Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Pineapples and Other Art

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

It doesn’t matter where I go, or how far from my sewing machine I am, there always seems to be a little voice that follows me around saying “Look at that…. you could put that on a quilt……” Of course, that little voice is actually startlingly loud at the moment. Since I am documenting one such instance everyday for this series, I have entered a kind-of hyper-vigilant quilt-inspiration-observation state! But, while noticing quilt patterns in the everyday is not unusual for me, recording them is. Usually the ideas come and then they depart, with no real effort to record them for when I might want them later.

pineapple stencils on wall — Pineapples stencilled on the kitchen wall in our Vanuatu accommodation

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 12

One good thing about travelling is that you get exposed to a lot of new art. Even if you don’t visit art galleries and museums. There are new sculptures in public spaces to notice. There are artworks on the walls of cafés. Murals on buildings. Tiles in the public restrooms…. oh yes, I spend much more time than I would care to admit contemplating the merit of floor tile designs while I am attending to business.

green floor tiles — Floor tiles in a local Indian restaurant

So for my last ad lib post from Vanuatu, I am going to tackle the idea of finding inspiration in the artworks displayed around me. I have chosen three ideas from my recent unintentional brushes with art.

How am I inspired by the art around me?

Firstly, the pineapples…..

I have a thing about pineapples. I am certain that there is a pineapple-inspired quilt in my future. This is mostly because there is a story from my family history that revolves around pineapples – not because I have some sort of bizarre fetish for pineapples. (You can read about the pineapple story here.) Actually, I don’t even particularly like pineapple, except on pizza.

I think my pineapple quilt will be an abstract representation related to my family’s pineapple story. But the pineapple art stencilled on my kitchen wall is reminding me that it also wouldn’t be that difficult to appliqué a pineapple on a quilt. 🙂 And it just so happens that the village we worked in today has a large pineapple patch in their garden…..hence the pineapple colour board. It is actually possible the pineapples are stalking me….

Secondly, the floor tiles…..

I spotted these tiles at an Indian restaurant here in Port Vila the other evening. I was very taken by the continuous design evident on these tiles when they are laid edge-to-edge. Wouldn’t it be fun to do something like this with a repeated quilt block? For no real reason except that we can?

And thirdly, a carved sculpture……

I haven’t ever considered incorporating ideas from sculptures into a quilt before. There have been some lovely wood carvings here in Vanuatu, as well as carved tree fern trunks. I could definitely free-motion quilt a representation of this guy. Maybe this would be a good idea for quilting my black, white and red Vanuatu quilt.

It suddenly occurred to me to look for quilt designs in sculptures thanks to Yanicka and her contribution to the current Art with Fabric blog hop. I love all the entries in the blog hop so far, but Yanicka got me thinking with a quilt called “Our Fragile Vessel” which was inspired by a spherical sculpture by Donna Marcus.

Speaking of the Art with Fabric blog hop…. tomorrow is finally my turn to show you my art-inspired quilted contribution! I have been waiting to publish this post for ages! It is doubling as my Everyday Quilt Inspiration series slot for tomorrow, so I hope you will come back to find out what I did. And I hope you will visit the blog hop and enjoy all the other art-inspired quilts as well.

See you tomorrow!

October 11, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Barking Geckos

barking geckos in Vanuatu

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

One of the things I really like in Vanuatu is the barking gecko. Actually, I like all geckos, full stop. They do the job of spiders without being anywhere near so nasty about it. We have geckos at home in Adelaide, and there are geckos in many of my favourite destinations in Australia. All different sorts and shapes of geckos, but all a variation on the non-threatening, insect-eating, big-eyed and big-toed small nocturnal lizard. Most geckos make noise of some description, but the barking geckos in Vanuatu are LOUD. It is unbelievable how much noise a tiny lizard can make!

barking gecko

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 11

I have been intending to add Vanuatu’s barking geckos to my everyday quilt inspiration series pretty much since the beginning. I would love to be able to FMQ their shapes onto a quilt such as the Tanna Island quilt design from Monday, or maybe even the black, white and red quilt I am planning for the Splash of Color QAL. They would also make great silhouette shapes for appliqué. For that matter, appliqué is an easier place to start with a new shape because it does not require drawing skills in real-time. You can edit until you’re happy. 🙂

barking gecko

How was I inspired by the Barking Geckos?

To start me on my gecko journey, I photographed several barking geckos as they hunted their evening meal by the light over our backdoor. Then I traced their forms. This gave me instant shapes I can use for appliqué silhouettes, but also a place to start working out a formula to quilt them freehand.

Would you like some gecko shapes for appliqué? Here are the six that I traced today. They are small so I could fit them all on one pdf page, but you can enlarge them as you need. Download my barking gecko silhouettes pdf here: Barking Geckos

How to quilt Barking Geckos

What makes a shape a gecko? Well, for these geckos it is a distinctively shaped head, the angle and size of the legs, the bulbous toes, the fat tummy and a tail that is about the same length as the rest of the lizard combined. When I can recreate these shapes with relative ease, I will be able to quilt barking geckos.

Here is my first attempt at free-hand drawing a barking gecko. Only happy with one of the four legs…..

barking gecko outline

Here is my second attempt.

free-hand barking gecko outline

Better. Three legs are great. The head is right. The tail could be a touch longer, but who would notice? Actually, if I could quilt geckos that looked no worse than this reliably I would be happy. If anyone is analysing my quilting shapes that closely and critically, we are not likely to see eye-to-eye about life’s priorities! So, my conclusion is…. with a bit of practice I think I will be able to quilt geckos. Yay!

barking geckos, Vanuatu

I hope you like geckos. I do! If you like quilting critters, you might also like my post in this series about hermit crabs.

You can also find the start of my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration blog post series here. And you can find the Write 31 Days website here, for hundreds more 31-day series on all sorts of topics.

Also, the Fall 2017 Art with Fabric blog hop is now well underway. You can find Day 2 here. My favourite blog post from this set of artists is by Heather about her quilt “Dancers”. She describes how she takes her inspiration and turns it into an abstract representation. If you are looking for more ways to turn your everyday observations into quilt designs, I think you might like her post.

See you tomorrow!

October 5, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Hermit Crabs

Hermit Crabs color scheme from Clever Chameleon

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

Yesterday we stopped for a picnic lunch at a little spot where the beach is accessible, between the two Vanuatu villages we are working in.

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 5

Hermit crabs in Vanuatu

Once we had settled and stopped moving around, we discovered that the pebbly beach was swarming with tiny hermit crabs. The smallest were wearing shells of less than half an inch long. The biggest one we found was less than an inch and a half in length. They were fast and shy, disappearing instantly if anyone moved suddenly or cast a shadow over them. Of course, hermit crabs are a novelty to my family. But they are everyday critters for the Ni-Vanuatu villagers here.

How was I inspired by the Hermit Crabs?

Hermit crabs in Vanuatu Well, while the kids ruined their shoes by getting “unintentionally” wet in the ocean, I amused myself by trying to get photos of the tiny, speedy hermit crabs. When I looked at the photos later, I thought several might make good starting points for appliqué designs.

So here is my first mock-up of a design for a hermit crab appliqué from the photo above.

Hermit Crab appliqué design by Clever Chameleon

For the most part I traced the approximate shapes of the crab from the photo.

What about you? Do you use your photos to help you draw appliqués? If you are not a confident drawer, taking pictures of your subjects and tracing them is a good way to generate original designs that mean something special to you. Start with a photo of a loved one, a flower from your garden, a piece of fruit, an interesting leaf, a pet, your favourite ornaments…… the everyday objects around you that you could appliqué are almost endless.

I hope you like hermit crabs. I do.

See you again tomorrow!

P.S. You can find the start of my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration blog post series here. Or you can find the Write 31 Days website here, for hundreds more 31-day series on all sorts of topics. Enjoy!

July 21, 2017January 19, 2024

The Tentmakers of Cairo and other Quilt Fun

It’s been one huge celebration of quilting in Adelaide! Festival of Quilts and Quilt Encounter Week, including a visit from the Tentmakers of Cairo.

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

This past week was one of the biggest in the calendar of the Quilter’s Guild of South Australia. The State Guild Quilt Show and the guild’s annual live-in quilting retreat’s 25th anniversary, back-to-back. I am not sure why it was organised this way this year. Festival of Quilts has been in November in the past. Perhaps it was to give country quilters a chance to participate in both in one trip? Or maybe it was to capitalise on the Tentmakers of Cairo? Anyway, a great week for quilters, and an exhausting week for organisers – I take my hat of to you all!

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

Today’s blog highlight is definitely the Tentmakers of Cairo coming to town. But first, a quick look at the South Australian Festival of Quilts.

Festival of Quilts, Adelaide 2017

I would love to tell you more about the Festival of Quilts. But photos were allowed only on the proviso that they are for personal use only. So there is only limited interesting news I can tell. I can tell you that the quality of the quilts is very high and still rising.

If you would like to see the winning quilts in each category from the Festival of Quilts. you can access pictures via the Quilters’ Guild of SA here.

My personal FOQ happiness

I can show you what I entered into this year’s show. This is the first time I have entered, and I was very excited to receive a ribbon! Judges commendation!!

Celebrate SA quilt by Dione Gardner-Stephen at 2017 FOQ — My quilt entry for the “South Australia – Ocean to Outback” challenge category. It is called “Celebrate SA”.

The brief for the quilt challenge was to make a quilt of 55cm square or 55x110cm on the theme “South Australia – Ocean to Outback”. I abstractly portrayed some of the highlights of our state with a happy pelican imposed over the top. Pelicans are not particularly numerous here, but they ubiquitous. You see them on the coast, in the wetlands at the end of my street in suburbia, on the River Murray, and in the salt lakes of the outback. And they travel all over the state at will. Anyway, more on this quilt another time – today I really want to get to the Tentmakers of Cairo exhibition.

But just before I do….. To top off the joy at getting a ribbon, I also just found out that the whole collection of challenge quilts is invited to Brisbane to be a Special Exhibition at The Mad Quilters’ Gathering in August. What fun! Sorry – I am a bit excited by all this!

Dandelion Wishes re-visit

Quilt guild project: Modern quilt jigsaw.

Remember my Dandelion Wishes Appliqué Mini Quilt? If not, you can find the tutorial for it here. I now know much more about the project that I made this for, as promised.

This project is going to run for nearly a year, and everyone is invited to make an unbound mini quilt of size 40x60cm. They will be trimmed to puzzle shapes and be sold as a fundraiser. Unsold pieces will become part of a special travelling exhibition. Apparently there are prizes up for grabs for guild members who participate. I will keep you up to date about this project as it progresses.

So, finally.! We’re here. Introducing the…..

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

Quilt Encounter participants were very fortunate to have two Tentmakers of Cairo, Essam Aly and Hosam Hanafy visiting and presenting at their retreat. The exhibition was also open to the public, which is where I come in. Photos were welcome, and I want to share with you the colour and happiness of these works of art.

There were lots of beautiful medallion-style designs.

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

These appliqués are done almost exclusively by men. There was one piece that was done by one of the craftsmen’s sister. I am pretty sure it is the one in the photo directly above. But this is apparently not typical. Also, each family from the Tentmakers has its own designs, and copying other family’s designs is forbidden.

There were also panel designs, which remind me (probably not surprisingly) of Arabian carved door panels.

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

My Favourites from the Tentmakers of Cairo

The last “category” of quilts I want to show you is my favourite. It is the pictorial appliqués.

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017

These pieces were called “quilts”, but what they really are is appliquéd wallhangings. They are lined on the back with canvas and they are bound, but there is no third layer inside, and there is no quilting. Just beautiful appliqué and hand embroidery. The work is needle turn appliqué, and the men are extremely adept – they are fast and use massive scissors to trim their work as they go with great confidence. If you ever get a chance to see them in action, it is definitely worth it. It will definitely Colour Your Mood for the better and Brighten Your World.

I’m glad we went early in the day to this. A lot of these pieces were sold and out the door by the time we left!

Clever Chameleon logo yellow

Finally, I will leave you with some shots of the detail in the pictorial appliqués. I hope you appreciate some of the humour and colour that is embodied in these works. Enjoy!

Tentmakers of Cairo at Quilt Encounter 2017, detail

July 7, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room: Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt

The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise

At our last Handiquilter meeting we were given not one, but two homework exercises!! We are allowed to combine them if we see fit, but I have had no inspiration in this direction. So I am doing them separately. The first mission, should we choose to accept it, is to do a small whole cloth design using changing thread colours as the main design element. I have put this exercise on hold for now.

The second homework exercise is to participate in a project for the upcoming SA Quilter’s Guild Festival of Quilts. The organisers of this project are asking for small modern quilted pieces of 23″x16″ in size. The theme is “modern” and the edges don’t need to be finished. The organiser has a plan to extensively trim and then finish the pieces to make an interactive display.

I have decided to participate in this second project. It gives me a small inexpensive project to do, with a deadline. Perfect for my current mission to actually do more quilting practice, and do it without breaking the bank. Hopefully, I will be able to tell you more about the project after I’ve seen it at the quilt festival in a few weeks. At the moment I am a little short on details, and I’m not sure about how much is public knowledge for sharing. So you’ll have to wait for the whole story.

In the meantime, you will have to settle for a free appliqué template of the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt I made.

My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt concept

“Modern” to me means lots of negative space, bold (probably solid colours), improv piecing and/or heavy on the geometric shapes. I am not doing any piecing for this project. (Just a tactical decision, I quite like improv piecing.) I have decided to appliqué a bold, colourful word (the pretty kind of colourful, not the other kind!!) in the centre of a neutral coloured background. There is a clear need to confine the design to the centre of the mini quilt, due to the aforementioned trimming plan. So lots of negative space also allows for this.

The word I have chosen is “wish”. My mini quilt will have the word “wish” raw-edge appliquéd such that the “i” is the stem of a stylised dandelion clock, and I’ll have several seeds escaping, blown from the stem. Not a totally original meme I know, but I will be drafting it from scratch, and it will be 100% the way I want it.

Here is the scan of my concept drawing:

My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt process

Dandelion Wishes design:

I scanned my original sketch and used Inkscape software to outline the shapes.

Dandelion wishes mini quilt applique outlines — My Dandelion Wishes mini quilt appliqué design

If you would like the pdf to print this design for your own use, you can download it here: Dandelion Wishes appliqué pdf.. Don’t forget to reverse the shapes when you trace them to produce a readable design!

Fabric choices:

In my current stash I do not have any large pieces of neutral fabrics I would consider typical for a modern background. I am definitely more a batiks and brights girl. I did find one mottled grey batik that might have sufficed, but in the end I didn’t think it would be right.

Reverse side of fabric — Using the reverse side of a fabric if it suits is a valid choice.

So, being short of shopping time, and trying not to buy fabric for quilting practice, I have had to think a bit more laterally. In the end I have decided to use the reverse side of a fabric that I am not overly fond of. The front is a wispy gold brown colour with white roses printed on. However, the reverse is a light cream colour with a sort of dreamy, wispy quality. Not a solid, but I think quite appropriate for the wishes theme.

As for the appliqué…. again, there not many solid colour scraps in my house. I have settled for bright printed fabrics.

auditioning fabrics for the dandelion wishes mini quilt — Auditioning fabrics for the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt

Appliqué pieces:

I generally print appliqué shapes in reverse onto sticker paper (rather than tracing them by hand straight to fusible adhesive). I do this to save time. Once the fusible adhesive is ironed onto my fabrics, I just stick the sticker printouts onto the paper backing of the adhesive and cut through all three layers. Fabric, adhesive and sticker. When I peel off the paper backing for the adhesive, the stickers are removed too.

Use of stickers for applique — I use stickers for printing out appliqué shapes when I am not in the mood for tracing.

Free-motion Appliqué:

Once all the appliqué pieces were ironed into place, I layered the mini quilt top over scrap wadding, pinned it and free-motion stitched 4-5 times around each appliqué shape. I added a stitched spine to each leaf, thread painted the dandelion parachutes and seeds and signed my name. Then I added a backing, ready for quilting.

thread painted dandelion seeds — Thread painted dandelion seeds

Quilting:

So, by this stage, I am not at all sure that this design particularly fits the “modern” theme anymore. I only used one solid fabric in the whole thing, ended up substituting the stylised geometric triangles on the dandelion clock for a more traditional pictorial representation by thread, and didn’t improvise a thing. So I have decided just to quilt it however I want. I have chosen a wavy line design occasionally broken with circles to emphasise the dreamy quality of the background. Is this modern? I don’t know, it matters little.

I thought this quilting design would be quick and easy, but today I am having trouble getting a nice even stitch length. I think it is a combination of tiredness (the whole family was sick last week) and the long stretches of stitching. Normally I quilt motifs that change direction frequently, so the quilt doesn’t travel far in any one move. So the awkwardness of this was a bit of a discovery, and more “practice” than I had anticipated. Which obviously is a good thing, after I have moved on from the mild frustration of suddenly wishing I had a stitch regulator on my HQ Sweet Sixteen….

Dandelion Wishes mini quilt — Be careful what you wish for…. I don’t really wish for a stitch regulator, what I really want is not to need one!

Anyway, it is now all finished and trimmed to size. Obviously, if I was finishing this as a normal mini quilt, it would need a binding of some sort. Or I could turn it into a cushion…..

Dandelion Wishes cushion pillow — The Dandelion Wishes appliqué design fits nicely on a throw pillow.

So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!