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 – it’s time for our usual weekly slot of colour and design conversation 🙂
Today we are conjuring up quilt ideas with the assistance of the “Wattle You Make?” colour scheme and a corresponding fabric.
Last minute edit: This post was pre-written long before I knew about the Write 31 Days challenge we have just started. So it uses Unsplash photos, not my own happy snaps. BUT… as you will see, this post is actually about being inspired by a fabulous everyday item – a fresh piece of fabric. So with a little tweaking I am letting it pass as Day 3 of my Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you may want to read the first post in the new 31 day series.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Wattle You Make?
The “Wattle You Make?” colour palette is brilliant yellow, grey and greyed blue-green. The colours of Australian wattle in flower. These are everyday colours in Australia at the moment, as early spring is when the wattles are out in full force.
But the real reason I have chosen these colours today is because I have a piece of this fabric:
A fun, coincidental fact….. the wattle species in the photo of today’s colour board is widely used as food for bees in making honey…. and this fabric definitely reminds me of bee hives!
This fabric is “Bathhouse Tiles Aqua” by Emma & Mila. The hexagons are about 1 1/4″ from corner to opposite corner.
Like all good quilters, I saw this fabric while I was shopping for something else. At the time I was actually shopping for the fabrics to finish my daughter’s Jewel Tone Diamonds tumbling blocks quilt. I had to have a piece of this to play with because I was instantly inspired. (I was actually very self-controlled and only got half a metre!)
Sometimes it is fun to choose a fabric as a starting point and wonder what you could make with it. Let your imagination take you places you may have never otherwise thought to go. Especially if the fabric is not your usual style (which definitely applies for me here). What would you make if you suddenly found yourself in possession of this particular fabric? Who would it be for? When I first saw this fabric I was taken with the hexagon lattice print. And I immediately thought it would be fun to accentuate some of the hexagons with trapunto. Shadow trapunto to be precise.
How was I inspired? What did I make?
Do you remember how I said that at our Handi Quilter club we had trapunto homework? And that Heather had upped the ante, adding shadow trapunto to the techniques we should try? Well, I did my trapunto homework – that was the “Dream Big” mini quilt. Now I have also done my shadow trapunto homework. It is a cushion. Always experimenting, I used felt instead of wadding for the trapunto. The trapunto design was directly inspired by the fabric print. I am hoping to have a more detailed discussion/tutorial post written up about it later in the week.
Sometimes a fabric just begs to be made into a particular design…
While you wait for my shadow trapunto cushion post, let’s explore more yellow and greyed green combinations…
Once I started thinking about this colour combination, I realised it is not uncommon in nature. In fact, yellow and greyed green combinations are everywhere…..
I could have continued down this path for ages, with daffodils, daisies, a yellow frog and all sorts. But I’ll stop here. I have that tutorial to write for you by the end of the week! But isn’t the sunflower pretty?! I could very happily do a sunflower quilt in these colours……
Today’s Photo Credit
Do you like the photos I used today? Today’s stock photos are from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. No credit is demanded, but I hope you will agree is very deserved. So, I will tell you the stock photos were provided by: Leticia Delboy (wattle), Alisa Anton (tulips) and Asgeir Pall Juliusson (sunflower). Click on the badges below to explore these photographer’s other photos. Leticia Delboy Asgeir Pall Juliusson Alisa Anton
Your turn to tell….
Do you let the fabrics sometimes dictate your quilts? Have you ever done a sunflower quilt? Know of a sunflower quilt pattern you’d recommend? Or have you ever done a yellow and green quilt?
I’ll tell you a quick story about a green and yellow quilt…… My first quilt jealousy was over a green and yellow quilt! When I was in year 10 of high school (decades ago) one of my friends did a Home Ec topic that I didn’t sign up for because it was about caring for babies…… eeeeeuuuuuch. But she had the last laugh because she made a quilt as part of her curriculum. It was another 16 years until I actually made my first quilt. After having had 2 babies (who weren’t eeeeeuuuuuch after all). If you are thinking of trying quilting, I suggest you get moving faster than I did!
Come on, tell me what you’d make with the hexagon print fabric. Or just say Hi. I love comments and finding out who’s visiting.
P.S. Don’t forget….. the upcoming Art with Fabric Blog Hop (next week) and also the new Splash of Color quilt along (starts today October 3!)
I hope yesterday’s post didn’t sound too delirious. It was truly written on the fly – trying not to start from behind with the Write 31 Days challenge. Luckily I had already been contemplating writing about the bedroom décor here in Vanuatu and how it relates to my Splash of Color quilt along plans! So there was already an idea seed waiting to sprout when I found out about the challenge. Today, I have had a bit more thinking time to prepare this post, although no more writing time.
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 2
Today we travelled out of Port Vila to a small village where we are going to be doing a pilot study of emergency telecommunications equipment my husband is inventing. We met the Chief and Elders of the village and explained in a public meeting how we would like to install the equipment in their vicinity and train them to use it in return for feedback on how to improve it to meet their needs. It has been a productive and interesting day.
Travelling to and from the village today has given me some quiet time to simply observe the colours and textures around me. Combinations that I wouldn’t normally see at home – that belong to other people’s everyday. Brightly coloured houses. Thatched roofs. Woven reed walls. Tropical lagoon colours. And bright tropical flowers. Lots of ideas to process here over the next few days. 🙂
Discovering the Vanuatu Nervous Plant!
One of the most fun things we saw today was an insignificant-looking plant that I would have never noticed on my own. Even though I am actively looking for blog inspiration. While we stopped for a short break on the roadside on the way home to Port Vila, a colleague who has travelled the Pacific Nations for many years showed us the Nervous Plant. This plant immediately closes its leaves at the slightest touch of a finger. If you poke it again it will shrink back even further from you, towards the ground. It is truly remarkable how mobile this plant is. I should try to get some video of it another day…. today I only have photos to share.
Nervous Plant, Vanuatu. Before being touched.Same Nervous Plant, seconds later, after being touched.
How was I inspired by the Nervous Plant?
It strikes me that I can free-motion quilt the Nervous Plant. It would make a pretty background fill design. There are a number of elements to make up the design – the feathery leaves (open and closed), the pom-pom flowers and the flower buds. I have sketched my initial idea for you with pencil on paper…..
Nervous Plant inspired FMQ design
These are relatively simple shapes that a confident beginner could put together on a continuous line. You can quilt this design as densely or loosely as you liked, depending on how soft you want your quilt to be.More experienced quilters can also modify this idea to pack the leaves together tightly to generate a dense uniform background fill design.
I hope you have enjoyed learning about the Nervous Plant as much I enjoyed discovering it today. And that you might find a use for its pretty colours or it’s cute little leaves in a project one day. See you again tomorrow!
Welcome to 31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday
The Write 31 Days Blog Challenge, Day 1
Surprise! It’s only Sunday and I’m baaaack…..
I was reading the Days Filled with Joy blog earlier today, and Joy said she was not going to do her usual Finishing Stitches linky for October, because she was joining in the Write 31 Days Challenge. And I went: “What’s the Write 31 Days Challenge?”, and clicked on that link…..
So, it turns out, it is a one-month challenge to blog daily. Now, I have no intention of becoming a long term once-a-day blogger. Or I’d get no sewing done at all. And I’m pretty sure you also don’t need that much of me in your inbox either! (Please forgive me for a month! 🙂 ) But it so just happens that I am away from my sewing machine for half of October, and I have an idea that would be fun to try for a little while. Also, I do tend to write long posts and it would be good to practice “less is more” occasionally.
So, I have made an impromptu and perhaps rash decision to join the Write 31 Days challenge. I am currently in Vanuatu for work, and the internet here varies from fine to appalling and back again without warning, so I am not even sure if this is possible. But I will try. I may have to write offline some days and post in batches as the internet allows. The main complication is that it starts Today! And as I draft this I am not signed up and I have no internet……
My Write 31 Day Topic: Everyday Quilt Inspiration
Anyway, my Write 31 Days series will be about finding quilt design/colour inspiration around us in the everyday. Today it is colours.. But it might be shapes, themes, motifs on other days…. wherever the imagination goes. This should actually be quite fun. And I think it is a good flip-side to Colour Inspiration Tuesday. I use professional photos for Colour Inspiration Tuesday because I can make pretty pins and headers out of them. And I do love them. But I can’t/don’t take photos like those. However, there is no reason why the photography skills I do have can’t be enough to convey the quilt/colour ideas that I often see around me. And there is no reason why you can’t use your happy snaps and incidental casual observations for inspiration either…. So let’s explore finding quilt/craft inspiration in real life for a month! I hope you’ll join me.
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 1
Red, Teal and Brown: décor inspiration
Because today’s post is being created at rather short notice (and I will be hoping for internet later to upload this), I am going to start my 31 everyday quilt design series in familiar territory. With a colour board. Today’s inspiration colours are red, teal-blue, coffee, dark chocolate and off-white. Teal and red are complimentary colours (opposite positions on the colour wheel), so look good together with or without the addition of neutrals.
Tip 1: find everyday colour inspiration in rented accomodation furnishings
Today’s photo is a snap of the décor in our bedroom in the rented concrete block house we are living in in Port Vila. It is a modest house, comfortable and designed to be lived in rather than holidayed in. One of the things I appreciate most about our accommodation is that the play areas are designed so that children behaving reasonably can safely roam and play without constant supervision. No pools or waterfront or other inherently deadly areas.
Décor is a very good place to look for everyday quilt inspiration, especially colour. There are often professional influences in décor choices, even if it only within the fabric prints. In paying attention here, you are using someone else’s knowledge and experience to help guide your own design process. That’s called working smarter!
Why was I inspired by this décor?
I was struck by these particular décor colours because only days before we got here, I posted about using red and teal with black and white for my next quilt design that will be part of the Splash of Color quilt-along. That post was called Hot Chocolate and you can find it here. Today’s colour board is going straight to my ideas folder for when I get around to designing my Vanuatu quilt for the Splash of Color quilt-along!
So there you have it….. my first everyday quilt inspiration post for the Write 31 Days challenge! Hope to see you again tomorrow!
Have you got décor around you that inspires a quilt you would love? Let us know in the comments!
P.S. Links to the posts in my 31 everyday quilt inspiration ideas series will appear here as they are published.
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!
Because today’s post is being created at rather short notice (and I will be hoping for internet later to upload this), I am going to start my 31 everyday quilt design series in familiar territory. With a colour board. Today’s inspiration colours are red, teal-blue, coffee, dark chocolate and off-white. Teal and red are complimentary colours (opposite positions on the colour wheel), so look good together with or without the addition of neutrals.
So there you have it….. my first everyday quilt inspiration post for the Write 31 Days challenge! Hope to see you again tomorrow!