prettiest quilts I have been given is also the only quilt I own made specifically for me, by someone other than me. It is dark jade and rainbow. Here is my birthday gift from a while back from a beautiful friend, Susan.
My lotus batik quilt from Susan
Susan is one of the friends I have made through quilting, and is an amazing wizard with colour. If I ever need colour advise, Susan will always have an idea tucked away that will help me out.
How one batik inspired a whole quilt
Let me tell you how this quilt came to be…. Susan bought a small piece of the rainbow lotus batik as an impulse purchase simply because she loved it. That seems like a great reason to me!
But she didn’t want it to end up in stash, so she took the dominant lotus shape from the batik pattern and turned it into an appliqué shape.
Raw-edge lotus appliqué
She secured the appliqués with a small zigzag in clear thread. The stitching is nearly invisible. Some shuffling of the squares, including some sneaky discussions with me about the layout, ensued. And the blocks were stitched together lickety-split.
The lotuses are stitched down with zigzag stitch in invisible thread.
And she ended up with the quilt that now has pride of place in my dining room. 🙂 This precious quilt of love would be in my sewing room, but there is very little wall space in there with 2 walls that are mostly windows and the third wall actually being mostly double doors.
So that is the story of the inspiration behind the lotus batik quilt. Simple, but enormously effective. Thank you, dear Susan!!
Have you used a fabric as the starting point for a quilt like this? If so, I’d love to know.
You could also extend this idea to generate quilting designs. Big, edge-to-edge lotuses would be lots of fun.
31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life
31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life
