Dragonfly Dance – Colour Inspiration Tuesday and Link Party

Oh Happy Day (oh happy day….), Oh Happy Day (oh happy day)…..

……when my ScanNCut (when my ScanNCut)….. cut my work away…. oh happy day….!

So, you know I have a new toy, right?…. the ScanNCut CM900 I purchased a few weeks ago. Of course you know…. the blasted thing keeps popping up in my blog. Well, I waaaaas going to stop going on about it after the snow globe project. But…..

I was in the shower the other morning, musing over the technicalities of my current quilt, as I so often do, and a light bulb went on.  Not just any light bulb either. The whole supernova mirrorball affair. With trumpets. The works!

And while I’m sure it’s not a novel idea, it’s new to me and it’s geniuuuuusssss!

Three words. “Infinite template possibilities!”

The (quite minor) problem

The issue I was pondering was how to best quilt wings onto the dragonflies I have on my upcoming Island Batik quilt. I want them to be nice….. And while I often do my quilting freehand, these dragonflies need matching wings on either side, otherwise they look a bit, ummm well, lame.

I have done these dragonflies before. In fact there is one on my homepage. Here it is – there have been plenty of others.

In the past I have produced the wings by tracing them out onto grease-proof paper, pinning the tracing into place, and sewing over the drawing. This is a lot of work… you have to draw each and every set of wings and when you are done you have to remove the paper. And if the paper has moved while you were quilting, well, the whole exercise becomes a foray into the cursed realm of un-sewing. 

“But”, I thought, “What if I could make all my own quilting templates on demand for pounce chalk marking?” Any design, any size…… ooooooh, now you’re seeing why I am a little bit excited, aren’t you? Here’s a little look see…..

The awesome new solution

Here’s my hand drawn dragonfly pattern. 

I traced it onto freezer paper with a texta  (the Australian now-generic term for a felt-tip pen). I used solid lines for the parts I wanted removed, and dashed lines for the shapes I wanted outlined.

Then I scanned my freezer paper drawing with my ScanNCut 900CM. And then I asked it to cut out all the shapes. It cut out the head and the tail and all the individual dashes. My 7 yo thought he would be able to cut it out faster…….. until he saw the machine actually doing it. He stood there with his mouth open for the whole 3 minutes, mesmerised. “Whoa……!” was his detailed commentary. ROFL.

Anyway, here is the finished template.

And the excised pieces left behind on the cutting mat.

Now I can iron this freezer paper template into place like so. 

I cut out the head and tail pieces so I could easily align my wings onto the appliqués without any guesswork. Once the template was secure, I patted over the wings with pounce chalk (the same chalk dust I use in my chalk wheel). Peeled off the freezer paper. And got this.

Over and over and over again.  It will be so easy to quilt these now! I can check the positioning up front, and there can be no shifting while I’m sewing.

Any template. Any size. Whatever I want, whenever I want it. “Whoa……….! ”

Now, let’s see what else has been making people happy this past week

As always, there were a stack of great projects brought to the party last week, and you should check them all out. But in particular…….

 The Chameleon would like to recommend Sandra’s post at Musings of a Menopausal Mellon – mmm! quilts. Sandra’s latest Island Batik Ambassador finish is called Beothuk Star, and is covered with amazing quilting that required a marathon finish! This beautiful quilt features secondary designs and is alive with Canadian history – the good and the bad. I can’t begin to sum up Sandra’s intense and moving post ,or to describe her beautiful pictures. So, instead, head over to Sandra’s post at Musings of a Menopausal Mellon – mmm! quilts to read it for yourself.

And Bobbi’s quilt at Snowy Days Quilting this week.… what a stunner! Bobbi made this quilt quite sometime back for her friend Joy in Joy’s chosen colours of blue, purple, yellow, and grey. You really need to see what Bobbi did with this unusual combination…. her finished quilt is terrific. It is called “Twinkle” because there are stars in every intersection of the lattice. Even the star detail has significant meaning for Joy and Bobbi…. so precious.

My sincerest thanks to everyone who linked up last week. If you were featured you can find a badge of honour here.

And now, your star-studded invitation to link up to the Chameleon’s Red-Carpet Linky Party and show us your projects……

What are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? Link up a blog post, a Flicker pic, an IG post or simply a photo from your computer.  See if you can get the Chameleon to turn quilted with happiness. We’d love to see your quilting colours.

Guidelines (more detail here):

• Link up your latest or recent quilt excitement. All construction stages welcome.
• You have 100 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what your fantastic project is.
• URLs are not necessary to link up…. non-bloggers 100% welcome! If you don’t have a URL, simply link up with just a photo. 
• Do it now……. before you forget! 

[inlinkz_linkup id=793125 mode=1]

Now, lastly, may I invite you to take a look at this huge event just started?

As you know, I am a very proud Island Batik Ambassador, and yesterday marked the beginning of my first blog hop with these guys. The purpose of this hop is to showcase all of Island Batik’s newest fabric collections.

During the hop, Island Batik have prizes to give away on their own blog AND each Ambassador will be having a giveaway at their own site as well! Spread over 5 weeks, with about 10 bloggers per week, this is HUGE. If you love batiks anywhere near as much as I do, you do not want to miss this hop with so many chances to win some of the latest fabrics. Please be aware that many of the prizes may not be available outside the US/Canada. Sadly, the main prizes are not. But mine will be 🙂

Here is the schedule for Week 1 (with the fabric collections in bold):

Monday, August 6 – All A Flutter
Yellow Cat Quilts, Creative Blonde

Tuesday, August 7 – Birds N’ Bees
Ark Angel Creations, Patterns by Jen

Wednesday, August 8 – Canterbury Manor
Sally Manke, Powered by Quilting

Thursday, August 9 – Eclectic Garden
Desert Bloom Quilting, Sew Karen-ly Created

Friday, August 10 – Vintage Morris
MooseStash Quilting, Devoted Quilter

My turn in Week 2.

Enjoy!

---

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here. And don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour Inspiration Linky parties!

The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!