The blog hop where there are oodles of free quilt row patterns to be collected and lots of prizes to be won! I hope you have been following along with the My Happy Place row-along at Seams to be Sew, collecting the free patterns as they’ve been released and before they expire. And of course, entering for the insanely large collection of prizes Marian has gathered. But if not, don’t despair, there is still plenty of goodness up for grabs. Join me today for my interpretation of the “My Happy Place” row-along theme, download my free quilt row pattern and enter for the latest prizes.
G’day! Today is the last day of the 2017 Fall Art with Fabric blog hop, hosted by Alida at Tweety Loves Quilting. I hope you are here because you have been following along all week. But if not, the good news is that you have a lot of fun art quilt exploring to catch up on. Either way, I am so excited that you are here!
The parameters for the Art with Fabric blog hop are pretty broad…. posts all feature an original art work done in fabric, inspired by a “more conventional” form of artwork (for example a painting, sculpture, etc). The blog hop also has a secondary theme. All works are to celebrate Mother Earth in some way. When I heard about this blog hop, I knew immediately which artist I wanted to use as my inspiration. Thanks for including me Alida!
Inspired by the work of Kim Toft
As my muse, I chose an Australian artist whom I have long admired. Her name is Kim Michelle Toft, and she is a silk painter who illustrates books. She resides in Brisbane and is an active advocate for environmental protection, especially of the Great Barrier Reef and the world’s oceans.
I first discovered Kim’s work when I rescued one of her books from a local library’s excess book disposal sale. I bought it “for my children” but it was the bright flowing pictures that attracted me, and the book has spent most of its time since on my resource/inspiration shelf in my sewing room. 🙂 Her art appeals to me in a similar way to my love for batik fabrics.
My slightly worn copy of Reef Superstar by Lesley Killingbeck and Kim Toft.
The book is called “Reef Superstar” and is about a talent show amongst the creatures found on a coral reef. It is written by Lesley Killingbeck, illustrated by Kim Toft and published by Brolly Books (2005). The text is cute (even though a few rhymes are slightly forced), but the illustrations are superb. It is out of print.
A fraction of one double page of Reef Superstar. Every single page is a riot of colour and activity like this one.
You can find Kim Toft’s website here. She has published lots of books since this story, all with excellent illustrations. Please note, several attempts to get into contact with Kim about this blog hop have been unsuccessful, so this post in no way represents her opinions or endorsement. But I hope this will not stop you popping over to her website to have a look. She is very talented.
The background to my Fabric Art piece
In 2015, our family did a 3-month road trip around Eastern Australia. Thousands and thousands of km in the car with two small children and a camper caravan. It could have been awful. But we loved it. One of the many highlights was the ReefHQ Great Barrier Reef Aquarium in Townsville. Here I fell in love with the Pacific Cleaner Shrimp. Amazing, shy little guys that help keep reefs healthy.
Pacific Cleaner Shrimp in a tank at the ReefHQ in Townsville 2015
Ever since then, I have wanted to have a go at depicting these creatures on a piece of fabric art. They are bright red on top, with white “speed stripes” and are just fascinating. Pacific Cleaner Shrimp eat refuse and clean up the reef, keeping it clean. They also remove parasites from client reef fish, such as parrotfish.
Parrotfish meets Pacific Cleaner Shrimp
So without further ado, I give you my fabric art piece. It is called “Remember to thank the Cleaner (Shrimp)”.
On one level my art piece is a celebration of the colours and life on a coral reef…. and hence the link to the Mother Earth theme and Kim Toft. But it is also a statement piece about being grateful for the people in your life who do the less glamorous jobs that you couldn’t live without. The hospital orderlies, the garbage collectors, street sweepers, office cleaners and other “sanitation engineers”. The reality is that these people are indispensable to healthy communities, but are too often taken for granted.
The Details
The Pacific Cleaner Shrimp is thread painted over appliqué and has a little black bead to give him a goggly eye. He is oversized, because for today at least he is being recognised for his importance.
Pacific Cleaner Shrimp, thread painted, detail
The background is improvised patchwork and appliqué using batik and solid snippets from my scrap bins and is lightly quilted.
Remember to thank the Cleaner (Shrimp), background.
Over the background I have appliquéd coral and anemones inspired in the style of Kim Toft. The reef creatures are more sparse than in the illustrations of “Reef Superstar”, because the reef we snorkelled at the Great Barrier Reef was disjointed, with large stretches of sand and rock between coral growths. So this reflects more my personal experience.
Kin Toft-inspired reef creatures.
I drew the reef creatures onto batik fabrics with black permanent fabric pen and added extra colour with wax crayons. The glitter on the pink coral was already embedded in the wax of the crayon, and on ironing, became very firmly stuck to the fabric. This was more a lucky discovery than a ensured outcome. Sometimes it pays to experiment! I then cut the shapes out and attached them to the collage with quilting.
The parrotfish is purposely partly obscured because he is not the star of this piece. The parrotfish is derived from Kim Toft’s book illustrations, although we did see (and hear) parrotfish while we were snorkelling. (Parrotfish scrape the reef with their beaks for food, and it’s quite audible!) To create this fish I combined wax crayon colouring with dense thread painting.
Parrotfish detail
Fabric art, not a quilt
To finish the piece I stretched it over a painting canvas. I display in my dining room it on this art stand.
Remember to thank the Cleaner (Shrimp) on display in my home.
I hope you have enjoyed my fabric art, and will visit the other contributors to this blog hop. You can find the schedule and direct links for all the blog posts at the bottom of this post.
I like using wax crayons on fabric. They are so vivid and easy to use. Have you used them to decorate a piece of fabric art? If so, what did you make? – I’d love to know. Or would you like a tutorial on how I get this result from wax crayons on fabric? Happy to schedule one if people are interested.
Fabric with Art Blog Hop – say hello to the other fabric art bloggers on the hop list:
P.S. Today’s post also doubles as part of my 31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series. Day 13 to be precise. By the time this publishes, I will be on the first of several airplanes home, so I hope you will agree that is fair!
Anyway, two good sources of inspiration you can use for your own quilt designs are represented here: picture books and animals in your local aquarium/zoo/wildlife park. You can certainly learn a lot about capturing the essence of your quilt subject by studying illustrations in picture books.
I hope you enjoy(ed) the Art with Fabric Blog hop!
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
This design wasn’t as easy as I assumed!
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….
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…..
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!!
Welcome to the launch of a long-held dream! My all new Clever Chameleon blog and website is a patchwork and quilt design resource, focused on helping you make your quilts most truly your own. Whether you want to find a new pattern, design a pattern, change a pattern or add to a pattern, The Clever Chameleon blog will offer you ideas to give you confidence on your next textile journey. As I explore all sorts of techniques to expand my skills, I will share my journey with you – my quilt story to empower yours.
A quilt made from another quilter’s scraps and then gifted to that person is just one example of a very powerful gift!
Chameleons are one of the best known colour-change-artists. But did you know that that they use colour as a social signal? And that these signals affect other chameleons around them?! It strikes me that quilters are like this too. We can convey mood and message in our work, through choices of colour, pattern and form. Quilts and textile art pieces convey love, happiness, comfort, thanks, memories, fun and many other things through our design choices. We express ourselves – and in doing so, affect others around us. The clever quilter knows the power of the quilt, and plans their project for the biggest impact. After all (and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you) – quilts are expensive and time consuming to make. So we might as well get the most value for our efforts, right?! Absolutely!
We can all create
So accordingly, the Clever Chameleon blog is a collection of my ideas. thoughts and experiences around designing, embellishing and personalising quilts and textile crafts, laid out especially for you to draw from. I love designing my own work, and I am usually drawn to strong colours and contrasts. So expect plenty of brightness.! I enjoy watching my kids design their own makings and seeing the joy that this brings them. Conversely, I feel disappointed when I hear people say that they don’t do art because they feel that they can’t “draw/create/do art like ….. (insert your favourite excuse here)”. I believe that we CAN all definitely create awesome stuff that makes us joyful on the inside and is meaningful to us or an intended recipient. Some of us may even turn out to be Picasso’s; who knows?! Let’s create joyfully like children before they get bogged down in self-consciousness.
Home is where the art is. Children don’t hold back on their creativity and neither should you!
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
I also like writing and teaching ….. so on this blog I am going to gather my thoughts and link in some great resources about improving your quilts and making them truly yours and truly awesome, in the hope that you might learn something that you wanted to know. Maybe even things you didn’t know that you want to know……
Learn and Connect
If you hang around here, be prepared to catch the urge to design and personalise your own quilts to make them special. Let me know what topics you’d like to cover. Learn to Colour Your Mood. Let your quilts Brighten Your World. And always Quilt Your Own Story!
The blog hop where there are oodles of free quilt row patterns to be collected and lots of prizes to be won! I hope you have been following along with the My Happy Place row-along at Seams to be Sew, collecting the free patterns as they’ve been released and before they expire. And of course, entering for the insanely large collection of prizes Marian has gathered. But if not, don’t despair, there is still plenty of goodness up for grabs. Join me today for my interpretation of the “My Happy Place” row-along theme, download my free quilt row pattern and enter for the latest prizes.
Fabric Art and the Art of being Grateful
I hope you have enjoyed my fabric art, and will visit the other contributors to this blog hop. You can find the schedule and direct links for all the blog posts at the bottom of this post. 
The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise
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!!
nt to find a new pattern, design a pattern, change a pattern or add to a pattern, The Clever Chameleon blog will offer you ideas to give you confidence on your next textile journey. As I explore all sorts of techniques to expand my skills, I will share my journey with you – my quilt story to empower yours.
