UFO Attack December 2017

Just this once I am going to be Done. on. Time! Ha! Just to find out what it feels like!
Welcome to My One Monthly Goal with Elm Street Quilts

Well, there is really only one thing to say about late November/early December if you have school age kids in Australia!!! But I suggest you plug your ears first! Here it comes…….. “Aaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

Thankfully, I believe the worst of the concerts and end of year break-up parties and special excursions and graduations and farewells and etc. etc are done with, and the end is in sight. School is out for the summer in a week’s time….. which will bring it’s own joys and challenges, but also hopefully, more sewing time. I really, really hope more sewing time. Because there are several projects I want/need to get on top of. Which leads me to…..

My One Monthly Goal for December

On the top of my list to finish for December is my Vanuatu Turtle Quilt. Here’s where we were at on the 24th of November.

black and white quilt in progress — Most of a quilt top

And this is where I need to get to by New Year. A completely finished version of this…..

Vanuatu Turtle quilt plan

Some background info in case you are new here….

This quilt is my project for the Splash of Color QAL at Busy Hands Quilts. A quilt along that encouraged everyone to choose their own project, as long as it fit the theme of black and white, with colour highlights. Then it was up to us to keep up with a set of deadlines for quilt construction milestones.

Currently the milestone on the table is to have a finished quilt top (flimsy). The whole way along I have been running down to the wire to get each milestone done before Myra’s linky closes. And of course, my current status is no different….. the opportunity to link up a finished quilt top will expire on Monday.

But I am getting there….. yesterday I added the first layer of the turtle appliqué. I was going to sew the appliqué down today but I like to machine appliqué with the batting under it. And the batting I rinsed out last night is not dry this morning…. of course after a record-hot Spring we had showers early this morning………

turtle applique in progress

Anyway, I should be able to get the aqua appliqué layer sewn down tomorrow, and then once the red pieces are ironed on I am calling this flimsy done.

So that just leaves the finish line…… a completed quilt. The linky for finished quilts opens on the 2nd of Jan 2018. Technically I have until until the 15th Jan to be linked up. But, I hereby declare that I intend to have my quilt done by the 31st of December, thereby being ready BEFORE the last linky opens, rather than throwing my URL under the descending roller door of a rapidly expiring linkup, again! Can I do it? With OMG at my back, anything is possible! 🙂

Why such enthusiasm to get the Vanuatu Turtle Quilt done?!

Good question! Well, I need to put this quilt to bed (so to speak) so I can get on with some new exciting projects for 2018. Otherwise I fear it will end up on my UFO pile.

There are two things that I am currently planning for Clever Chameleon next year that are making me really happy just thinking about them. Both are BOM style projects that will be available for you to follow along with if you wish or to go back to over time. I hope at least one might appeal to you.

Exciting Project 1

The first project is a joint BOM quilt with Joy of “Days Filled with Joy”. We are going to be doing a skill-builder quilt. One that focusses heavily on techniques that you can use to texturise or embellish a quilt. We are still finalising the details, but I can tell you it will be a house block quilt and will start a little way into 2018 after all the New Year dust has settled. This one will be very informal and lots of fun. I’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching.

Exciting Project 2

I am thrilled about my second big project for 2018 because it will complement my weekly colour board posts very nicely! It is the brainchild of Jen from Patterns by Jen, and involves a monthly Color challenge. This one kicks off on the 1st of January 2018, so not long to go now!

Jen is doing a colour challenge BOM quilt project, with free patterns and instructions available to you from her website. She has asked for a small group of quilt bloggers to support her by either making her blocks or something else in her colour of the month. I have opted for the second option and will be doing a Beary Colourful quilt. Twelve appliqué bears in Jen’s 12 colour challenge themes. Oh happy day! This one is making me wriggle with anticipation already!

I will be giving away the instructions for each bear each month on the same schedule as Jen. My aim is to get some of those scraps moving from my sewing room…… want to join in?! I’ll keep you posted on this project as it develops too.

And of course, linking up to One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts! There are a lot of goals linked up this month! Go check it out!

Wishing you all a fabulous December!

P.S. Also linking to Confessions of a Quilt Addict, Crazy Mom Quilts

If you would like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I 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. Thanks for your support!

November 24, 2017January 19, 2024

Black and White Friday

black and white quilt under construction

From the Sewing Room: Vanuatu Turtle Quilt Progress

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated you on the quilt that I am doing for the Splash of Color Quilt Along at Busy Hands Quilts. I have been slightly distracted with the homemade ornament blog hop and a few other small projects. They’ve been lots of fun, but I must admit, it’s really nice to get back to quilt making again.

The current milestone in the Splash of Color QAL is to have all our blocks completed, ready to sew up into a finished quilt top. If you haven’t been following along on this journey, you can find the relevant links here:
The quilt along guidelines and schedule at Busy Hands Quilts
My design thoughts and fabric choices
My cut pieces – appliqué preparation
The blocks for my quilt centre completed

In a nutshell, my plan is to make a quilt with fabrics predominately from Vanuatu. The intention is that this quilt will be a memento of our family’s visit there earlier this year. It will also double as a TV snuggle rug and protection for the couch from the cat. This is roughly what I’m aiming for:

My Vanuatu Turtle Quilt design for the Black and White and Splash of Color QAL

So, the progress report….

Now I have all the components prepared for my quilt top. I have sewn the centre blocks from my last check-in together.

black and white quilt

And I have sewn up four border strips.

border strips

It would have been quicker and simpler without the assistance……

Cat affected quilt

black and white cat — You can’t prove anything…..

Now all that remains is to combine these pieces with a red strip border to create the flimsy. And then it will be time to add the appliqué. 🙂

black and white quilt under construction

Short and sweet this week!

If it’s part of your heritage, I hope you had a special Thanksgiving. And wishing everyone a great week ahead as we enter Advent. My kids are eagerly anticipating the hanging of the Advent quilt (aka the candy-pockets quilt)! Do you have any Advent or Christmas quilts that will be making their seasonal appearance soon? I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. Don’t forget to go see what the other Splash of Color QAL participants are up to.

Also sharing on:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Crazy Mom Quilts

November 6, 2017January 19, 2024

Vanuatu Turtle Quilt Progress: blocks

Vanuatu Turtle Quilt: Design process, warts and all.

In the last few days I have finally had a chance to get back into the sewing room. And I have to admit it was very therapeutic. I have missed sewing. So has our cat. I swear he is addicted as I am!

My goal this week was to design and sew the blocks for my black, white and red Vanuatu Turtle quilt for the Splash of Color Quilt Along. I started with this basic plan…

Vanuatu turtle quilt plan

And these fabrics…..

Vanuatu turtle quilt fabrics

If you wish, you can read more about the what and why of my original plans, and see my turtle appliqué pieces all cut, waiting for a quilt top.

So, on Thursday, I started on the quilt top. I looked at my plan. I cut six 6½ squares. And I went off script.

That might be a record, even for me!

Changing my mind….

Firstly, I decided that I wanted to add in a very dark, plain fabric behind the bulk of the turtle appliqué. Plainer than any fabric I have brought home from Vanuatu. I did actually look for a mostly black fabric in Vanuatu, but there wasn’t any to be had.

So, I went hunting among my scraps here at home and found an Australian Aboriginal print in black called Sand Dunes. The Sand Dunes scraps are leftover from the backing of a dear friend’s quilt. It is very soft and colourfast – an amazing piece of fabric to work with. So I added it to the mix. I also found some black 2½” pre-cut strips inherited from another friend. Perfect for extra darkness behind the appliqué.

Turltle quilt background — Dark corner for the turtle appliqué background. Sand Dunes is the black with the dotted wavy lines through it.

Changing my mind, again…

Although I had a 5×5 grid drawn up for my colour gradient in the quick diagram above, I had actually intended to do an 8×8 grid of 6″ squares. Some fussy cut whole squares and some pieced squares to get a black and white gradient. That is why I started by cutting 6½ squares of each Vanuatu fabric.

However, I quickly realised that 6″ squares of pinwheels and HSTs in these prints is going to result in a very. busy. quilt. Which would be fine, except that this was supposed to be the background for my appliquéd turtle. And it was also going to take waaaay too long to construct.

So, I decided that my mockup was trying to tell me something – that I should have 5×5 8″ finished blocks. I cut some new 8½” squares, and recycled the 6½” squares into 8½ squares by adding 2½” strips on two sides. This had the added bonus of being an easy way to graduate through colour values and tie the blocks together visually.

And again…

As I started on the more intricately pieced blocks, I decided that I needed some more solid or solid-like fabrics. Specifically in the grey range. Somewhere for the eyes to rest from the prints. I had already included a blue-grey hand-dye and a white solid in my original fabric choices. Now I added two grey Shadow Play fabrics from my scraps. I only had enough of the dark grey Shadow Play for 4 pieces. But that is half the fun, making do. 🙂

And again…

At this point it was time for me to head out to the South Australian Quilters’ Guild evening meeting. I’m glad I got this far before I had to go, because I was beginning to heed the little voice that said I needed to add a nearly white fabric. There were no nearly white fabrics in Vanuatu, just as there were no nearly black ones. I had thought that I might get by with fussy cutting. Or using the reverse side of a fabric. But…

At the Guild meetings there is always a shop stall, and in the end I picked up something to round out my fabric choices. Actually I picked up two somethings. One was a white fabric with a fine black print. It had slightly more black than I wanted, but it was the best pick available. I was happy at least that the swirls on the print are consistent with the patterns already in my quilt. 🙂 The second purchase was a fat quarter of a dark blue-grey Grunge that happens to be the exact same colour as the blue grey on two of the Vanuatu fabrics. Score!

Finishing off the design

A little more playing and switching fabrics around and I settled on this layout (with a few more tweaks as I sewed).

Cat designing a quilt — Somebody who thinks he is invisible siiting here…..

And now I have finished sewing up the 8½” blocks for my Vanuatu Turtle quilt. They are ready to be assembled into a quilt top and have borders attached.

Pile of blocks for Vanuatu Turtle Quilt — Happy with my pile of blocks

So, how am I feeling? Well, I really love this quilt top so far. I think the design is actually quite effective as it is. A small part of me even thinks that I should claim the grey-blue as my “Splash of Color” and leave it really simple. Because there is a whisper of a question in my head as to whether it will marry well with my appliqué. Despite all the changes I have made, it is still very busy.

But the whole point of this quilt is the turtle appliqué….. And if I stop now this quilt top will be too small to be particularly useful, and my turtle appliqué will be orphaned. So I will push on. If, in the end, it isn’t as fantastic as I envisioned, then I won’t mind it going on the couch, right?! And there is always something to be learned in quilts that don’t quite make it to awesome. Fingers crossed that I am just over analysing things and it will be just fine!

If you are also participating in the Splash of Color Quilt Along I hope that you are pleased with your progress so far. If you like black and white quilts and haven’t been over and checked out the progress of the other projects yet, be sure to do that. Everyone has chosen their own project, so this QAL is very interesting, even as a spectator sport. 🙂

P.S. Colour Inspiration Tuesday resumes here tomorrow! Yay!

Also linking up to Freemotion by the River, Wednesday Wait Loss, Quilt Fabrication, Needle and Thread Thursday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Crazy Mom Quilts.

October 25, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Turtle Fabrics

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

About a month ago I signed up for the Splash of Color quilt along from Busy Hands Quilts. The rules mostly consist of a few deadlines for the quilt stages, and that the colours of the quilt are to be predominately black and white with colour highlights. Apart from that, the direction the quilt takes is up to each quilter.

So, I decided to do a quilt with some fabrics my husband bought me in Vanuatu some time back. Two of them are black and white, the other is red. Here are my original fabrics and the post I wrote about my idea for a black, white and red turtle quilt.

black and white and red fabrics from Vanuatu — The fabrics for my Splash of Color quilt inspiration.

Vanuatu décor color scheme from Clever Chameleon — The colours in our Vanuatu bedroom.

Since that post, we have been back to Vanuatu to continue Paul’s humanitarian telecommunications research. While we were there I acquired more fabrics specifically for this project :). And some more inspiration. I decided to add a little greyed blue or teal to my splash of colour, thanks to the Vanuatu décor in our bedroom.

Here is my final pile of goodies to work from:

Vanuatu fabrics — The white, grey and teal fabrics are from my stash here at home. The red and black fabrics are all from Vanuatu.

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 25

The next challenge in the Splash of Color quilt along was to choose a quilt pattern. Well, I am not known for working to a quilt pattern. So I have opted to design as I go, as per usual. But I do have a basic idea of where I am headed. I am making a turtle quilt inspired by the tribal turtle motif on two of the original fabrics.

I have now designed my turtle appliqué. It is influenced by the turtle above, but also by a beautiful turtle batik I have in my collection. If you like batiks, you might recognise this fabric, its been around for a while.

Turtle batik fabric from Lunn Studios for Artisan Batiks from Robert Kaufman Fabrics

I actually started a quilt for my nephew two years ago inspired by this turtle batik, that I also intended to put a turtle appliqué on. But he got a monkey quilt instead. Long story for another day. But it s nice to be returning to the turtle idea. Perhaps I can knock off this UFO too.

My Turtle Appliqué Quilt Design Concept

Here is my turtle appliqué design:

It is quite likely that the quilt background will be significantly different from my quick diagram. The basic plan for the background of the quilt is to create 8×6″ finished blocks out of the black and white fabrics. Some blocks will be fussy cut 6″ squares. Some blocks will be created from 4″ and 2″ squares, with possibly some half-square triangles and/or pinwheels thrown in. I will decide on their overall layout at the end. Basically, I am going to give the free die that comes with the Accuquilt GO! cutter a whirl.

Accuquilt GO! die

Then, the intention is to add a 1″ red border, and then an 8″ piano key border in black and white. It will finish at 66″ square and I will bind it in red. Or teal. Subject to mind changes, of course!

Where am I at?

Well, the sharing link for having the fabrics cut opened 10 days ago or so. So, you can tell I am a little behind schedule as usual. But the link is not closed yet, and I have my appliqué printed, traced and cut out, so all is not lost!

Turtle appliqué design — Turtle appliqué templates

Turtle appliqué cut out — Here are my turtle appliqué pieces. The teal fabric will be mostly covered by the red, so I bought a cheap Prima solid for this layer.

I actually have no intention of pre-cutting my black and white fabrics. I will do this as I create blocks. Not efficient if I was producing a quilt from a pattern, for sure. But it is the way I design quilts from scratch. So I am claiming that this QAL stage is done to my satisfaction. And I hope you will find my design process more interesting if I actually report it like it is rather than showing you just the end result.

Linking this post up with the Splash of Color QAL on the cutting fabric page.

If you would like to see the other projects in this quilt along, the original ideas links are found here. There were 14 projects joined up from the very beginning – there may be some late comers too if you keep an eye on the progress linkys. There is certainly a great variety, you are sure to see something that inspires you!

See you again tomorrow!

Linking up to:
Midweek Makers, Wednesday Wait Loss, Freemotion by the River, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Crazy Mom Quilts

October 23, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Sentimental Scraps

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

One thing that most quilters do is save their scraps for another project down the line. But if those scraps aren’t sufficient for another quilt, yet have strong sentimental value, it can be hard to decide to do with them. So what do you do? Move them on? Throw them away? Or make something entirely different with them?

Today, for my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration challenge, I want to share with you the story of a quilted clock, inspired from all sorts of sentimental scraps and inherited notions.

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 23

Sentimental scraps and fake flowers

There once was a fabric off-cut amongst my collection that I didn’t want to part with. It was left over from a project (not actually a quilt) that I did for a friend who now lives overseas and whom I miss very much. I decided that my sewing room needed a clock, and that this special black and white batik should be the background.

There were also a stack of fake flowers left in my mother’s belongings that I couldn’t quite commit to throwing away. I am not a “fake flowers sort of person”, but I know she enjoyed decorating her last residential unit very much. So I pulled the flowers to pieces so I could sew with them.

fake flowers amongst my sentimental scraps — One of the deconstructed tiger lilies from my Mum with a bell centre.

Sentimental trinkets and real flowers from my love

Also among my mother’s things was a brand new wooden frame. It framed a print I know she loved, but it was never destined to hang in my or my siblings’ homes. It never even got to hang in her home – it was still in it’s wrapper. So I pulled that to pieces too.

In my own things I always have ribbon scraps from flowers my hubby buys me. He knows that if he buys me flowers regularly I don’t immediately get suspicious if he suddenly starts. This avoids questions like “What have you done this time?!”. Hahahaha. High IQ has my hubby.

Sentimental scraps quilted clock — I echoed the tiger lily with bobbin work and hand embroidery. I think this is my favourite part asthetically.

Acquired supplies and new techniques

Also among my own things was a very heavy blue thread that I bought secondhand from a class instructor because she was downsizing her thread collection. And I had just learned bobbin work….. So I added a ghost tiger lily to the background.

More sentimental notions and hoarded items

The bright blue button was languishing in one of the button collections I have inherited along the way. It spoke to me as the new centre for the deconstructed white tiger lily.

There was also a bell among my buttons. It came from one of my previous cats’ collars. My indoors-only cats have no need for bells, so I tend to remove them and stash them away for later. Bit of a magpie, me.

Easing my conscience over unused supplies

Finally, I needed to find a way to mark out the clock face without obscuring the batik fabric that I was trying to honour. In my USOs (un-started objects!!) I (still) have a sample of a fabric called “glass”. It is like an ultra-fine tulle. I bought it to try it in shadow trapunto. That was years ago…. and I only just got around to trying shadow trapunto last month. But not with the glass yet. Anyway, two layers of this, fused over the batik, gave just the right degree of opaqueness.

I bought the clock parts especially for this project and made the clock face size to match.

I agonised how to put all this together for a long time. Shuffled my sentimental scraps and notions around many times. In the end though, I was happy with the result. I know some of my friends think it is a bit odd. But I actually don’t care. This piece is for me. 🙂 They were my sentimental scraps, after all.

See you again tomorrow for another round of Colour Inspiration Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

Tag: black

UFO Attack December 2017

Just this once I am going to be Done. on. Time! Ha! Just to find out what it feels like!
Welcome to My One Monthly Goal with Elm Street Quilts

My One Monthly Goal for December

Some background info in case you are new here….