Fabric of Nepal – Colour Inspiration Tuesday and Link Party

Gifts from Nepal

At times my husband travels overseas for work. One of the conditions of him being granted domestic leave to do so is that he brings back something interesting from the country(s) he’s visited. 🙂 These days his peace offerings are often fabric – did I ever tell you hubby is one smart little cookie?! Fabric bribes are quite an effective grease for the bureaucratic wifey wheels  around here. lol

With Paul just back from his latest trip, the question of the week is….. what to do with my new pretties?

Because Paul works in emergency telecommunications, the places he visits are often less economically developed than here at home. That means his destinations often also have a higher retainment of local traditions and textile designs. And this in turn usually makes for interesting fabric shopping. This last trip, Paul was in Nepal. So he brought home these:

Do you see the recycled silk yarn my daughter scored? Amazing. I don’t knit or crochet, but I do couch occasionally. I’m putting in an order for some too if Paul ever ends up back in Kathmandu!

Inspired by fabrics from outside my own cultural experiences

When using the fabrics Paul brings home, I like to try to design something that has some relevance to their origin.  I’ll be honest, I don’t know a lot about Nepal, so I am taking most of my cues from the fabrics themselves. But I do know that Nepal has an interesting flag.

The Nepalese Flag

Nepal is the only country that does not have a quadrilateral-shaped flag. It is a double pennon… a combination of two triangle pennants. The triangles symbolise the two main religions of Nepal. It has a blue border for peace, while the crimson red is their national colour. There are also motifs of the sun and the moon on the flag. Fun fact: older versions of the flag had two faces on these celestial bodies. There are many layers of meaning built into this flag – if you are interested to know more, you can get an overview here

I thought it would be fun to design a quilt with my new fabrics which honoured the shape of the Nepalese flag. So I started with a blue lightening bolt through the centre of the quilt. Using this as a dividing line, I filled the two sides with designs inspired from the fabric prints.

To construct this quilt, I would add some white and coloured solids to the four fabrics brought home for me to piece something like this……. 

Do you ever start with fabrics to design a quilt? It is not usually the way I work, but I have made quilts through this process before. That’s specifically how the Vanuatu Turtle quilt came to be. Here are the fabrics that came home from Paul’s first trip to Vanuatu. I talked about the design in a much earlier version of Colour Inspiration Tuesday.

And here’s the finished quilt that eventually followed. 

So hopefully, I will have a Nepal-inspired quilt to go with it someday soon.

Now, last weeks fabulous link-ups!

There was a lot of quality in last week’s party….. here is just a taste.

Sew Yummy shared her take on a Bonnie Hunter  Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt. A graduation gift for her daughter, Sew Yummy deliberately added in a black centre diagonal to each block to provide cohesion and a visual rest point. These are both great tips, and I’m glad she pointed them out.

A fellow Aussie, Pam from Threading My Way, shared the silk-screened quilt she made with her daughter. I do love quilts with a bit of embellishment or personalisation, and I am totally in love with this one. Go find out about all the silhouettes on her quilt on her post.

After a bit of a blogging/sewing break, Tish at Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland is back! And aren’t we all glad for that?! 🙂  Tish shared her sweet baby quilt that is modern and graphic and will last a sweet child many years beyond the baby phase.

And, just because I can….. a fourth feature. a gentle and perfectly made quilt from Dawn at Quilting by Dawn. Aren’t these colours pretty?

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

I also plan to be sharing a couple more of last Tuesday’s links with you on Thursday….. Thursday is my stop on Joan of Moosestash Quilting‘s Fabulous Freebies blog hop, and they are super relevant. So come back then for another dose of quilting inspiration.

In the meantime,  give me something awesome to talk about next week……

Link up to the Chameleon’s  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=794752 mode=1]

P.S. Don’t Forget

Did you see my latest quilt finish from last week? More importantly, have you named it yet?!

I am running a competition to name this quilt. The winning name will be chosen by the quilt’s new owner, my daughter. The winning entry will win some Island Batik fabric samples – the equivalent to 48 charm squares from the Victoria and Albert fabric collection. A second prize is also offered exclusively to Australian and New Zealand entries. Head over to that blog post to name my quilt and be in the running to win. Entries close 6th September.

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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!