Welcome to Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Where we always find something interesting to inspire a quilt!

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I took the kids to see the Christmas lights display at the local brewery. The display is a bit of a South Australian icon, and has been running for 58 years. The link I have supplied gives quite a good overview of the event, if you would like to see it. Like many other Adelaide locals, I do very much like our brewery lights display. But this year the take-home memory was actually a little plant growing in the council strip nearby.

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Lovely Leucadendron

Many years ago, my mother grew lots of Australian natives and other plants that thrive in similarly poor, dry soil. Among the non-natives that my mother grew were quite a number of leucadendrons. So I tend to notice leucadendrons on my wanderings. But I have never seen one like this before!

I was struck by the beauty of this small bush, perhaps only 40cm high. Oh, the colours…. like a dusky sunset! I have called this colour scheme “Lovely Leucadendron”. Maroon stems, green and aqua lower leaves, graduating through lavender and lilac, peach, orange to yellow-green at the top of each stem. Once those yellow leaves open up there will be an insignificant flower cone in the middle. But it is the leaves that this plant is usually grown for. You can see why!

A Lovely Leucadendron Quilt?

If I was challenged to make a quilt inspired by this plant, it would have to be a string quilt. One with long thin-ish pieces like the strappy leucadendron leaves. It would be a scrap-busting quilt. And of course, made in the colours of the “lovely leucadendron”. After all, it was the colours that stopped me in my tracks in the first place!

If you arrange the string blocks like this you get leucadendron stems. Or peacock feathers…..  🙂 That’s ok, I like both. You could graduate the colours through the same sequence as the real-life bush, or just scatter them randomly…..

These colours would also be great on the Regatta Quilt (currently featuring in Home Sewn with Us’s no pressure sew along). I have started my Regatta Quilt. It’s not being made in these colours though. I had an orphaned jelly roll which has finally found its destiny. More about that in a day or two.

Not into dusky rainbows?! Perhaps you’ve been seeing red lately instead…..

Are you joining in the 2018 Monthly Colour Challenge? I have seen a few Red Bears popping up in social media this week. You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that people are actually making my red bear pattern,. I’ll round up a few I/ve seen in a post for you later in the week. They are all different and it is amazing the variation in techniques and tweaks that have surfaced so far. What a clever bunch of quilters you all are!

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