Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Real life inspiration for quilts and crafts
This week has been a little hectic here, so there’s been very little sewing time for me. There was a fair bit of secret Christmas crafting, which I am excited to be able to share with you on Thursday, but no quilting. I’ve been creating for the Christmas Ornament Exchange and tutorial blog hop coming up this week…. Stay tuned, it’s going to be huge!
One of the main reasons why it’s been a slow week here is that I went on a two-day camp in the local hills with my young son. This past weekend was the South Australian Hoporee camp at Woodhouse. This camp is the state level Joey Scout adventure that happens only once every two years. A very action-packed weekend for nearly 1,000 people (children, parents and leaders), and one of the highlights of the Joey Scout calendar.
Here’s just a very small taste of what the Joeys (6&7 year olds) got up to with the support of their parents and Scout Leaders……
A taste of archery…..A bit of rock climbing…..Each Joey made paper poppies to add to this banner to commemorate Remembrance Day on Nov 11.A big ball pit….Treasure hunting in a pool of slime….Reinventing the wheel….Recording the things that matter.
All in the midst of the beautiful Adelaide Hills, in amongst the koalas, pobblebonk frogs and kookaburras.
Koalas have Joeys…. so I guess they are allowed on camp.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: English Broom
As well as the ample wildlife (that seemed surprising unperturbed by the sudden influx of 1,000 people), there were also some notable spring flowers about. While we were on a rest break I spotted a medium-sized bush with stunning yellow and red pea flowers…… So I took pictures of that too, thinking it would make an fabulous colour board for Tuesday. Which I hope you will agree, it most certainly does.
But I have to admit that I was also highly disappointed when I did some research yesterday and found out that this plant is an invasive noxious weed in Australia (and according to Wikipedia, also parts of the US, and New Zealand, and India).
This naughty but beautiful plant is commonly known as English Broom, Scotch Broom or Common Broom. The scientific name is Cytisus scoparius. Most often the flowers are plain yellow…. which well describes the other bushes I saw at the campsite. But there are also several multi-coloured hybrids that have naturalised, and this particular bush was showing off big-time!
I am not sure what I will do with this vivid red, green and yellow colour scheme. I had thought a true-to-life pea flower appliqué would be nice, but the noxious invasive weed thing has taken the shine off that idea. At least for now. In reality, English Broom is not a bad plant – just not welcome here. Perhaps the best place for it is on a quilt or cushion after all! I’ll have to muse over this one for a while.
In the meantime…
Wishing you all a lovely week, and hope to see you back here on Thursday. I will have for you a tutorial on how to make the Christmas tree ornament I dreamed up for my 2017 Ornament Exchange partner. I am paired up with the very talented Evija of the award winning From Evija with Love blog. How lucky am I? Anyway, there will be links to 46 other ornament tutorials from around the world on this hop. All on Thursday! You’ll be sure to find something you will want to make!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: weekly colour stories for your quilts and other crafts.
Have you ever taken the time to really look at something you had always assumed you knew well, only to discover something unexpected? We live such fast lives these days that the little details can start to slip by. At least, that is true for my stage of life, with 2 young children and a travelling husband. But today I stopped to “smell the bougainvilleas” and discovered something.
Nope, it wasn’t that bougainvilleas have a fainter scent than many flowers. Or that the bright leaves that surround the tiny flowers are indeed leaves, not petals. I did already know both of those things. 🙂 It was something more subtle.
The photo of the hot pink bougainvillea at the top of this post was taken at our accommodation in Vanuatu a few weeks ago. At the time, I made a colour board and noticed the pretty form of the tiny flower in the centre of the showy leaves. “Funny”, I thought. “How come I’ve never noticed how cute the little centres are?” I even toyed a little with a free-motion quilting design to celebrate my discovery, but it never really got very far.
And the bougainvilleas went by the wayside as other inspiration presented itself for my 31 day series.
But now we are home, and I find that the local council has repainted the local outdoor pool surrounds. In colours not unlike the tones of the Vanuatu bougainvillea, but with a powder blue thrown in for good measure. I would show you but I keep forgetting my camera when we go to the pool. Anyhow, the new pool décor reminded me of my bougainvillea colour board and I thought I would take another look.
The bougainvillea surprise
Since we have a huge bougainvillea just outside our back door, I also thought I should make a colour board of the that one too. Just for some extra material. Our bougainvillea is in full bloom now. It is the rampant purple variety that grows well in a lot of climates. But when I went to take photos, I noticed something more. The centres of the purple variety actually do not have the charm of the pink one. Their basic construction is the same but there is very little definition between the petals. “Ahhh ha! The purple and pink bougainvilleas are more different than I realised”.
And all this noticing of something I had long taken for granted finally spawned a bougainvillea FMQ idea that might actually work….. bougainvillea flowers.
Stages in quilting the bougainvillea flower
I could immediately launch into the next flower, like pearls on a string. This would work to fill borders and other long thin spaces. I don’t think it matters how many petals fit around the circle, as long as there are 4-6 sets of one long and one short petal.
I also thought I could return and add leaves to the string to make a wider border in a second quilting run. Something like this:
String of bougainvillea flowers with leaf triplets to fill a wider border.
It will take a bit of refining, but I think I could quilt this.
I hope you like the little bougainvillea-inspired FMQ design. Next time I need a warm-up at my Sweet Sixteen I am going to have a go at this one.
Today’s post doubles as my daily Everyday Quilt Inspiration offering. See you for more Everyday Quilt Inspiration fun tomorrow. In the meantime, if you haven’t been following along, you can find the start of this 31 day series here. Only one week left until the daily writing challenge is over! Amazing.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The bright blue button was among my inherited button collections.
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.
I constructed the clock face with two layers of glass and satin stitched over coloured slivers of fabric to make the numerals and hour marks.
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!
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
Did you know there are an amazing number ways of achieving the stuffed quilting known as trapunto? When I was at school we were only taught one method. Snip the back of your work after stitching the trapunto outlines, stuff in some extra padding and sew the hole back up again. Of all the trapunto methods I now know, this would be my least recommended!
Trapunto quilting can be achieved by hand or machine. If you want to do trapunto by hand, read this fabulous article by Quilts A Lot and watch this video she recommends. This is a much nicer method than the slit and stitch I was taught. I would like to give it a go, “one day”.
Actually, even if you don’t want to do trapunto/french boutis by hand, these links are worth a look. The trapunto wedding rings quilt of Quilts A Lot is amazing, and the more techniques you know about, the more idea resources you’ll have to use in all your designs. 🙂
Machine Trapunto
Probably the most common method of trapunto I see these days is created by machine free-motion stitching onto fabric layered over polyester wadding. The wadding is then clipped to the trapunto shape before a quilt sandwich is made. There are many experts out there on this, including Geta Grama. I am not one of them, but I have given this type of trapunto a go recently on my Dream Big mini quilt. Now I am playing with shadow trapunto.
Shadow Trapunto
Shadow trapunto is when the top fabric and clipped wadding is laid directly over a second fabric rather than straight onto the quilt batting. The fabric between the polyester wadding and the quilt batting is expected to show through the top layer, except where the trapunto lies. Here the wadding obscures the fabric design underneath, creating a “shadow”. Thus the trapunto design has even more visual impact than ordinary trapunto.
Cross-section through a shadow trapunto quilt sandwich
The remainder of this blog post is a description of how I did the Dandelion Shadows trapunto with felt.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: materials
What you need: which fabrics to choose
The first step of a shadow trapunto project is to choose the top fabric and the feature fabric. The main requirement for the top fabric is that it needs to be partially see-through. You can use very transparent fabrics like tulle, or more opaque fabrics, like cotton lawn. Choose white or a very pale colour. For this project I wanted a subtle effect, so I choose white cotton lawn for its partially opaque nature.
The most important requirement for the feature fabric for shadow trapunto is that there is good contrast within the print. Light coloured prints often perform very well. Saturated prints that look bright but have low colour value contrast do not give very pleasing results. If in doubt, lay your top fabric over potential feature fabrics until you find one that shows through as you would like.
The feature fabric for my Dandelion Shadows project practically chose itself. While I was out shopping I noticed this hexagon print fabric, and it sparked an idea. It is “Grecian Bath House Tiles” by Emma & Mila.
Grecian Bath House Tiles fabric by Emma and Mila
Don’t forget, of course, that you’ll also need quilt batting and a backing for your project, seperate from the trapunto supplies.
What you need: which trapunto stuffing to choose
Finally, you need a material for the trapunto stuffing. To do a project with the method I am describing here, you will need a thick non-fraying fabric that you can cut into shapes without stitching it down first. I used felt, but thick fleece or similar would also work. The result is a much flatter trapunto effect than the traditional method…. perhaps it is “modern trapunto”. I like both effects…. but I would use them in different contexts. Choose a colour that works with your feature and top fabrics, because the idea is that you will partially see the trapunto stuffing through the top layer.
How much of everything you will need:
For this cushion (about 42cm square) I used:
– 50cm WOF of the feature fabric, cut into 2x 50cm² pieces.
– 50cm² white cotton lawn
– scraps of yellow and white felt
– 50cm² low-loft polyester batting
I didn’t use a backing because I intended to make a cushion out of the trapunto piece, so a backing would just be hidden inside the cushion. However, if you wish to back your trapunto, by all means do so.
My furry helper approving materials for the shadow trapunto.Time to do something else for a while. These materials are taken!
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: creating the trapunto quilt sandwich
How to create your trapunto shapes:
Once you have chosen your trapunto materials (and rescued them from your furry quilting friends), the next job is to produce the felt shapes to make the trapunto design. I chose to overlay the printed hexagons on the feature fabric with felt hexagons of the same size. You could exploit any medium or large scale fabric print in the same way. Or you can create any original design that you are willing to cut out and glue down onto your feature fabric. Either draw your design in reverse onto the back of your felt, or trace your reversed design onto freezer paper and use these templates to cut out your felt pieces.
Freezer paper adheres really well to felt…. who knew?!
I used freezer paper. This was actually a bit of an experiment, because I thought that the freezer paper would not stick to felt more than once, due to the great amount of fluff that remains on the freezer paper once the felt is peeled away. But I got at least 4 re-uses out of each freezer paper template, and it would have been more, but I didn’t require any more felt hexagons.
Attaching the felt to the feature fabric:
Elmer’s glue works well to tack the felt shapes down, but use it sparingly.
To get the felt accurately attached to the feature fabric I used a very thin smear of Elmer’s school glue (available in Officeworks here in Australia) to position the pieces. Once the glue was tacky enough that the pieces couldn’t shift, I flipped the project over and hot ironed from the back. This sets the glue hard so it cannot damage my sewing machine. However, if I want to re-position any pieces, they just gently peel off. Elmer’s glue is so fantastic!
Take care to use just a little so it doesn’t soak through to the front of the felt, especially if you are using a highly transparent top fabric…. but if it does, Elmer’s glue washes out, so as long as you can wash your project, it shouldn’t matter.
Once the pieces are securely attached and ironed dry, layer your work over the quilt batting and backing (optional for cushions). Then layer the top fabric (cotton lawn) over the top of everything else.
Cotton lawn laid over my felt shapes glued to my feature fabric, and the quilt batting.
Secure all layers with your favourite basting method (in my case, quilting pins).
Dandelion Shadows trapunto pin-basted
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: quilting
Now it is time to quilt. I chose to quilt around the trapunto with a pebble, spiral and feathers design I saw on Karen Miller’s work posted in the Free Motion Quilting Frenzy facebook group (if you are into FMQ – join this group!!). There was no particular reason to use this FMQ design, except that I really wanted to try it. Any dense fill you like will do.
I densely quilted the background around the trapunto to help the feature fabric show throughClose-up of the FMQThe pebble quilting is easier to see from the back
I finished off the quilting by adding some stems and leaves to the trapunto flowers and dandelion clock. These are quilted in a very pale grey-green. The idea is that they don’t detract from the trapunto and are only really noticeable if you are closely looking at the piece. Ghost details, if you wish.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: finishing off the cushion cover construction
Once I was happy with my trapunto piece, I squared up the sides. I cut the remaining piece of my feature fabric in half and hemmed one long edge on both pieces. I then sewed these pieces to the sides of the trapunto sample.
Dandelion Shadows trapunto with fabric attached for cushion envelope.
I then folded the flaps over the trapunto piece, right sides together, so that the cushion backing pieces overlapped by 3-4 inches. I then sewed up the top and bottom of the quilt cover and trimmed the excess from the seams.
Envelope Cushion cover ready to sew.
Here is the back once it was turned right sides out and filled with a pillow form.
And the finished cushion 🙂
I hope these instructions are clear enough. If you have been following my blog lately, you’ll know that I am writing things in a bigger hurry than usual. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll endeavour to answer and/or edit to clear things up.
Shadow trapunto with felt is a lot faster and less stressful than the more traditional kind. No risk of accidentally snipping fabric or stitches. But it does give a different effect, so it’s not a replacement for stuffed trapunto. I really like the effect this gives. I will be doing this again, for sure.
What do you think? Are you going to give this a go? Have you already done trapunto using this method? I’d love to know what you made.
Now, I’m going to have to love and leave you….. we have a family day in between all the work we are doing here in Vanuatu. Going to see an active volcano!!!!!! I am hoping tomorrow’s “everyday” quilt inspiration slot will be anything but! xx
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – it’s time for our usual weekly slot of colour and design conversation 🙂
Today we are conjuring up quilt ideas with the assistance of the “Wattle You Make?” colour scheme and a corresponding fabric.
Last minute edit: This post was pre-written long before I knew about the Write 31 Days challenge we have just started. So it uses Unsplash photos, not my own happy snaps. BUT… as you will see, this post is actually about being inspired by a fabulous everyday item – a fresh piece of fabric. So with a little tweaking I am letting it pass as Day 3 of my Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you may want to read the first post in the new 31 day series.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Wattle You Make?
The “Wattle You Make?” colour palette is brilliant yellow, grey and greyed blue-green. The colours of Australian wattle in flower. These are everyday colours in Australia at the moment, as early spring is when the wattles are out in full force.
But the real reason I have chosen these colours today is because I have a piece of this fabric:
A fun, coincidental fact….. the wattle species in the photo of today’s colour board is widely used as food for bees in making honey…. and this fabric definitely reminds me of bee hives!
This fabric is “Bathhouse Tiles Aqua” by Emma & Mila. The hexagons are about 1 1/4″ from corner to opposite corner.
Like all good quilters, I saw this fabric while I was shopping for something else. At the time I was actually shopping for the fabrics to finish my daughter’s Jewel Tone Diamonds tumbling blocks quilt. I had to have a piece of this to play with because I was instantly inspired. (I was actually very self-controlled and only got half a metre!)
Sometimes it is fun to choose a fabric as a starting point and wonder what you could make with it. Let your imagination take you places you may have never otherwise thought to go. Especially if the fabric is not your usual style (which definitely applies for me here). What would you make if you suddenly found yourself in possession of this particular fabric? Who would it be for? When I first saw this fabric I was taken with the hexagon lattice print. And I immediately thought it would be fun to accentuate some of the hexagons with trapunto. Shadow trapunto to be precise.
How was I inspired? What did I make?
Do you remember how I said that at our Handi Quilter club we had trapunto homework? And that Heather had upped the ante, adding shadow trapunto to the techniques we should try? Well, I did my trapunto homework – that was the “Dream Big” mini quilt. Now I have also done my shadow trapunto homework. It is a cushion. Always experimenting, I used felt instead of wadding for the trapunto. The trapunto design was directly inspired by the fabric print. I am hoping to have a more detailed discussion/tutorial post written up about it later in the week.
Sometimes a fabric just begs to be made into a particular design…
While you wait for my shadow trapunto cushion post, let’s explore more yellow and greyed green combinations…
Once I started thinking about this colour combination, I realised it is not uncommon in nature. In fact, yellow and greyed green combinations are everywhere…..
I could have continued down this path for ages, with daffodils, daisies, a yellow frog and all sorts. But I’ll stop here. I have that tutorial to write for you by the end of the week! But isn’t the sunflower pretty?! I could very happily do a sunflower quilt in these colours……
Today’s Photo Credit
Do you like the photos I used today? Today’s stock photos are from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. No credit is demanded, but I hope you will agree is very deserved. So, I will tell you the stock photos were provided by: Leticia Delboy (wattle), Alisa Anton (tulips) and Asgeir Pall Juliusson (sunflower). Click on the badges below to explore these photographer’s other photos. Leticia Delboy Asgeir Pall Juliusson Alisa Anton
Your turn to tell….
Do you let the fabrics sometimes dictate your quilts? Have you ever done a sunflower quilt? Know of a sunflower quilt pattern you’d recommend? Or have you ever done a yellow and green quilt?
I’ll tell you a quick story about a green and yellow quilt…… My first quilt jealousy was over a green and yellow quilt! When I was in year 10 of high school (decades ago) one of my friends did a Home Ec topic that I didn’t sign up for because it was about caring for babies…… eeeeeuuuuuch. But she had the last laugh because she made a quilt as part of her curriculum. It was another 16 years until I actually made my first quilt. After having had 2 babies (who weren’t eeeeeuuuuuch after all). If you are thinking of trying quilting, I suggest you get moving faster than I did!
Come on, tell me what you’d make with the hexagon print fabric. Or just say Hi. I love comments and finding out who’s visiting.
P.S. Don’t forget….. the upcoming Art with Fabric Blog Hop (next week) and also the new Splash of Color quilt along (starts today October 3!)
The photo of the hot pink bougainvillea at the top of this post was taken at our accommodation in Vanuatu a few weeks ago. At the time, I made a colour board and noticed the pretty form of the tiny flower in the centre of the showy leaves. “Funny”, I thought. “How come I’ve never noticed how cute the little centres are?” I even toyed a little with a free-motion quilting design to celebrate my discovery, but it never really got very far.
31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
