Yesterday we stopped for a picnic lunch at a little spot where the beach is accessible, between the two Vanuatu villages we are working in.
Picnic lunch spot in Vanuatu
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 5
Once we had settled and stopped moving around, we discovered that the pebbly beach was swarming with tiny hermit crabs. The smallest were wearing shells of less than half an inch long. The biggest one we found was less than an inch and a half in length. They were fast and shy, disappearing instantly if anyone moved suddenly or cast a shadow over them. Of course, hermit crabs are a novelty to my family. But they are everyday critters for the Ni-Vanuatu villagers here.
How was I inspired by the Hermit Crabs?
Well, while the kids ruined their shoes by getting “unintentionally” wet in the ocean, I amused myself by trying to get photos of the tiny, speedy hermit crabs. When I looked at the photos later, I thought several might make good starting points for appliqué designs.
So here is my first mock-up of a design for a hermit crab appliqué from the photo above.
For the most part I traced the approximate shapes of the crab from the photo.
What about you? Do you use your photos to help you draw appliqués? If you are not a confident drawer, taking pictures of your subjects and tracing them is a good way to generate original designs that mean something special to you. Start with a photo of a loved one, a flower from your garden, a piece of fruit, an interesting leaf, a pet, your favourite ornaments…… the everyday objects around you that you could appliqué are almost endless.
Aghhh. Slow internet! No internet! Slow internet! Great Intern….. Nope, dropped out again! That is the reality here the last 36 hours. Writing what I can offline… and then madly uploading if I see signal. So, I apologise for all the typos, comments ending up in the wrong place and other weird stuff…… I think I have only embarrassed myself once so far :(. It’ll be a while before I take good internet at a sane time of day for granted again!
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 4
Tsunami escape route sign
The overwhelmed, under-spec and oh-so-vulnerable communications network here is the reason why our family is currently in Vanuatu. Hubby, Paul, is developing a cheap, easy to deploy, phone-based technology that will allow villages to maintain their own intra-village text-message services independently of cellular networks. We even hope to connect two neighbouring villages. We are aiming for a system that can provide rudimentary communications when the cellular network is down and where it doesn’t reach. Which is too often and in too many places. Vanuatu tops the natural disaster at risk list for the entire world – being vulnerable to earthquake, hurricane, volcano, and tsunami, with low capacity to prepare and rebuild.
Inspired by the Pandanus Fruit
Unripe fruit on a Pandanus plant in Vanuatu
Yesterday and today we travelled out of Port Vila again to the two small villages where we are doing a pilot study of Paul’s telecommunications system. One of the very noticeable plants along the roadside out of Port Vila are the Pandanus trees, with their big green fruits the size of rockmelons (cantaloupe). Currently the fruits are unripe – they will turn a robust orange when they are edible. I have been told locally that they are good for pregnant women, although I didn’t find out why.
Anyway, it is solely the visual texture of these fruits that has aroused my interest today. I haven’t actually been able to touch one – they are too high up.
How was I inspired by the Pandanus Fruit?
Because the Pandanus Fruit has interesting shapes and textures, I was inspired to try an abstract representation that I could piece and appliqué. Here is my Pandanus Fruit-inspired art quilt design:
Abstract pandanus quilt design
I used the colours I can see in my photo. I think the large background space would be good for some FMQ practice. Maybe try out some Vanuatu themed motifs.
Hope to see you again tomorrow!
P.S. If you missed the beginning of my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration, you can find it here.
P.P.S. While I have internet, here is a picture of the telecommunications boxes we are installing and testing.
See the white box with the three antennas on the pole? That is the technology we are testing, installed on the roof of a house in Vanuatu.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – explore with me the endless possibilities of colour for our quilts!
Welcome back to Tuesday! We made it! This past weekend we had a family celebration with my father turning 70, so blogging has had a backseat for a few days. But here we are, on the right day, and more or less on time! Yay!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Dancing Macaw
About the time I started the Clever Chameleon blog, I also started experimenting with free-motion appliqué. Free-motion appliqué was the homework of my very first Sweet Sixteen monthly meeting. During this time I drew up a number of critters I thought I would like to turn into appliqué designs. One of these fellows was this guy – a cheeky version of a dancing macaw. Macaws are magnificently beautiful, don’t you think?!
Dancing Macaw appliqué design in progress.
Needless to say though, learning to blog has been even more intensive than I expected, and I haven’t yet got back to developing many of the designs into patterns. (Some owls are an exception, more on that another day soon! And I did do a pelican quilt – do you remember him?). Anyway, when I found a photo of a blue and gold macaw on Unsplash.com, I knew I had to do a “Dancing Macaw” colour board.
The “Dancing Macaw” colour scheme is gold and blue. It is a beautiful example of blue and orange-yellow together. You’ll be hard pressed to go wrong with these colours on a quilt because they are complementary and therefore very eye-catching.
The only downside is that the macaw photo doesn’t really capture all the colours that I want to use for my macaw appliqué. So I went back to Unsplash.com and found another photo that makes pulling out the colours I want easier. So, without further ado, here is today’s second colour board: Summer Foliage.
The Summer Foliage colour scheme is blue, gold and green. Between these two new colour boards, I believe I will have no trouble at all putting together a collection of fabrics to appliqué my dancing macaw. What would you use these colours for?! Let us know in the comments below.
Maybe blue and orange is not your favourite complementary colour scheme….
Today’s photos in Dancing Macaw hues are 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, the macaw photo was provided by Andrew Pons and the foliage photograph was taken by Jakob Owens. Be sure to check out their collections of photos on Unsplash.
P.S. If you would like to use Andrew’s or Jakob’s photos 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.
It’s been one huge celebration of quilting in Adelaide! Festival of Quilts and Quilt Encounter Week, including a visit from the Tentmakers of Cairo.
This past week was one of the biggest in the calendar of the Quilter’s Guild of South Australia. The State Guild Quilt Show and the guild’s annual live-in quilting retreat’s 25th anniversary, back-to-back. I am not sure why it was organised this way this year. Festival of Quilts has been in November in the past. Perhaps it was to give country quilters a chance to participate in both in one trip? Or maybe it was to capitalise on the Tentmakers of Cairo? Anyway, a great week for quilters, and an exhausting week for organisers – I take my hat of to you all!
Today’s blog highlight is definitely the Tentmakers of Cairo coming to town. But first, a quick look at the South Australian Festival of Quilts.
Festival of Quilts, Adelaide 2017
I would love to tell you more about the Festival of Quilts. But photos were allowed only on the proviso that they are for personal use only. So there is only limited interesting news I can tell. I can tell you that the quality of the quilts is very high and still rising.
I can show you what I entered into this year’s show. This is the first time I have entered, and I was very excited to receive a ribbon! Judges commendation!!
My quilt entry for the “South Australia – Ocean to Outback” challenge category. It is called “Celebrate SA”.
The brief for the quilt challenge was to make a quilt of 55cm square or 55x110cm on the theme “South Australia – Ocean to Outback”. I abstractly portrayed some of the highlights of our state with a happy pelican imposed over the top. Pelicans are not particularly numerous here, but they ubiquitous. You see them on the coast, in the wetlands at the end of my street in suburbia, on the River Murray, and in the salt lakes of the outback. And they travel all over the state at will. Anyway, more on this quilt another time – today I really want to get to the Tentmakers of Cairo exhibition.
But just before I do….. To top off the joy at getting a ribbon, I also just found out that the whole collection of challenge quilts is invited to Brisbane to be a Special Exhibition at The Mad Quilters’ Gathering in August. What fun! Sorry – I am a bit excited by all this!
Dandelion Wishes re-visit
Quilt guild project: Modern quilt jigsaw.
Remember my Dandelion Wishes Appliqué Mini Quilt? If not, you can find the tutorial for it here. I now know much more about the project that I made this for, as promised.
This project is going to run for nearly a year, and everyone is invited to make an unbound mini quilt of size 40x60cm. They will be trimmed to puzzle shapes and be sold as a fundraiser. Unsold pieces will become part of a special travelling exhibition. Apparently there are prizes up for grabs for guild members who participate. I will keep you up to date about this project as it progresses.
So, finally.! We’re here. Introducing the…..
Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017
Quilt Encounter participants were very fortunate to have two Tentmakers of Cairo, Essam Aly and Hosam Hanafy visiting and presenting at their retreat. The exhibition was also open to the public, which is where I come in. Photos were welcome, and I want to share with you the colour and happiness of these works of art.
There were lots of beautiful medallion-style designs.
These appliqués are done almost exclusively by men. There was one piece that was done by one of the craftsmen’s sister. I am pretty sure it is the one in the photo directly above. But this is apparently not typical. Also, each family from the Tentmakers has its own designs, and copying other family’s designs is forbidden.
There were also panel designs, which remind me (probably not surprisingly) of Arabian carved door panels.
My Favourites from the Tentmakers of Cairo
The last “category” of quilts I want to show you is my favourite. It is the pictorial appliqués.
These pieces were called “quilts”, but what they really are is appliquéd wallhangings. They are lined on the back with canvas and they are bound, but there is no third layer inside, and there is no quilting. Just beautiful appliqué and hand embroidery. The work is needle turn appliqué, and the men are extremely adept – they are fast and use massive scissors to trim their work as they go with great confidence. If you ever get a chance to see them in action, it is definitely worth it. It will definitely Colour Your Mood for the better and Brighten Your World.
I’m glad we went early in the day to this. A lot of these pieces were sold and out the door by the time we left!
Finally, I will leave you with some shots of the detail in the pictorial appliqués. I hope you appreciate some of the humour and colour that is embodied in these works. Enjoy!
The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise
At our last Handiquilter meeting we were given not one, but two homework exercises!! We are allowed to combine them if we see fit, but I have had no inspiration in this direction. So I am doing them separately. The first mission, should we choose to accept it, is to do a small whole cloth design using changing thread colours as the main design element. I have put this exercise on hold for now.
The second homework exercise is to participate in a project for the upcoming SA Quilter’s Guild Festival of Quilts. The organisers of this project are asking for small modern quilted pieces of 23″x16″ in size. The theme is “modern” and the edges don’t need to be finished. The organiser has a plan to extensively trim and then finish the pieces to make an interactive display.
I have decided to participate in this second project. It gives me a small inexpensive project to do, with a deadline. Perfect for my current mission to actually do more quilting practice, and do it without breaking the bank. Hopefully, I will be able to tell you more about the project after I’ve seen it at the quilt festival in a few weeks. At the moment I am a little short on details, and I’m not sure about how much is public knowledge for sharing. So you’ll have to wait for the whole story.
In the meantime, you will have to settle for a free appliqué template of the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt I made.
My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt concept
“Modern” to me means lots of negative space, bold (probably solid colours), improv piecing and/or heavy on the geometric shapes. I am not doing any piecing for this project. (Just a tactical decision, I quite like improv piecing.) I have decided to appliqué a bold, colourful word (the pretty kind of colourful, not the other kind!!) in the centre of a neutral coloured background. There is a clear need to confine the design to the centre of the mini quilt, due to the aforementioned trimming plan. So lots of negative space also allows for this.
The word I have chosen is “wish”. My mini quilt will have the word “wish” raw-edge appliquéd such that the “i” is the stem of a stylised dandelion clock, and I’ll have several seeds escaping, blown from the stem. Not a totally original meme I know, but I will be drafting it from scratch, and it will be 100% the way I want it.
Here is the scan of my concept drawing:
My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt process
Dandelion Wishes design:
I scanned my original sketch and used Inkscape software to outline the shapes.
My Dandelion Wishes mini quilt appliqué design
If you would like the pdf to print this design for your own use, you can download it here: Dandelion Wishes appliqué pdf.. Don’t forget to reverse the shapes when you trace them to produce a readable design!
Fabric choices:
In my current stash I do not have any large pieces of neutral fabrics I would consider typical for a modern background. I am definitely more a batiks and brights girl. I did find one mottled grey batik that might have sufficed, but in the end I didn’t think it would be right.
Using the reverse side of a fabric if it suits is a valid choice.
So, being short of shopping time, and trying not to buy fabric for quilting practice, I have had to think a bit more laterally. In the end I have decided to use the reverse side of a fabric that I am not overly fond of. The front is a wispy gold brown colour with white roses printed on. However, the reverse is a light cream colour with a sort of dreamy, wispy quality. Not a solid, but I think quite appropriate for the wishes theme.
As for the appliqué…. again, there not many solid colour scraps in my house. I have settled for bright printed fabrics.
Auditioning fabrics for the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt
Appliqué pieces:
I generally print appliqué shapes in reverse onto sticker paper (rather than tracing them by hand straight to fusible adhesive). I do this to save time. Once the fusible adhesive is ironed onto my fabrics, I just stick the sticker printouts onto the paper backing of the adhesive and cut through all three layers. Fabric, adhesive and sticker. When I peel off the paper backing for the adhesive, the stickers are removed too.
I use stickers for printing out appliqué shapes when I am not in the mood for tracing.
Free-motion Appliqué:
Once all the appliqué pieces were ironed into place, I layered the mini quilt top over scrap wadding, pinned it and free-motion stitched 4-5 times around each appliqué shape. I added a stitched spine to each leaf, thread painted the dandelion parachutes and seeds and signed my name. Then I added a backing, ready for quilting.
Thread painted dandelion seeds
Quilting:
So, by this stage, I am not at all sure that this design particularly fits the “modern” theme anymore. I only used one solid fabric in the whole thing, ended up substituting the stylised geometric triangles on the dandelion clock for a more traditional pictorial representation by thread, and didn’t improvise a thing. So I have decided just to quilt it however I want. I have chosen a wavy line design occasionally broken with circles to emphasise the dreamy quality of the background. Is this modern? I don’t know, it matters little.
This design wasn’t as easy as I assumed!
I thought this quilting design would be quick and easy, but today I am having trouble getting a nice even stitch length. I think it is a combination of tiredness (the whole family was sick last week) and the long stretches of stitching. Normally I quilt motifs that change direction frequently, so the quilt doesn’t travel far in any one move. So the awkwardness of this was a bit of a discovery, and more “practice” than I had anticipated. Which obviously is a good thing, after I have moved on from the mild frustration of suddenly wishing I had a stitch regulator on my HQ Sweet Sixteen….
Be careful what you wish for…. I don’t really wish for a stitch regulator, what I really want is not to need one!
Anyway, it is now all finished and trimmed to size. Obviously, if I was finishing this as a normal mini quilt, it would need a binding of some sort. Or I could turn it into a cushion…..
The Dandelion Wishes appliqué design fits nicely on a throw pillow.
So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!
Well, while the kids ruined their shoes by getting “unintentionally” wet in the ocean, I amused myself by trying to get photos of the tiny, speedy hermit crabs. When I looked at the photos later, I thought several might make good starting points for appliqué designs.
Hope to see you again tomorrow!
Or you could check out the fun series we had recently – looking at matching colour boards to fabrics to express a variety of summer themes. 
For more colour inspiration for your quilts, follow along by subscribing to this blog by email (on the sidebar).
It’s been one huge celebration of quilting in Adelaide! Festival of Quilts and Quilt Encounter Week, including a visit from the Tentmakers of Cairo.
The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise
So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!