The last Colour Inspiration Tuesday of 2017, and the first of our 2018 Monthly Colour Inspiration series
In 2018 it is my intention to set aside the last Colour Inspiration Tuesday of each month to look forward to the incoming “Colour of the Month”. The Colour of the Month is the colour that we will focus on each month in Jen Shaffer’s Monthly Color Challenge and blog hop.
The Colour of the Month for January 2018 is Red. And today, being the last Tuesday before January, I am painting the town!
January is Red. Where can red take us…..?
Red is strong, red is loud and attention seeking. Red is demanding, warning, luring. Red is the colour of danger, the colour of speed and adventure, and the colour of rescue. Red declares the most passionate of loves!
Red is delicious ……. or poisonous. One thing is certain, red is never boring! Red stimulates appetite, causes tension, and generates excitement. Red is the colour of opportunity, wealth and prosperity. Red is glorious.
Red deepens to purple……
….. and lightens to orange.
A little red can go a long way. It loves to accent white, grey and black colour schemes. Red is very powerful.
It looks great with its complement, green. But blue and red runs deepest in many a people groups’ veins.
Will you be seeing red in January?
Are you joining the 2018 Monthly Color Challenge? If so, where will the colour red take you? A red block for a rainbow quilt? Like Jen’s red block or my red appliqué bear?
Or are you a true lover of red? Whether it is a red block, a red pin cushion, a red pillow or an entire really red quilt. I can’t wait to see what everyone shares!
Join my Beary Colourful BOM in January for the first block… the Red Bear of New Beginnings
Today, red is already in the air at my house. I have been making binding for the Vanuatu Turtle Quilt.
Not long to go now….. 2018 is less than a week away. I have a great feeling that it is going to be a marvellous quilty year! Have you had a think about your goals for 2018 (if you are a goal setting type)? My main quilting goal is to end 2018 with less UFOs than I started with!!!
P.S. All of the red photos featured today are the work of the generous photographers who use the Unsplash distribution platform. If you would like to use any of these photos (they are all free and without strings attached), or find the talented photographers who took them, head over to my Red Collection here.
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!
Welcome to a short and sweet episode of Colour Inspiration Tuesday
I have been on this blog a lot the last week, so I’ll keep this brief. I was blog binge-reading on Saturday when I came across something I didn’t know, that I wish I had known a long time ago. So I am sharing it with you, on the off chance that you don’t know it either.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Blacklight Blue
One of the quilting blogs I love to keep an eye on is Tamarack Shack. Kathy Schwartz is a longarm quilter way out of my league, and I love the eye-candy that she shares from her professional quilting business. And this week I got an extra helping of happiness from Kathy’s blog…… Kathy shared a quilt marking tip that she had recently realised not everyone knew. Wait for it…….You can see quilters’ chalk on light fabrics under blacklight! Ummmmm, I’m sure you’re excited, right?!
Well, I was excited. I had to know right then, if it was true! I got up off my bottom at once, found my son’s blacklight torch (one of those that comes with invisible ink spy sets for kids) and my chalk wheel. I drew several chalk lines on my Vanuatu Turtle Quilt (because that was what was at hand with white fabric).
Quilters’ chalk on light fabric
And turned on the torch.
Quilters’ chalk on same fabric under blacklight torch
Now, I think I have mentioned that I don’t really trust marking pens, and avoid using them as much as possible. Now I have a new weapon in my arsenal that gives me an option I do trust.
Guess what I am asking for for Christmas….. a blacklight of my own….. I have to put this torch back before I get accused by DS, fairly or otherwise, of making it go flat!
If you want to follow this up, the specific post where Kathy shares this tip can be found here. She uses the blacklight on her longarm to see pounce chalk. She also shares about her new design wall – another thing I need to get on top of one day.
Another Colour Inspiration Tuesday – and finally, that ornament tutorial…..!
Well, thanks to you guys, I have learned another new thing this week! As you are probably aware by now, I have been working on writing up a tutorial on the Christmas Bells ornament I created for last week’s Colour Inspiration Tuesday. But I still wanted to give you a mood board this week, and somehow link it all together.
So, this week, when I noticed that my Hoya plant is in flower, all my bloggy wishes came true…… I got a photo for a mood board and another idea for an ornament using the same technique as for my bell. For my Hoya carnosa has star shaped flowers, and stars are definitely relevant to Christmas. I stole the shapes and colours of my Hoya’s flowers and plagiarised them into this:
And in the process of working through this week’s Christmas Stars idea, I found out something. Did you know that Hoya carnosa (also known, among other names, as the common Wax Flower) is an Australian native? I didn’t. I had always assumed all Hoyas were exotics. It turns out that there are at least seven Australian Hoyas, and Hoya carnosa is native to Queensland (Australia) and several other locations in Asia. I love learning new things, especially happy things.
Wax Flowers with nectar
Perhaps you like learning new things too. Then you might like to try making your own Christmas ornaments like those I have been making this week….. Christmas Bells, Christmas Stars and Christmas Trees. Oh yes, I made a Christmas Tree version as well…… if an idea is fun, you should flog it til it’s dead, right?! Of course! hahahaha 🙂
How to make “String Art style” Christmas Ornaments
The inspiration to make Christmas decorations in a string art-like style came to me from a fusion of ideas that started many many moons ago. The first seed was planted when I discovered Deb Layt, an Australian quilter who at the time was embellishing her quilts with a netting made from pearl cotton couched onto soluble stabiliser. She calls this netting geoweb. If you have ever made freestanding lace on soluble stabiliser with an embroidery machine, it is essentially a cruder, hand-directed version of this. I have dabbled with this technique over time, making the occasional bookmark and adding highlights to art quilts such as the hot air balloons on the quilt I entered into this year’s local state guild show.
Now, I have many times eyed off string art pieces as pre-cursor ideas for thread painting or quilting designs, but to date, I have never acted on these ideas. But in seeing Emily’s ornament, I was reminded – hmmmmm, I could make “string art” tree ornaments with that geoweb technique…….
And then the idea sat there in the gloomy depths of unresolved creative thoughts until last week. When I suddenly fused it with the ideas that I have already laid out for you in the Christmas Bells Colour Inspiration Tuesday post. Here is how I did it (and how you can do it too).
You will need:
A sewing machine set up for zigzag/satin stitch
A thick thread for the backbone of your ornament. I suggest starting with a size 3 pearl cotton, but I have also successfully used thinner (size 8) pearl cotton, as well as thicker cotton twine from the hardware store.
Sewing machine thread – rasant, poly-cotton or 100% cotton will do. Put the same thread in the bobbin as you have running through your needle. This is a good opportunity to use some of those old or cheap threads you have somehow accumulated that will (should) never end up on a quilt – you will have the most success if you match the colours of your thread to your pearl cotton and don’t use fancy threads (rayon, metallic etc) until you are comfortable with the basic technique.
water soluble stabiliser (sorry, I don’t know the brand of mine, I purchased it as yardage off a roll and have had it a long time). The stabiliser I am using was originally purchased to facilitate machine embroidery on towels. It is 100% soluble and clear, it is not the disintegrating fibre, opaque type sometimes used for appliqué.
a biro, and a paper template if you do not wish to draw your own design freehand. I have supplied you a downloadable sheet of Christmas templates for the 3 shapes I used. Update: there are now also instructions for a Christmas Bauble shape option in a guest post on Days Filled with Joy.
beads and ribbon for decoration and hanging.
What to do:
Step 1
Trace the outline of your shape onto the water soluble stabiliser. Biro works well for this and doesn’t leave traces after washing out the stabiliser. I have tried using permanent markers and found they partly transfer from the stabiliser to the couched threads.
You do need to know that your finished ornament will end up slightly smaller than your original design. How much smaller will depend on the thread you are couching onto the stabiliser, the brand stabiliser you are using, the tension settings on your machine and how tightly you can keep the stabiliser stretched while you are sewing.
My original template vs the final ornament
Trim the stabiliser around your traced shape, leaving sufficient margin that you can comfortably sew around the edge of the design while not sewing your fingers! Cut out a second piece of stabiliser the same size as the first and lay it on top of the first. Secure the two layers together temporarily using pins.
Step 2
Set your machine to a very small zigzag stitch. I set mine on the lowest width and stitch length possible when I am couching pearl cotton. I used the decorative foot, which has a wide groove underneath so that it runs over raised surface stitching more easily. While using a foot that has the centre line marked is very helpful to see where your pearl cotton should lay, a special couching foot is totally unnecessary for this project.
Lay the pearl cotton on the outline of your design, starting in a position where you will not be required to immediately turn any corners. Leaving a tail, sew enough stitches along the length of the pearl cotton to secure it to the design. Snip off the pearl cotton and thread tails.
Start the couching somewhere sensibleMake it easy on yourself – leave thread tails as you startTrim the thread tails when convenient
Continue couching the pearl cotton around the main shape until you reach the beginning again, overlapping the start point slightly to secure the beginnings of all threads. Ignore the hanging loop and any projecting shape outlines (like the bell ringer) for the moment. We’ll come back to them.
Main outline completed
Once you have stitched all the way around the main shape you can remove the pins, as your stabiliser layers are now fixed itogether by stitching.
Step 3
With the needle in the down position, turn your work so that you will next sew across the design. It is easiest to make couching turns if the needle is down on the inside of the corner.
Sew across the design to the opposite edge. Make sure you catch the edge couching with a few stitches, then turn again and sew across the design in another direction. Repeat until you have filled the design. Make sure you catch the edge each time you finish crossing the design.
As you travel around the design you will eventually end up near a feature that needs adding….. take the opportunities to do this as they arise.
When you reach a loop or protruding shape such as the bell ringer, fill it in.Continue filing in the design until you are happy with the density.
Step 4
Once your couching is dense enough to look great, secure the end with a few backstitches and trim off the threads.
Finished couching still on stabiliser
Thoroughly wash your piece to dissolve the stabiliser. If you have stitched correctly, the couched shape will be quite stiff, self-supporting and require no further treatment. Dry your piece and decorate as desired.
Decorate as desired……
To the bell ornament I added a green bell off an old cat collar plus a remnant of purple ribbon. I think the ribbon was about 30cm long…. I am not going to remove it now to measure it. You know how long it takes to make bows look good!
To the top of the Christmas Tree ornament I added a cherub button left over from an Advent quilt I made many years ago. I would have preferred a star, but I am trying to be good and use what I have. I also added beads from my collection and three rings as “ornaments”. Do you know what the rings are? Eyelets! I stitched the decorations on, but you could use glue.
Adding a hanging ribbon to these ornaments is easy…. Just thread it through one of the holes at the top!
Tips for making the “Christmas Stars” ornament
For the ornament to match the Christmas Stars mood board, I decided to see how far I could push the boundaries of this technique. So I used cotton twine for the backbone, with rayon thread for the white and yellow sections, metallic thread for the maroon centre and also a pink rasant thread for the detailing. The rasant is stitched over the finished ornament – I did not couch any thread under this stitching. The pearl beads and bead cap in the centre were inherited from a friend’s mother.
Using the twine and fancy threads was more difficult than pearl cotton and standard sewing thread. My tips? For twine use a wider zigzag. For fancy threads make sure you drop the upper thread tension on your machine. And sew slower.
When I wanted to change thread colours I did not cut the cotton twine, I just anchored the couching thread, swapped the top thread and started again where I left off. For the star I used white sewing thread in the bobbin regardless of which thread I had on top.
And there you have it!
I hope these instructions make sense….. if not, please ask questions. Because if you are wondering something, it is likely that others are also wondering the same thing.
Enjoy your creative time leading up to the holidays. If you make a string art-style ornament I would love to know….. there are so many shapes you could try…. what about a dove, a snowman, baubles, a stocking, a snowflake…..? You are really only limited by your imagination, (and time of course). And just so you know, shapes with corners are easier than those with curves.
Wouldn’t these make fabulous decorations to finish off a special gift?! Speaking of gifts, I am off to Days Filled with Joy to see what else Joy has put on her 12 Days of Last Minute Homemade Gift ideas list. Don’t forget to keep an eye on this too.
P.S. If Suffolk Puffs (Yo-Yos) and hand sewing are more your thing, why not give my friend Evija’s Christmas Ornament tutorial a try? Evija was my partner in the 2017 Ornament Exchange, and she sent me these two beauties that are now on my tree. Enjoy! 🙂
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Celebrating the Holidays with Inspiration from Real Life
Here in Australia, sometimes it can be hard to reconcile the major seasonal holidays with the weather. Spring is now in full swing and summer is doing its best to come early this year. So here I am, merrily decorating our Christmas tree in ornaments which, on the whole, celebrate winter….. while quietly pondering whether I should just abandon ship and head to the pool instead…..
But, not everyone here is as confused as I am. There is at least one local that does our summer Christmas wholeheartedly, with absolutely no inhibitions. It is not a person though, it is a street tree. For the rest of the year, this tree is actually a bit on the plain side, possibly verging on ugly. A funny, almost stunted looking tree, unassuming, lacking in any apparent vigour and vitality. But come November and December, it does this!
This tree is a hybrid from the Brachychiton family. Two Australian natives – the Kurrajong tree (white bell flowers with pink/red insides) and the Flame Tree (scarlet red bell flowers) – can be crossed to get hybrids like this one that produce masses of pink bells.
To add to the fun, because the tree is so unworthy the rest of the time, I forget how amazing it is for the few weeks that it flowers. So, every year the kids and I get a nice moment of sudden realisation that the “Christmas Bells” are back, heralding the end of school and promising Christmas.
How to respond to such extravagant Christmas Spirit?
Well, the obvious answer is to produce something Christmas flavoured in dusky pinks and green. A “Christmas Bells” quilting motif or quilt design perhaps? Well, these bell flowers actually put me in mind and mood of a small Christmas project I have been musing over for a couple of weeks, ever since the Ornament Exchange Tour. And I would have made it in pink but I couldn’t lay my hands on my pink pearl cotton yesterday. So purple had to do. Since I still have purple and green on the brain from the last few weeks, and our purple Bougainvillea is still out in full flower, I admit that wasn’t a hard compromise to make.
This is what I created in response to my thoughts around Christmas Bells.
How to make my Christmas Bells Ornament?
Would you be interested in a short tutorial on how to make this ornament? I wanted to do the tutorial for you today, but there are just too many other things that need attention before the end of the week. I am hoping I might be able to write it up for you next week though. How does that sound?
Sorry for the tease (or maybe it is just a sneak preview?), but it seemed silly not to show you what I made in a rare quiet moment in response to my musings around today’s Colour Inspiration Tuesday. November is simply a crazy month for our family! It’s the same every year. Update: the tutorial is done – you can find it here!
So on that note, I must be getting on with those other things, but I wish you a lovely and productive week and hope to catch you back here on Thursday with my One Monthly Goal. Yup, last minute, as usual! Did you really expect anything else? 🙂
P.S. BREAKING NEWS!! Last night Clever Chameleon arrived on Facebook….. I know, not exactly earth shattering, but another step forward for my baby blog. 🙂 If you’d like to follow via Facebook, I’d be very glad of your company! Thanks a million!!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: From colour scheme to quilt block and beyond!
I love green and purple together. Always have, although I have not really given it any particular thought before. They look so strong and comfortable together, complementing and magnifying each other without competing. And it is a generous, welcoming colour scheme…. in that you can add in other colours without making a hideous mess (usually).
But until recently it flummoxed me why this is so. They are not complementary colours. They are two parts of a triadic colour scheme, the third ingredient of which is orange. But quite honestly, purple and green can sing together without orange. Helen Godden, one of my all time favourite Australian quilt artists, shared a comment on facebook recently that helped make sense of the brilliance of purple and green. She says “It’s a well balanced combo. Both green and purple are blue (primary) based, one has yellow (primary) added and the other has red (primary) added so all bases are covered and it looks visually balanced.” I had never looked at it in this light before. Thanks Helen!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Aurora Star
This week I needed to make a once-off 12.5″ pieced quilt block. No further guidelines were given. Which is a much harder task than “make this block”, don’t you think? Anyway, I had no initial ideas beyond wanting to make a scrappy batik block in greens and purples. Thankfully, this past weekend we decorated our Christmas tree (earlier than normal), and that sparked of a whole raft of ideas. And like many of my ideas, the one I settled on came to me via a rather circuitous route.
On top of our tree this year is the paper star that my daughter made in Germany last Christmas. It is green. And her green star somehow reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of the Northern Lights, which are predominately green with purple. There are some amazing pictures of the Aurora Borealis on Unsplash.
Photo by Vincent Guth
While I am not a bucket-list kind of person, the northern aurora is one thing I do want to see one day. I was fortunate enough to see small southern auroras from my home twice when I was a teen and I will never forget them.
Anyway, getting back to the point, I started wondering whether people take pictures of Venus (the Morning Star/Evening Star) with the auroras. And of course they do. One of the photographers I have featured before has even shared one on UnSplash. The amazing Jonatan Pie.
But in the end it was his photo of the aurora at sunset that captured my colour imagination.
So I put all these ideas together and decided to make a simple aurora star block in green and purple with splashes of sunset colours. Here is what I made.
It turns out that I didn’t have as many green batik scraps at hand as I thought. But I am still happy with my pretty little block. Of course now I want to make a whole quilt! hahahaha! But that Vanuatu Turtle quilt is the next thing in line for attention, so I shan’t.
Want to make your own Aurora Star?
Now it turns out that there is truly very little new under the sun. A little digging revealed that Em of Sewing by Moonlight has already shared a very good tutorial on how to construct the block I wanted to make. So I decided not to re-invent the wheel. I can tell you that the template she provides works very well, so if you would like to make this block, I wholeheartedly refer you to her post. About the only change I made was that I did not trim the outside edges of the block until I had it all constructed and blocked it square.
Of course, Em’s reasons for making this block were completely different to mine…. if you place multiples of this block together side by side you get octagons (spider webs) with stars in between. But if I were to make a quilt from today’s aurora star idea I would actually use offset blocks to break up the octagons. Because I would want to emphasise the stars in a sea of aurora colours and swirls. Something like this…..
Or this….
Or maybe with most of the stars darkened out for the sky…… I think this is my favourite so far.
Credit
Today’s photos are from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. Credit is not required, but I’m sure you’d love to know who is being so generous with their talent. Accordingly, the aurora photos that inspired me to make the aurora star block were provided by Jonatan Pie. Be sure to check out his collection of photos on Unsplash.
You can also see Vincent Guth’s photos here. Vincent Guth
I hope you enjoyed today’s Colour Inspiration Tuesday! Let me know if you’ve been lucky enough to see Aurora Borealis! Or share your favourite aurora quilt with me – I know there are quite a few bargello versions out there. You can send pictures via the blue, round email icon at the very very bottom of this page. I always love to hear from my readers!
P.S. If you like vivid colours and free-motion quilting, you are sure to like Helen Godden’s work. If you are not already familiar with this amazing quilt artist, then go check her out. She is my recommendation for the week.
P.P.S. If you would like to use Jonatan’s photos or another Colour Inspiration Tuesday photo for your own projects, you can easily find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.
If you wish to explore the world of red quilty projects, here are a few to get you started:
Well, thanks to you guys, I have learned another new thing this week! As you are probably aware by now, I have been working on writing up a tutorial on the Christmas Bells ornament I created for 
The inspiration to make Christmas decorations in a string art-like style came to me from a fusion of ideas that started many many moons ago. The first seed was planted when I discovered 
To the top of the Christmas Tree ornament I added a cherub button left over from an Advent quilt I made many years ago. I would have preferred a star, but I am trying to be good and use what I have. I also added beads from my collection and three rings as “ornaments”. Do you know what the rings are? Eyelets! I stitched the decorations on, but you could use glue.
