Pinwheels and Pretties: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

Pinwheels Mystery Quilt Progress

Over a year ago I started a quilt that will actually, one day, be for me! I started it at a Pick-A-Case mystery retreat with Judy in Bordertown. Which I attended at the invitation and insistence of my at-the-time-unmet internet blogger friend, Joy (of Days Filled with Joy blogging fame).

But once I was home from that retreat, the quilt dropped like a stone in the priority queue and stalled. I’m sure many of you will be familiar with the troubles associated with finishing a project for oneself over all the other important and urgent quilts in the works! So, until this past weekend that mystery retreat quilt has laid largely untouched.

What was so special about this past weekend that it got such a quilt back on track? Well, I returned to Judy’s place to spend some more time with her and Joy and other quilter friends. This time my goals were to play with our collective AccuQuilt GO! resources, and to get some more done on “that quilt”! We had a lot fun, and I even made some on target progress too. 😀

The Sorry State of my 2018 Pinwheels Quilt

You can read all about the mystery retreat and the start of my pinwheels quilt in this blog post here from over a year ago. Yes, this UFO has already had it’s first birthday. Ooops! You can also find out more about our host, Judy who is a very talented longarm quilter in Bordertown at News from Jude. Judy is very organised and has already blogged her retreat report. And I expect many of you already know of my friend Joy of Days Filled with Joy, as we have done a few blog events together now.

When I came home from the mystery retreat in July 2018, my supposed-to-be pinwheels quilt looked like this.

How do I know? Because this is how they still looked when they came out of the case again a year later!

Progress on the Piecing

But most of the hard work had actually been done last year. So the pieces zipped up together quite quickly this time to become a pile of colourful pinwheel and HST blocks. Then the fun started. Judy’s original pattern called for the pinwheels to be laid out like this….

But. Have loose blocks, must play! And I’m not the only one. Pat rearranged them for me to look like this……

I had already decided to make this quilt larger than the original pattern. So I figured that a similar layout to Pat’s actually would work well with the appliqué border I’d had in mind all year. I shuffled the colours a few times and settled on a bright centre followed by rings of green, yellow-orange and then blue-purple.

Progress on the additional appliqué

My plan for enlarging this quilt also entailed borrowing Joy’s considerable AccuQuilt GO! die resources to cut shapes for appliqués to add to the top and bottom of my quilt. My basic intention was to echo the shapes and colours of the border fabric supplied in the original quilt kit.

I used all these GO! cutter dies of Joy’s to design the extra borders. This is only a fraction of the dies Joy brought along to our weekend away!

Here’s a couple of shots of how I am planning to construct the bottom border. The top border will be similar.

I might have talked and laughed too much all weekend and run short on time to finish this…… So I cut a truck-load more shapes for the top border and brought them home, but I haven’t done a layout yet.

Judy thinks I have brought this project home to finish it! 😀 I have sewn up the first row today as a token of good faith. But reality bites and this quilt must make way now for more urgent deadlines (again!).

Here are the AccuQuilt dies from Joy’s collection that I used to cut my new appliqués (Click on picture captions to go directly to the AccuQuilt website for each die: NB affiliate links). Wasn’t I lucky to be able to access such a diverse range of shapes for this project?

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Here’s what the GO! Daisy die actually looks like if you buy a new one. Joy’s die shown above pre-dates when AccuQuilt started using two tone foam to make fabric positioning easier. Effective change isn’t it?

We made other GO! fun on our retreat as well!

We had so many GO! dies between us (mostly Joy’s, thanks Joy!) that we could never possibly have sensibly used them all in one weekend. But we tried!

Frogs

The leaping frog die I purchased a while back to make my Pond Life and Hop to be Square/Tic Tac Toad quilts with was very popular with the GO! uninitiated ladies who visited unexpectedly on Sunday. Lots of fabric frogs with fusible hopped out the door ready for future projects. And some paper frogs for printing with too! I particularly hope I will get photos of that activity one day.

Cleopatra’s Fan

My newest die from the Island Batik Ambassador program, Cleopatra’s Fan, was also used quite heavily all weekend.

I did a test block of Cleopatra’s Fan to see how difficult it is. It was actually pretty easy. The hardest part is matching the points in the middle of the block in the final centre seam. I will use this die “for real” in September, and maybe October too.

Joy decided to see what Cleopatra’s Fan looks like if you use the pieces as appliqué shapes. This needs the sewing tabs removed from the cut shapes, but will make an interesting wall hanging or table runner.

Joy also used dies from my 8″ GO! QUBE from my first 2019 Island Batik Ambassador shipment to cut and sew a number of the basket blocks from Eleanor Burn’s companion book “GO! QUBE“.

And Pat made a bed runner with four Cleopatra’s Fans. This was a spur of the moment project but Pat was on a mission and this was done in less than a day! Try doing that if you have to trace and cut around templates!

Treasure from Scraps

Joy also turned piles and piles of scraps into useful 2 1/2″ squares, strips and larger pieces for a future scrap quilt(s). Joy was at Judy’s house one more night than I was, but I think she might have worked harder than me too.

There was quite a lot else went on at the retreat with these and other ladies present, but I think you have a good idea now of the tone of the weekend. It was a good time away.

No Pinwheels in last week’s linky party but look at this!

This week I can’t resist sharing another masterpiece from Nancy of Grace and Peace Quilting. The Chameleon and I love everything about Nancy’s version of Lo and Behold Stitchery’s Church Window quilt. Especially the colours and the texture that somehow combine to really give an impression of stained glass. Nancy shared a stack of terrific photos of the making and staging of this quilt, it’s well worth your time to click over and see. 🙂

And don’t forget the ongoing Island Batik Beat the Heat blog hop happening this month. Half the ambassadors are showcasing the new release Spring collection batiks. You can find all the first week’s quilts in this roundup post here and also how to enter for the Week 2 giveaway! Good luck!

Your turn to shine!

Tell us – what are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? We want to know so we can visit and be inspired. Link up a blog post, 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!

• 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!

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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!

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!