Colour Inspiration Tuesday: February is Blue

February is Blue color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: The next Colour in the 2018 Monthly Color Challenge is Blue!

February is just around the corner, and that means it’s time to start getting our heads around next month’s colour. This year, at Clever Chameleon, the colour of the month is defined as our monthly focus colour in Jen Shaffer’s Monthly Color Challenge and blog hop. You still have a couple of days to link up your red creations at Jen’s – but only a couple, so please don’t forget! On February 1st, Red will be “soooo yesterday!”. 🙂

2018 Monthly Color Challenge

The Colour of the Month for February 2018 is Blue. So, today we are going to get a big dose of the Blues to get us in the mood – the good kind of Blues of course!

February is Blue. And blue is a very popular colour….. so let’s have a quick look at why……

Continue reading “Colour Inspiration Tuesday: February is Blue”

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Red Rocket Blue

Red Rocket Blue colour scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – where we intentionally let real life creep into our quilts.

January is Red color scheme from Clever ChameleonWhen we were talking about the colour red a few weeks ago, I discovered that I have not yet done a blue and red colour scheme for Colour Inspiration Tuesday. So, with Australia Day coming up on the 26th January, now seemed like a good time to fill in this gap in our quilt inspiration musings.

Australian Flag

As you have probably gathered by now, I am proud to be Australian and call this beautiful land my home. I especially love the Australian Outback, and we travel there at least annually. And I am constantly fascinated by our wildlife and our flora – so different to much of the rest of the world. So much quilt inspiration just in my little corner of the world!

kangaroo
“Who are you calling strange?!! Ok…. the platypus – he is a bit odd.” Photo by Ewa Gillen on Unsplash

Ewa Gillen

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Red Rocket Blue

Red Rocket Blue colour scheme on Clever ChameleonI was very excited when I found the picture of the red rocket sculpture on Unsplash. You will find out next week why! Actually, I couldn’t believe how well this picture lines up our next bear for the Beary Colourful BOM. Remember, we are doing the Blue Bear of High Hopes in February. So it was a cinch to choose this pic to focus my thoughts around red and blue as a quilting colour scheme. What’s more, January has been a fun month of exploring red. But I am now itching to get to February to do it all again with blue. A red and blue colour scheme seems the perfect way to celebrate this transition.

Red and Blue – such simple colours, such rich diversity

As I was musing upon red and blue, and my thoughts were turning to Australia Day and our flag, I wondered how many other flags use the same colour scheme. Flags for the USA, New Zealand, Great Britain and France come to mind in an instant, but it turns out there are so many more….. Here’s just a few that I didn’t know or didn’t know well enough to recall without help.

Slovakian Flag
Slovakian Flag
Samoan Flag
Samoan Flag
Cambodian flag
Flag of Cambodia
Icelandic Flag
Icelandic Flag

BTW, If you are ever looking for flag graphics, I found a great site that has royalty free downloads of many…. including some pirate flags! 🙂 It’s called Flag Lane.  Anyway….

How was I inspired by Red Rocket Blue?

Well, I know that red, white and blue quilts become very popular around July for US Americans. But where could we go with this colour scheme for the rest of the year…. or for us of other nationalities at any time? Because blue with red is a great colour scheme for a boy’s bedroom, regardless of your place of birth.

I have seen some amazing nautical-themed quilts in red, white and blue. And of course, the basic rocket shape of Red Rocket Blue would in itself make a great block. But what about flags as quilt blocks? According to Wikipedia, there are 38 countries that have flags considered to fall into this tricolour category – although some on their list have extra colour motifs. Even if you exclude these, there are a lot of options. And then there are red and white flags, and blue and white flags that would also fit right into a red, white and blue quilt.

So It wouldn’t be difficult to pick a few interesting flags and make a diverse quilt that reflects a collection of countries you are interested in.

My Blue, Red and White Flag Picks

For instance, if I was making a blue, red and white flag quilt, I would likely choose Australia, New Zealand, USA, Denmark, Thailand, Samoa, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, Scotland and France purely on the basis of having been there or having some connection with that country that is important to me. Then I could add in a few that I think that have cool flags or I would like to visit….. Canada, Cook Islands, Iceland, Slovakia, Greenland, Nepal, Antarctica. The list could go on. As you can see, I have stretched the definition of “country” already, but you could add in states or territories or causes that mean something to you as well. I was tempted to add the Red Cross, since we work with some amazing Red Cross people through my hubby Paul’s research.

Here is my off-the-cuff design for a boy’s flag quilt that would have significant meaning for my family, with a few extra flags thrown in for visual interest. 

Which countries would you put on a flag quilt to represent your family’s history or experiences? Of course, there is no need to restrict yourself to a single colour scheme for this exercise. I just chose to to stick with today’s colour discussion. As it happens, most of the countries that have special meaning to me are on the red, white and blue list. But that is purely coincidental. Germany and Vanuatu are two countries not on this quilt design that are also part of my family’s recent journey. If I was making a multi-coloured project, I would definitely add them in!

P.S. Picture Credits

The Red Rocket photo was supplied by John Baker on Unsplash.com.

John Baker 

The flags were supplied by Flag Lane, Clipartmasters or Wikipedia under Creative Commons Zero licenses.

P.P.S Shared on Cooking up Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: She’ll be Apples

She'll be Apples color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Welcome back to Colour Inspiration Tuesday! Today we are exploring a new FMQ mini tutorial “She’ll be Apples”.

Last week I was suddenly inspired to quilt my next charity quilt. I’ve had the pinned quilt in my possession since before Christmas, but I always knew it wasn’t going to get touched until January. Partly because December is a ridiculously busy time of year, and partly because it wasn’t “speaking to me”. In fact, it was confusing me slightly…. apples and roses on one side, autumn leaves, nuts and berries on the other. I quite like both sides, but struggled to choose one quilting theme to make sense of this quilt.

charity quilt before quilting
Here is the charity quilt before quilting….. I nominated it as my January One Monthly Goal.

After musing over this quilt for some time, on and off, and  getting it out several times and putting it away again, inspiration finally struck. I was in a right-brain kind of mood and scrolling through photos on Unsplash over a coffee when I spotted the picture of apples I have used on today’s mood board. And it all somehow just fell into place. I *just knew* I had to quilt apples, but not just any apples. Apples with a little bit of cheeky thrown in!

The “She’ll be Apples” FMQ Motif

I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and started doodling. First I started with a continuous line apple motif.

Apple FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon

Then I thought, what if the apple has a bite taken out of it? Well, that’s easy.

Apple FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon

And it’s no more trouble to take several bites, is it?

Apple FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon

But what if the apple has a worm in it? A friendly worm, of course!

Apple and worm FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon

And of course, I couldn’t resist…… The worm and the bite combination! This one’s for my daughter, who is at that age where one of her favourite jokes is “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” “Half a worm…..” Hahahaha Snort. Oh the joys of childhood! Anyway, I was mostly well behaved….. I only put this combo on the quilt once. And I did overrule my daughter’s request for the apple and half a worm motif…..

Apple FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon

She’ll be Apples Quilting in Real Life

Here are some pics of the quilting up close, and of the little charity quilt all done. Sorry, the quilting does not show well – which is exactly how I wanted the quilt to be, but it is excruciating to try to photograph.

Apple FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon
Apple FMQ motif
Apple with a bite FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon
The apple with a bite FMQ motif
Apple core motif from Clever Chameleon
Apple core motif
The apple with a friendly worm motif from Clever Chameleon
The apple with a friendly worm motif
Apple, worm and bite FMQ motif from Clever Chameleon
And the one instance of an apple with both a worm and a bite

It didn’t take very long to quilt this little lap quilt. Once I had got the hang of the basic apple shape, I found  quilting these to be quite quick and easy. In fact, I had the whole thing finished before I realised that there is another apple variation that I could have added. The half apple. No matter, I will save this idea for another day.

Half apple FMQ quilting motif from Clever Chameleon

If you would like to give the apple motifs a go, I have made you a printable reference page, which you can download here: She’ll be Apples pdf

And here is the finished quilt. The quilting has made it crinkly and cuddly. 🙂

She'll be Apples quilt finished

So, that’s my January One Monthly Goal done and dusted! I promised you I’d had a lot of fun with it!

I hope you have enjoyed this little project and might put some apples on a quilt soon. My daughter is currently requesting apples on the Regatta Quilt I am making for her. Yes, complete with a half-worm apple. It’s not what I had in mind at all……. the big question is…. “How old will she be before such a thing becomes “cringe-worthy”?” The Regatta Quilt is supposed to take her forward into her teens.  Then again, maybe I should just do it. Kids are not young for very long. are they? And there’ll be plenty more quilts. Thankfully there is still some thinking time on this until I get to the quilting stage of the Regatta Quilt. I’ll see what she thinks when I actually get that far.

P.S. Photo Credits

The photo which sparked the apple motifs was supplied for free by Marina Khrapova via Unsplash. You can find this photo, as well as many others I have used for Colour Inspiration Tuesdays here. They are all available for free for you to use in your own projects however you wish. 

Marina Khrapova

P.P.S Linking up with Freemotion by the River, Free Motion Mavericks. Elm Street Quilts


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

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Lovely Leucadendron

Lovely Leucadendron color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Welcome to Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Where we always find something interesting to inspire a quilt!

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I took the kids to see the Christmas lights display at the local brewery. The display is a bit of a South Australian icon, and has been running for 58 years. The link I have supplied gives quite a good overview of the event, if you would like to see it. Like many other Adelaide locals, I do very much like our brewery lights display. But this year the take-home memory was actually a little plant growing in the council strip nearby.

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Lovely Leucadendron

Many years ago, my mother grew lots of Australian natives and other plants that thrive in similarly poor, dry soil. Among the non-natives that my mother grew were quite a number of leucadendrons. So I tend to notice leucadendrons on my wanderings. But I have never seen one like this before!

leucadendron

I was struck by the beauty of this small bush, perhaps only 40cm high. Oh, the colours…. like a dusky sunset! I have called this colour scheme “Lovely Leucadendron”. Maroon stems, green and aqua lower leaves, graduating through lavender and lilac, peach, orange to yellow-green at the top of each stem. Once those yellow leaves open up there will be an insignificant flower cone in the middle. But it is the leaves that this plant is usually grown for. You can see why!

A Lovely Leucadendron Quilt?

If I was challenged to make a quilt inspired by this plant, it would have to be a string quilt. One with long thin-ish pieces like the strappy leucadendron leaves. It would be a scrap-busting quilt. And of course, made in the colours of the “lovely leucadendron”. After all, it was the colours that stopped me in my tracks in the first place!

If you arrange the string blocks like this you get leucadendron stems. Or peacock feathers…..  🙂 That’s ok, I like both. You could graduate the colours through the same sequence as the real-life bush, or just scatter them randomly…..

Lovely leucadendron quilt idea
Lovely Leucadendron quilt idea

These colours would also be great on the Regatta Quilt (currently featuring in Home Sewn with Us’s no pressure sew along). I have started my Regatta Quilt. It’s not being made in these colours though. I had an orphaned jelly roll which has finally found its destiny. More about that in a day or two.

Not into dusky rainbows?! Perhaps you’ve been seeing red lately instead…..

January is Red color scheme from Clever ChameleonAre you joining in the 2018 Monthly Colour Challenge? I have seen a few Red Bears popping up in social media this week. You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that people are actually making my red bear pattern,. I’ll round up a few I/ve seen in a post for you later in the week. They are all different and it is amazing the variation in techniques and tweaks that have surfaced so far. What a clever bunch of quilters you all are!


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. Thanks for your support!

How to Appliqué the Red Bear Block

Red Bear Free Motion appliqué

How to put together the Red Bear of New Beginnings

One of the techniques I have done a lot since I learned to free motion quilt is raw edge free motion appliqué. Primarily because free motion appliqué is the fastest form of appliqué I know. And for me, currently, fast is good……. I have young kids and an often travelling husband…..

But there is also another reason…. I have found that free motion appliqué is a great way to improve my free motion skills for quilting. The act of tracing around a shape several times in a row. then another shape, and another shape (and so on) has definitely helped with my FMQ confidence and accuracy. 

So, if you are still working on your free motion quilting skills and don’t do raw edge free motion appliqué yet, you might just want to give it a go. Here’s how to do it, using the Red Bear Block from the Beary Colourful BOM as an example.

What you will need to make the Red Bear appliqué block

Before we get started, if you haven’t got the Red Bear of New Beginnings pattern yet, you can download it here from yesterday’s blog post. Reminder: if you are a beginner and don’t want to jump in the deep end, I will share a slightly simplified pattern later this week once I have the all main instructions posted.

Here is also a brief reiteration of everything you will need to make the Red Bear block. If you require more detail, this list was covered more fully yesterday.

  • Background fabric 13.5″ by 17″
  • Thin batting for trapunto 11″ x 15″.
  • Fusible paper-backed fabric adhesive (for example vliesofix). 15″ x 24″
  • Red fabric scraps for the main sections of the bear. The whole bear requires the equivalent of 6″ x 24″ of red fabric. 
  • White/light colour fabric scraps for the muzzle and tummy,  5″ x 8″. Or 10″ x 8″ if you would like to make the light fabrics double layered.
  • Various coloured small fabric scraps for eyes, nose, mouth, paws, inner ears and tummy motif appliqué shapes. 
  • Machine embroidery or sewing threads to match your appliqué fabrics 
  • General tools: sewing machine, iron etc, teflon ironing sheet or baking paper, small sharp scissors, pencil, chalk/washout fabric marker, quilting pins, black permanent fabric marker, curved blade embroidery snips, greaseproof paper.

Where to start

Step 1

First, print out your appliqué templates. Pay attention to the size of the check box on the printout. It is actually really important that this box is square. If it is not square, then all sorts of bad things will happen. I.e. your pieces won’t all overlap, your bear will be misshapen and rain will fall on your nearly dry washing….. just kidding about that last one, but the other two consequences are 100% true. 

Step 2

Choose whether you are making the Butterfly Bear or the Beetle Bear and tape together the large outline of the entire bear. This is a placement guide to build your bear appliqué over later. Put it aside.

Red Bear Appliqué assembly guide

Step 3

Now, from the appliqué pieces pattern sheets (the first 5 pages of the Red Bear pattern) trace your appliqué shapes onto the paper side of your fusible fabric adhesive. The pieces are already reversed to give you a bear that faces the same way as my sample. The arrows indicate the top of each piece. Leave space between the tracings so that you can cut out the pieces with 1/8th inch or slightly more excess paper around them.

Step 4

fused adhesive for raw edge appliqué
Red Bear pieces fused onto my scrap of red batik

Fuse each traced piece to the back of your chosen fabric, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Protect your iron by covering your work with an non-stick ironing sheet or baking paper – the really shiny kind that is used for lining cookie baking trays. Carefully cut out each fused shape on the traced line. Cut the centre out of the “outer tummy” shape, so you get a tummy doughnut.

baking paper
Here’s the baking paper I use for appliqué. I save the cheap stuff for cooking with…… 🙂

Building the Appliqué for the Red Bear Block

Step 5

Lay your bear outline face up on your ironing board and cover it with a see-through teflon ironing sheet or baking paper, I have an ironing sheet (somewhere) but I had to use baking paper because it is lost. I did mention that taking control of my sewing space is a 2018 goal.….. Actually I like using baking paper for this step, because I can happily stick pins through the baking paper and the template into my ironing board, and nothing moves.

baking paper over appliqué template

Step 6

Peel the paper backing off your appliqué pieces. If you can get them off in one piece, save the backing paper pieces from the left foot, both arms, the tummy, muzzle and head (otherwise you will just have to trace them again later – no biggy).

Place the arms, legs and outer ears into position and tack each down with a quick touch of the iron. If anything moves out of place carefully peel it off the baking paper and try again.

red bear appliqué first layer
First layer of the red bear appliqué temporarily adhered to baking paper.

Step 7

Join up all the limbs by adding the outer tummy ring over the top.

Tummy added to red bear appliqué

Step 8

Now add the inner ears over the outer ears and lightly press. Notice that the edges of the outer ear and the inner ear pieces are slightly offset? This creates a gradual decrease in layers under the head, and prevents a pronounced  bump forming on the head at the edge of the ear pieces.

offset appliqué layers

Step 9

Now add the main head section and the feet, overlapping the already placed pieces.

Step 10

Add the tummy centre and muzzle. If you wish to make the white areas double layered, now is the time to do that (use fusible adhesive to stick two layers of fabric together before you cut out the white shapes).

comparison of one vs two layers of fabric
Upper picture shows muzzle with one layer of white fabric. Lower picture has two layers of fabric on the muzzle.

Step 11

Add the whites of the eyes, the irises, the nose, mouth and paws. You most likely will not be able to see the position guidelines through your appliqué now, with the possible exception of the white areas. You can position your pieces by eye, or if you want them placed exactly, you can use the following trick:

Take the saved backing papers from your appliqué pieces (or trace new shapes on tracing paper if the originals tore during the removal process). Move your bear (still on the baking paper) off the appliqué positioning guide. Use the guide to trace the positions of the paws, facial features and tummy motif onto the backing papers.

add details to backing paper
This arm backing paper now has the paw location marked on it

Align the marked backing paper over the corresponding part of your bear appliqué. For instance, this arm backing paper now has the position of the paw marked on it. Gently slide the paw piece in under the arm backing paper  until the paw piece is aligned with the paw outline on the backing paper. Press to fix the paw in place. 

Align paw under backing paper
Align paw under backing paper and iron down

Actually, you can see this process better with an eye…..

aligning eye with backing paper
White eye piece aligned under marked backing paper

Repeat with two remaining paws and the facial features.

appliqué bear face
Bear face all assembled

Step 12 – Butterfly motif

Add the butterfly motif. The butterfly construction follows the same method as the paws and face (step 11).

butterfly assembled
Butterfly appliqué assembled

Step12a – Beetle motif

To do the beetle, use your favourite marking method (chalk, pencil, washout pen, greaseprroof paper) to mark out the beetle’s legs. Then either: use the permanent fabric marker to draw the beetle’s legs. Or, if you are confident with FMQ, you can thread paint the legs in a later step (and go straight to step 14 now).

If you have drawn the legs on, you can now add the beetle body. If you wish to thread paint the legs, leave the beetle body off.

Step 13

Mark the pupils with the permanent fabric pen. I thread paint over these later, but you could leave them as is, or hand embroider them instead.

add details with texta
Add small details with permanent marker

Step 14

Once you are happy that all of your pieces are in place, give the appliqué a thorough pressing to adhere all the pieces together. Once it has cooled, your appliqué should peel off the baking paper in one large piece.

Lay the bear onto the centre of your block background fabric and iron down.

Step 15

Lay the whole block over the polyester batting and pin into place with a few quilting pins around the bear.

pinned block
Pin the polyester batting under the bear. Make sure the whole bear is sitting over batting.

Step 16

Set your machine up as you would for free motion quilting. 

Starting with the white areas, sew straight stitch around the edge of every piece to secure the appliqué. If your quilt is to be a wall hanging, one or two rounds of stitching around each raw edge will suffice. However, if you would like to make this as a bed quilt to be used and loved, stitch around each appliqué piece 4 or 5 times. 

White appliqué done
White appliqué areas stitched down with free motion straight stitch

Step 16a

If you are thread painting the beetle legs, do these next.  I used my favourite marking method….. drawing onto greaseproof paper and stitching around the outline. You can find out more about this method here.

Marking out the beetle legs with greaseproof paper
Marking out the beetle legs with greaseproof paper
stitching on greaseproof paper
Once the outline is stitched, remove the paper before you colour in the shapes.
thread painting
Thread paint in the legs and antennae
thread painting done
Thread painting all done

Press the beetle body into place. It will hide the travel stitching between each appendage.

finished beetle
Press on the remaining beetle parts

Step 17

Free motion stitch around all the remaining raw edges as for the white areas in Step 16. 

Don’t forget to add a few stitches of white to give his nose some shine. And of course, thread paint or embroider the pupils.

Step 18

Remove the safety pins. Turn your finished work over and carefully cut away the batting just outside the perimeter of the bear. Take care not cut your fabric or stitching, just the batting!! Curved embroidery scissors work wonderfully for this job. The result is padding left behind the bear, so that the bear will be a greater thickness than the surrounding quilt. For those who have never heard of trapunto, that is exactly what this is.

Back of appliqué
The back of your appliqué should look something like this
Cut away excess batting
All excess batting cut away.

Once the excess batting has been removed your red bear block is done! Fabulous!

If you have any trouble with the pattern please let me know.  And don’t forget to link up a photo with Jen’s linky party at the end of January.

Then hold tight for the Blue Bear of February.

Red Clever Chameleon logoAnd  to finish off, I didn’t forget that it is Tuesday…… and the first Colour Inspiration Tuesday of the year, no less! I do admit that this past week has been a bit manic getting the Beary Colourful BOM up and running, so there has been no time for my usual dose of wandering creative thoughts….. so we will simply take this opportunity to celebrate the colours of the Butterfly Bear of New Beginnings. Happy Colour Inspiration Tuesday!!

Beary Red Colour scheme from Clever Chameleon


Don’t want to miss a bear in the Beary Colourful BOM? You can follow my blog directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’. Sneak peeks of next month’s bear will also appear throughout the year at Clever Chameleon Quilting on Facebook. All your follow options can be found here