Mallee Ringneck Parrot: Colour Inspiration Tuesday and Linky Party

Hello!! We are back safely from the Outback.

Which means I have internet and phone coverage again. And that means that I will be slowly catching up on all your lovely comments and seeing what everyone else has been doing on their blogs recently. Being off grid is nice for a while, but quilting is really quite a socially centred pursuit, don’t you think?

The technical isolation of the Outback does have an upside…. for me, heading bush is a time of mental clearing, and of gathering fresh inspiration. Space and time to think and muse over possibilities. Usually quilted ones. 🙂 Arkaroola is especially good for this, being so ruggedly beautiful, and also a bit of a magnet for artistic and inventive people. You never know who you will meet there and what you might learn.

Want to know who I met on this trip and what we did? Of course you do! 🙂

While we were at Arkaroola this time, we were lucky enough to meet Michele Lane, a visual artist who specialises in print making. She was super generous with her time and resources, running a workshop on Nature Printing for the visiting kids last Saturday. 

Learning Print Making with Michele

My kids had a great time learning how to ink up leaves and feathers to make prints.

 

The press is named Geoffrey. Many of us name our sewing machines, so I figured, who’s to judge?! Geoffrey it is. Anyway, by the end of the workshop, the kids had invented a whole persona for Geoffrey. Of particular note; apparently he is cranky without his morning coffee…… hilarious!

After printing directly from their nature materials, the kids learned to make silhouette prints.

When the print is made, this time the paper is protected from the ink where the nature samples are. This gives you empty silhouettes. Then we wondered ……what would happen if we removed the leaves and feathers and printed the plates again? This gave us a fascinating print of the protected ink from the first run. Here are my daughter’s prints, the silhouette print on the bottom and the protected ink  print above it.

This workshop made me remember how much I had enjoyed printing in high school. And that I once purchased a gel plate I have never got around to playing with….. Oh look! A squirrel!! hahahaha. Don’t worry, I won’t likely be fabric printing anytime soon….. you’ll see why in a minute.

But first, don’t you want to meet that little Yellow-Footed Rock Wallaby I left you for at the end of my last post? You were seriously out-cuted by this……

Kaytoo is about half grown and has been released into the wild. But because there is so little food available, due to a serious lack of rain, he still returns to the home where he was reared for food pellets in the evenings. He has started bringing his wild family with him now too.

They were very nervous to have us watching, and bolted away every time I moved the camera. Yellow-Footed Rock Wallabies are naturally very shy and timid, much more so than kangaroos. But they kept coming back, because the food scarcity is already pretty severe.  We left them to their free dinner and headed back to our accomodation for our last night away. That’s when we spotted a pair of Mallee Ringneck Parrots eating mistletoe berries. The Chameleon digs the colours!

This was the view back to our accomodation as we walked down.

I hope you are getting the idea why artists love this place!

But this family of artists has now had to return to reality. We are now home again after  12 hours on the road. I have to admit my kids are pretty amazing on long drives, especially since their entertainment options are limited to activities that don’t make them motion sick.

My own little Christmas in July waiting at home!

And guess what arrived while I was out bush? My next supply of Island Batik fabric and other goodies for use in my role as an Island Batik Ambassador. It actually arrived the day after we left home. Oh how tortuous it was, to know it was sitting in a post office walking distance from home, but 700km away. 

Want to see what’s inside? Sure ….. but me first! (Actually I’ve already peeped, but you totally knew that didn’t you?!)  I’ll prepare a post for you to see all the goodies in there very very soon, I promise!

In the meantime, let’s have a look at what the little-bit-dusty and travel-weary Chameleon has chosen to feature from last week’s linky party.

Last Week’s Link Up Features

Bobbi at Snowy Days Quilting added not one, but two ripper posts to the linky party last week. Firstl, she has finished her On Ringo Lake quilt. That in itself deserves a round of applause.

Then in a second post, which is actually for the Fall into a Quilt Along, she explains how to  adjust the scale of any block. What a helpful little post – you might want to bookmark that one.

Claire at knitNkwilt shared the process behind a recent group quilt she participated in. I was wowed at the idea, because I can see how fantastic this idea would be for groups with participants of a wide range of sewing abilities. Ordinarily, variations in block sizes can cause grief in finishing a group quilt – but not this one…. being all improv means everyone’s efforts are equally useful. Fantastic!

And here is a quilt top that Jeannette has made for herself, shared via Instagram @quilted_collie. I think I should probably quit whinging about all the pinwheels in my mystery quilt after I have seen Jeannette’s project! Head over to @quilted_collie to find out what makes this quilt special to Jeannette.

I hope you will visit today’s great features. And my sincerest thanks to everyone who linked up last week – I really appreciated the heads up on your posts after having been away. If you were featured you can find a badge of honour here.

Now it’s your turn to share. Link up to this week’s Chameleon’s Colour party!

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!
• Do you use muted/pastel/low volume colours? Fantastic….. the Chameleon wants to see Everything, not just the bright stuff!
• Do it now……. before you forget! 

[inlinkz_linkup id=790237 mode=1]

P.S. Here’s some extra fun for you from the internet:

The Sew Early 4 Christmas blog hop continued yesterday at Threading My Way. Pam has organised you a tutorial to make this sweet little gift bag with a divider, perfect for nail polish and other small items.

And Fall into a Quilt Along continues, with acorn blocks from Kathleen at Kathleen McMusing. This post particularly caught my eye because Kathleen shared a new-to-me technique called “Split Appliqué”. I had heard of pieced appliqué before, but hadn’t come across split appliqué. I love adding ideas to my repertoire, and if you do too, this one’s worth a read. 🙂

Enjoy!

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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!