I hope yesterday’s post didn’t sound too delirious. It was truly written on the fly – trying not to start from behind with the Write 31 Days challenge. Luckily I had already been contemplating writing about the bedroom décor here in Vanuatu and how it relates to my Splash of Color quilt along plans! So there was already an idea seed waiting to sprout when I found out about the challenge. Today, I have had a bit more thinking time to prepare this post, although no more writing time.
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 2
Today we travelled out of Port Vila to a small village where we are going to be doing a pilot study of emergency telecommunications equipment my husband is inventing. We met the Chief and Elders of the village and explained in a public meeting how we would like to install the equipment in their vicinity and train them to use it in return for feedback on how to improve it to meet their needs. It has been a productive and interesting day.
Travelling to and from the village today has given me some quiet time to simply observe the colours and textures around me. Combinations that I wouldn’t normally see at home – that belong to other people’s everyday. Brightly coloured houses. Thatched roofs. Woven reed walls. Tropical lagoon colours. And bright tropical flowers. Lots of ideas to process here over the next few days. 🙂
Discovering the Vanuatu Nervous Plant!
One of the most fun things we saw today was an insignificant-looking plant that I would have never noticed on my own. Even though I am actively looking for blog inspiration. While we stopped for a short break on the roadside on the way home to Port Vila, a colleague who has travelled the Pacific Nations for many years showed us the Nervous Plant. This plant immediately closes its leaves at the slightest touch of a finger. If you poke it again it will shrink back even further from you, towards the ground. It is truly remarkable how mobile this plant is. I should try to get some video of it another day…. today I only have photos to share.
Nervous Plant, Vanuatu. Before being touched.Same Nervous Plant, seconds later, after being touched.
How was I inspired by the Nervous Plant?
It strikes me that I can free-motion quilt the Nervous Plant. It would make a pretty background fill design. There are a number of elements to make up the design – the feathery leaves (open and closed), the pom-pom flowers and the flower buds. I have sketched my initial idea for you with pencil on paper…..
Nervous Plant inspired FMQ design
These are relatively simple shapes that a confident beginner could put together on a continuous line. You can quilt this design as densely or loosely as you liked, depending on how soft you want your quilt to be.More experienced quilters can also modify this idea to pack the leaves together tightly to generate a dense uniform background fill design.
I hope you have enjoyed learning about the Nervous Plant as much I enjoyed discovering it today. And that you might find a use for its pretty colours or it’s cute little leaves in a project one day. See you again tomorrow!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Weekly Inspiration and Colour Happiness for your Quilting Mental Fitness!
Hi! Welcome back to Tuesday! Doesn’t it roll around quickly!? Today we are going to exercise the little grey cells and treat them to some beautiful colours along the way.
Mental exercise is good for your mind. Luckily for us, mental exercise can be waaaaay more fun than the physical sort! Keeping your mind active can be as fun as learning a new sewing technique. Resizing a quilt pattern. Or exploring new colour combinations. Anything that takes you out of your mental comfort zone and requires you to do some actual thinking rather than just consuming information or watching TV.
This week I have been stretching my mind by learning new techniques (playing with trapunto), and thinking about what to explore next for Colour Inspiration Tuesday. I finally settled on some strawberry flowers. These flowers remind me of the time when I was a country teen and had a huge patch of strawberry plants that I grew from a few runners my maternal grandmother gave me. I used to water them, mulch them and even feed them with cow dung that I collected and pre-soaked in buckets of water! And the little fruits were ohhhhh soooo sweet. Accessing happy memories is good for your mental health too!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Strawberry Vines
In honour of happy memories and mental exercise, today we have the “Strawberry Vines” colour scheme and an accompanying free-motion quilting motif to try. “Strawberry Vines” is a green, yellow and pale grey-blue colour palette. The blue is so subtle it looks white unless there is real white up against it. Go on, have another look at the photo. The main colour captured on the strawberry flower is not really pure white is it?
Anyway, I decided against designing us another quilt idea this week. The truth is that there are many good ideas floating around in Colour Inspiration Tuesday already. And I would like to have an honest go at some of them. Without the weight of new ideas to cause drag or distraction. But I did want to still give you something…… I am ever so grateful to you my readers and especially to my growing list of regular followers for coming by.
So, this week’s idea for personalising your quilts is….
Looking at the strawberry flower picture and remembering my garden with the hundreds of plants and gently tending the runners until the new plants had roots and planting them too, made me think of quilting strawberries, strawberry leaves and flowers on a continuous line. Strawberry Vines. Wouldn’t this be a lovely finishing touch for a quilt in summer colours or pastel tones? Or on reds, pinks and greens on a girl’s quilt? Do you remember the Strawberry Shortcake character from the 1980’s? A quilt in her colours!
Strawberry Shortcake…. 35 years old(ish) and still scented! This little darling now belongs to my daughter.
Strawberry Vines Quilting Motif
So I started doodling on paper and came up with my first go at such a design. Followed by a quick experiment on a fat quarter left over from Jewel Tone Diamonds and some waste cotton batting.
The three elements I used were leaf triplet, a small flower with the characteristic star in the centre between the petals, and of course, strawberries. As you can see, I tried the strawberries with and without seeds.
Strawberry Vines quilting motif
One of the things I like about my new impromptu design is that any gaps that get missed or are too hard to fill in with continuous quilting can be filled in with a curly “strawberry runner”. How good is that?!?
On my next try, I think I will round out the leaves a bit more. I know that strawberry leaves also have zigzagged edges, but that level of detail doesn’t interest me for quilting. The flowers were a bit tricky, I went through several methods to try to quilt them neatly. Here is the path that worked best for me. Start by travelling into the flower centre, and add the petals second:
A strawberry flower quilting path. Note, I have added gaps where lines would normally touch or overlay each other, so that you can easily see the pathway.
Don’t worry if you need to place more than 5 petals around the centre to finish the flower. Strawberry flowers can have 5, 6 or 7 petals. It’s the flat shape of the petals with the triangle gaps between them that make them so distinctive.
The other important thing to remember is to round off the tops of your strawberries where they meet the leaves. And don’t make the berries too symmetrical…. otherwise they look like acorns with the wrong caps instead. Or maybe persimmons. At least to me.
Next time I play with this motif I want to add flower buds as well. I have a UFO in colours not unlike “Lily Pad Glow” that might look nice quilted with this motif. What would you use it on?
Don’t need strawberry vines quilting motifs this week?
“Strawberries! How dull. Wake me up when you are quilting something interesting… like flies! Flies are cool!”
Today’s photo of strawberry flowers is 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, this photo was provided by John-Mark Kuznietsov. Be sure to check out his collection of photos on Unsplash. John-Mark Kuznietsov
I hope you have fun trying out this strawberry vines quilting motif. See you next time for more quilting fun!
P.S. If you would like to use John-Mark’s photo 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.
You are invited too. Come and see what lots of craft-loving people are sharing on the net this week!! Here’s one of my favourites from the parties so far: Project Sew a Jellyroll by Patchwork Sampler
From the Sewing Room – The Stylised Flower motif and how I free-motion quilt with baking/tracing paper
Last time we talked quilting, I had just finished stabilising two charity quilts and deciding how I was going to quilt them. This week I have finished quilting the first of these, and I learned a number of lessons along the way that I thought you might be interested in. There is also a free downloadable template of the flower motif nearer the end of this post if you want to give it a go yourself.
Last week I designed a stylised flower motif to cover the pieced blocks of a red, brown and cream quilt that my daughter has dubbed “Jaffas and Cream”. Do you know what Jaffas are? They are an Australian and New Zealand chocolate treat. Delicious. But I digress….. 🙂
Stylised flower quilting motif over a Jaffas and Cream quilt block
At first I decided I was going to quilt this motif freehand, like the daisy I did on a similar quilt. I planned to mark the diagonal lines with chalk, and once I had the orange peels stitched in place, quilt the petals and corner details around the main lines. But it was not to be. I had “one of those days”, quilting-wise.
I marked up the first block with chalk and set to work. But I couldn’t get the tension between the top and bottom threads just right. Once I had what I thought was an acceptable balance, I couldn’t get the nice sweeping curves I wanted for the orange peel backbones. I started again on a second block, this time with extensive chalk markings to guide the sweeping lines. But still to no avail. I gave up and unpicked.
The dirty culprit….
Coming back at it later, I realised that the pre-wound bobbin was not spooling off nicely. I’m not even sure how to describe this issue in words…. The thread coming off was suffering friction from the adjacent thread still on the bobbin slightly trapping it. But not consistently. That was why I couldn’t get a nice stitch flow and happy tension. This is not the first time I have had trouble with these commercially wound bobbins, but it was the worst. I like the actual bobbin thread, but I will only be buying cones to wind my own bobbins from now on. This was Lesson 1.
Anyway, I re-wound the bobbin thread from the pre-wound bobbin onto a fresh bobbin. Having fixed the main problem, I also changed the needle for good measure. I was ready to go again. But my free-motion confidence and chilled disposition was now shot for the day!
The baking paper approach to the stylised flower motif
In the past when I have wanted to quilt a design that is too hard to do without marking, I have often traced it onto baking paper and quilted over the tracing. Then I pull the paper away. So, feeling a bit frazzled, I decided to ditch the freehand stitching and use a tracing. I have never tried this before on my Sweet 16, but I didn’t expect things to be particularly different to on my domestic machine. Wrong!
Stylised Flower motif after trace-stitching, before pulling off the paper.
It turns out that trace-stitching with the Sweet 16 is a different art to on my domestic machine. I think this is because on the domestic machine you are sitting more over the needle, and it’s slower. Both of these things means it is easier to retrace your stitches exactly when you need to back track. My first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif was messy. It also resulted in too many small fragments of paper to pick out, trapped in the not quite aligned back-stitching. Agggh. I didn’t like it, it didn’t have the clean look that I set out to achieve, and it was going to take too long to clean the paper off 25 blocks. This was Lesson 2.
This was my first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif. I actually intended to leave this as it was, but the remaining flowers worked out so much better, that I did rip it out and replace it once the other 24 blocks were done.
I ended up rethinking my stitching path several times to get a much neater and faster result. Lesson 3, and the one I am most satisfied with! If you would like to know how to best stitch out this design using baking paper, here is the method I settled on.
Tutorial: The Stylised Flower Quilting Motif
Supplies and Printing
The first thing you will need to do is print out the motif from the downloadable file below. Then you can trace it or print it onto tracing paper/baking paper/parchment paper. I use “Greaseproof paper” for my projects, found in the kitchen section of the supermarket. It is a type of baking paper. The cheapest versions are best; thinner and less slippery than quality baking paper brands. Save the expensive baking paper for your actual baking! And don’t get confused with waxed kitchen paper. Waxed paper is not good for this project.
Click here to download the pdf of the stylised flower motif.
Please note that the pdf is formatted to the A4 standard for Australia. You may need to adjust your printer settings if your default paper size is “letter”. The size of the provided motif is 5.75 inches square. This is because my blocks started at 6 inches square, but shrunk a little when I stabilised them. The final design is slightly smaller than my blocks, to ensure the whole motif fits inside.
I print my designs directly onto greaseproof paper by taping the greaseproof paper to a piece of office paper as a “carrier”. The greaseproof paper won’t go though the printer alone because it is too flimsy and it gets jammed. I use white paper-backed masking tape to attach the greaseproof paper to the office paper. This has never harmed my laser printer, but I take no responsibility for anything you put through your own printer. If you are unsure about putting unorthodox things through your printer, trace the design by hand.
Baking paper taped over printed office paper, ready for printing (left) and after printing (right).
Quilting the Stylised Flower
Pin the design to your quilts with quilting safety pins.
Pinned and ready to go.
First the leaves….
To quilt the stylised flower motif, enter into the design from one corner and travel to the diagonally distant corner through the centre point. Then quilt the first half of the corner “leaflet” and stop.
Follow the red line to quilt his design
I then tear the paper out of the way so that I can complete the leaflet and travel back to the centre of the design without double-stitching over any paper. Use the back of a seam ripper or a pin to neatly score the paper so it only tears away from where you want it gone.
Scoring the baking paper for controlled removal. You will also notice in this picture that I adjust the design on the fly to fit each block so that it reaches the edges.I now use the stitching lines already done as a reference for where to stitch next.
Finish the leaf and return to the first corner of the design through the centre. Finally, finish the little leaflet in that corner.
Now, travel along the edge of the block (stitch-in-the-ditch) to one of the two remaining leaves.
Travel along the ditch
Repeat the above steps to quilt the remaining leaves. Except, once you return to the centre after completing the third leaf, enter the first petal and stop with the needle down.
After finishing the third leaf, enter the first petal. Make sure you pause at the top of this first petal for more paper removal.
Then the petals….
Tear all the paper out of the middle so that you can see where you are stitching and to avoid back-stitching over paper. Be careful to leave the tops of the petals visible so that you can still see where to stitch.
Remove the paper from the flower centre, sparing the tops of the petals.Paper removed. Now quilt the petals using the petal tops and the leaf edges as visual guides.
Complete the petals using the petal tops and leaf edges as visual guides. Quilt into the centre for each petal but stop just short of actually touching the centre point to avoid a build up of thread there. Where petals cross over the leaf edges, don’t quilt into the centre again. Just bounce off the leaf stitching line to the next petal top. Finally, finish the last leaflet as you exit the block.
Finished stylised flower quilting motifAfter the paper is removed, finish quilting the petals.
What if you want to quilt this design, but not in a block?
If you are not quilting this design into a block and can’t travel invisibly between corners, you can also quilt it as shown below. I did actually do two blocks with this method before I changed to the described method above. I changed only because I found it easier to quilt the “S” shape straight through the centre than to neatly arc through in a half circle to the third leaf. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I just did!
Another perfectly good way to quilt the stylised flower.
The rest of the quilting on this quilt
I completed the quilt with a vine of leaves in the sashing, and piano keys in the border with orange peels in the border corners.
Quilting in the sashing and borderOrange peels in the corner
That is it for me for this charity quilt. Now it is ready to go to the next quilter in the production process for binding.
Finished “Jaffas and Cream” quilt.
I hope you enjoy playing with this motif and making it your own. Let me know if you quilt it so I can feature your work for everyone else to see!
Do use a brand of pre-wound bobbin thread for your Sweet 16 that you would recommend. I’d love to know! Please comment below!
For more tutorials and colour inspiration for quilts, follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin’ or by email (sign up in the side bar).
Learn how to quilt this informal daisy motif onto large, pieced quilt squares.
Remember how I said I was going to start doing some charity quilting to increase my quilting practice without using up my entire quilting budget? Today I plucked up the courage to start on my first charity quilt. There is a part of me that was a bit concerned that the owners of the quilt top may not be enthralled by whatever I did. I am not a professional quilter, after all. They have already invested their time and money into this quilt – what if I did bad things to it?! But that attitude will not get quilts into the hand of recipients or practice into my quilting muscles, so I took a few deep breaths and this is what happened….
Choosing a quilting motif
I quickly discovered one interesting thing. Apparently I think a lot about quilting a quilt while I am piecing it. It was quite a new experience to decide how to quilt a piece without weeks of prior musing. I can’t say I was prepared for how different it felt to be handling a quilt I was not intimately familiar with. Has anyone else experienced this?!
The beautiful quilt I received to quilt. It arrived thoroughly pin basted and ready to go.
The quilt I have been entrusted with has chocolate brown pieced squares with cream coloured sashing. I like to think of it as Coffee and TimTams (an Australian chocolate biscuit). My daughter argues that it is actually Maltesers and Milo (more Australiana). But anyway, at first glance I assumed it was a man’s quilt and instantly thought to quilt a strong geometric design on it. But on closer inspection I discovered that the fabric prints were predominately floral. So I decided that this little beauty needed something feminine in the way of quilting to bring out it’s gentle side.
While I got my head around this thought, I stabilised the quilt by stitching in the ditch in every sashing seam (ie every seam except those inside the brown boxes).
Coffee and TimTams is a 5×5 grid of squares measuring around 6″. The quilt is 47″ square
Working up the Daisy Motif
The process of stabilising the quilt thankfully helped me feel more connected to the quit and able to decide how to proceed. One of my priorities was to leave the quilt feeling soft and comforting. Eventually I decided that I wanted to fill the the boxes with a simple flower motif. Before I attempted this though, I did two things. Firstly, I mocked up a digital example on Inkscape software to see what it might look like.
I started with photos of two representative blocks. Then I drew a basic circle and petal design. Finally I decided to fill in the centre spiral and place a line in the centre of each petal.
Secondly, once I was happy with this design, I got out a good old fashioned pen and paper to see how I could quilt the daisy motif as a continuous design.
First: I tried drawing the petals and then filling in the centre in one pass. As you can see, it wasn’t a huge success. The petals aren’t nicely formed and the centres are jagged.Next: I tried drawing the spiral centres first, then the petal outlines and then going back to fill in the petal centre lines. This is better, but the double outline is busy, and escaping the block looks messy.This time I did the same as my second attempt, but just traced the original centre circle when I returned to add lines to the petals. Much simpler and tidier.
If you would like to learn this design by first tracing it, you can download a free pdf of the daisy motif here:Daisy motif free printable.
Quilting the Daisy Motif
To get the daisy motif to show up better against the mildly busy fabrics of this quilt I opted for a rayon (40wt) thread in antique white for the top thread. In the bobbin I had 80wt cotton/poly thread.
Step One: use chalk to mark thirds on the centre fabric of the block. Quilt the stem of the daisy and the centre circle. Fill in the spiral now, if you want one.Step Two: Quilt the petals clockwise out to the edge of the block. Stop each petal just short of block edges and the centre circle – this looks neater than accidentally crossing the lines.Step Three: Once all the petals are outlined, fill in the centre line of each petal by travelling anti-clockwise around the centre circle.Step Four: If you have forgotten to do the spiral, you have another opportunity to fill it in now. Otherwise, exit the block by completing the other side of the stem.The finished daisy quilting motif
A Bonus Variation of the Daisy Motif
In every second block, I didn’t add the centre spiral – so I have some open and some filled flowers. Truth be told, this is largely because I forgot to quilt the spiral into one of the flowers early on. Then I decided I liked the variation…. so now it’s a feature! Hahahahaha!
In the sashing I did a simple leaf vine with the same thread combo. It is very nearly invisible but it gives a good overall texture. I left the star fabric squares un-quilted and filled the outer border with quick perpendicular lines. And finally, I put spirals in the four corners to echo the flower centres.
So, that’s it. Quilting completed, and quilt ready to hand to the next volunteer willing to do the binding!
Here is the finished product!
Further Reading
If you want to further explore the topic of how to choose a free-motion motif for your quilt, you can read a very thorough discussion on this at Amy’s Free-Motion Quilting Adventures.
If you want to know why I think you should consider quilting for charity, you can find out in my previous discussion here.
Perhaps you like the colours in this quilt and want to make something with the same colour palette? Here is a colour inspiration bonus for you, even though it is not Tuesday.
Let’s call this colour palette Cookies and Cream.
I hope you enjoy quilting this daisy motif. Until next time – keep Quilting Your Own Story!
I hope you have enjoyed learning about the Nervous Plant as much I enjoyed discovering it today. And that you might find a use for its pretty colours or it’s cute little leaves in a project one day. See you again tomorrow!
Don’t worry kitty! We are looking at quilting bugs later on this week. 
If you would like to learn this design by first tracing it, you can download a free pdf of the daisy motif here:
In the sashing I did a simple leaf vine with the same thread combo. It is very nearly invisible but it gives a good overall texture. I left the star fabric squares un-quilted and filled the outer border with quick perpendicular lines. And finally, I put spirals in the four corners to echo the flower centres.
I hope you enjoy quilting this daisy motif. Until next time – keep Quilting Your Own Story!