Pigs Might Fly! Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

Show Your Wings Blog Hop

When Carol from Just Let Me Quilt announced there was a new blog hop coming up in February, I did my usual mental dance with myself. Mature Me said “Nope, you’ve got too many more urgent important things on your plate”. Optimist Me said “But I’ll just do something little…. I’ll squeeze it in”. Mature Me said “Pigs might fly!”. And Stick It to Mature Me Me said “Oooooh….. pigs might fly – that’d fit the theme! Hahahahaha”.

The thought of doing a Pigs Might Fly appliqué motif based on my balloon pig for the Love with a Twist quilt along was just too irresistible. Mature Me was seriously outvoted. So we joined the “Show Your Wings” blog hop, and here we are! There is a free pattern download for you too. Enjoy!

Pigs Might Fly

Why was I thinking about pigs when the opportunity to quilt some wings came across my inbox? Because 2019 is the Lunar Year of the Pig. And to celebrate, I was in the process of planning a pig mini quilt with Island Batik….. now done…..

And a pig/year date appliqué for the centre of one of the Love with a Twist throw-size quilt….. also now done…..

So, you see, the leap from a temporary obsession with pigs to our piece of cheek today was not that great. 🙂 All I really had to do was show the pig some wings!

Pigs Might Fly – the details

The background fabric for this mini quilt (isn’t it glorious!) is one I won from Sandra at mmm! quilts last year. It is a Paula Nadelstern print by Benartex called Marbella Red Wonderlust. I made my mini quilt to fit the piece of fabric I was sent….. a fat quarter. I wasn’t wasting a scrap of this one. If you’d like to make a flying piggy mini, you will need a background fabric piece of 18″ x 22″ for yours too.

The wings on the pig are “Sky” – scraps of a batik left over from yardage given to me by Island Batik last year. You will need a piece approximately 7″ x 10.5″.

And the remaining fabrics used came from ancient stash (gold: 9″ x 11″; purple: 9″ x 10″). Each shape was traced onto fusible paper-backed adhesive and fused to the back of the appropriate fabric before being cut out.

Because I melded the “balloon shapes” into conglomerate appliqué pieces, I needed to mark out lines for stitching in the details. To do this, I used pencil.

I free-motion-stitched the appliqués down with my favourite appliqué/embroidery threads, which are Madeira Rayons. I go around each shape 4-6 times to ensure a good hold. You could also use blanket or zigzag stitch. And the batting I used is a dense low-loft polyester I bought in bulk from my local quilt shop, Adelaide Sewing Centre.

Here’s a little video of me doing some of the stitching on the pig’s wings…. I’m not sure about doing video, but I am starting to experiment. Do you like/want to see video in blogs? Watching stitching is kinda boring, but a bit zen too. Anyway, if for some reason you’d like 1:44 of stitchy-meditation and a peek at how I stitch, today is your lucky day!

Finishing Details

I quilted this mini by echoing the pig on three sides. Actually, this is the first time I have echo quilted anything, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Look at me, spreading my wings!

Behind the pig, I used my newest (and only second ever) quilting ruler to add horizontal lines to indicate that he is ZOOOOOMing through the air! If you are going to have a flying pig, and all the inconvenience that might cause your drying washing, it might as well be a speedy pig!

There’s a bit of stippling between the lettering too, as it’s the fastest finish I could think of, and I was getting pushed for time. (insert Mature-ish Me chanting “Told you so!!!……”).

Machine binding in red finished the job.

On the back I have a print from stash of a cartoon pig called Olivia. She has a lot of attitude and is a real go-getter, so it seemed appropriate. Actually I find her character a bit irritating, but my daughter loved her once upon a time. I’ve had this fabric since my kids were little and of course they grew up before I got around to using it. Meh. But I enjoyed using it on this project.

Are you an optimist, or a cynic, or does it depend on your mood?

When I first decided to add the words to my flying pig, it was in a moment when one of the kids asked for something impossible. Again. And I was contemplating the virtue of having a sign on the wall to refer people to in such circumstances. Something that indicates a subtle “fat chance”. Pigs might fly!

But the real reason why I went ahead with Talk to the Pig is that many of my big goals frequently seem out of reach to me. And I figured that it can’t hurt to have a flying pig around to remind me that people achieve seemingly impossible things everyday. I can talk to the pig about my dreams and he will not judge or point out the flaws in my plan – he will just cheer me on!

Want a free appliqué block? Pigs Might Fly!

Just joking. Of course you may. I promised you earlier.

You can make this appliqué into a mini quilt like I did. Or a cushion cover. Or you can make yourself a king sized quilt with a whole squadron of flying pigs if you feel in need of a lot of extra luck….

**** It is really important that you print this pdf at 100%, otherwise your pattern pieces will be the wrong size. Turn off “fit to page” options in your printer dialog and ensure that the printout size is set to 100%. There are check boxes supplied in the document. If your printout is successful, these will measure 1″ square. The document is designed to fit on both US Letter and A4 paper. ****

If you are new here at Clever Chameleon and you like the look of the balloon pigs, you are invited to join us for our free 2019 quilt along. Love with a Twist is a series of balloon animal blocks that you can choose to make into a throw size or twin size quilt. We are only three blocks in…. you could catch up easily!

Find More Wings

There are also stacks more Quilts with Wings for you to see today. Here is the list of bloggers participating in Show Your Wings today.

Patchouli Moon Studio 
Vroomans Quilts 
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
Songbird Designs
Quilts Fabric and Thread Tales
Kathleen McMusing
Life in the Scrapatch
DesertSky Quilting
Clever Chameleon Quilting – that’s me!

And there are plenty more bloggers who presented yesterday and who will present in the next two days too. You can find the entire list at Just Let Me Quilt here. Thanks Carol, for another terrific blog hop!

But before you fly off on that adventure….

Last week’s Colour & Inspiration linky party feature is…..

…. another dose of mischief! Mary at Made by Marney has cute blocks ready for you to purchase for a March St Patrick’s Day project. Including this Leprechaun. I love the 3D nose made from a stuffed yo yo. And the gold buckle. I’m always a sucker for textures and embellishments.

And please join us for this week’s linky party….

Tell me…. What are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? We want to know so we can visit! 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:

• Link up your latest or recent quilt/sewing excitement. All quilt construction stages welcome – finished quilts, quilt blocks – even fabric pulls! Or inspiration sources!
• You have 50 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what your fantastic project is.
• URL links are not necessary to link up…. non-bloggers 100% welcome! If you don’t have a URL, you can link up with just a photo.
• Take a moment to visit some friends who came to the party – leave a little love and make their day. And a link back to Clever Chameleon is always appreciated.
• Do it now……. before you forget!

[inlinkz_linkup id=816746 mode=1]

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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!

P.S. Joining in when I can at these fabulous linky parties: Midweek Makers, Main Crush Monday, BOMs Away, DrEAMi, Wait Loss Wednesday, Needle and Thread Thursday, Friday Foto Fun, Finished or Not Friday, Whoop Whoop Fridays, TGIFF, UFO Busting, What I made Monday, Moving it Forward Monday, Show and Tell Monday, Modern Patch Monday, Oh Scrap, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, To-do Tuesday.

And because this project was a last minute sidetrack – linking up to DrEAMi at mmm! quilts too.

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, IG or FB. All your follow options can be found here. Don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour & Inspiration Linky parties!