November 2017 Roundup

November Roundup at Clever Chameleon

One Monthly Goal Check-in and November Roundup

At the beginning of November I nominated a specific goal for OMG at Elm Street Quilts. My goal was to get this charity quilt off my “to be quilted” pile so that it can go to its new home. It was pieced by one of the generous members of Southern Comforters.

Pink and green quilt — Charity quilt waiting in my queue

And I am pleased to say that this dirty trick still works!…….. I have gotten around to quilting this little quilt, and attaching the binding, purely because I had this pseudo deadline. Sad but true.

I am very glad it’s done though. It is a pretty little thing. And I had a lot of fun further developing my Strawberry Vines allover FMQ skills on it. I haven’t had much time for FMQ over the past couple of months. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it.

Here’s some pics of the strawberry motifs I used on a loop-de-loop string to keep this quilt soft and informal. I didn’t want to compete with the strong geometric design in the piecing, so I kept the thread to a low contrast pink. The choice is perfect in real life….. but a bit difficult to photograph for you. I hope you can see well enough.

Strawberry quilting — Strawberries, with seeds

Strawberry quilting motifs — And without seeds

strawberry quilting motif — Strawberry flowers

I’ve also had my work quality controlled by the expert and it was approved…..

Cat on quilt — Can always rely on the Boss to keep an eye on things…..

The border has a striped green fabric, so I just quilted the edges of the stripes to create faux piano keys. It was the right decision, they look very neat and tidy.

It may have been last minute, but this quilt finish has made me happy.

Pink and green quilt

What else happened at Clever Chameleon in November?

Well, we had 4 Colour Inspiration Tuesdays. On week one, “Poolside Fun” featured the new décor at our local outdoor pool and put me in the mood to design a summery picnic quilt.

Poolside Fun color scheme from Clever Chameleon — Poolside Fun colour scheme

Poolside Fun-inspired picnic quilt design

On week two, the “English Broom” colour scheme was inspired by a beautiful flower I observed at my son’s Joey Scout Hoporee camp. I probably learned more about this flower than was helpful, since I found myself freshly uninspired in the end. But that is sometimes how it goes when you look into the truth of a thing. And I now know things I didn’t before, which overall is a win. At the end of the day, this flower is still pretty.

The next week, “Aurora Star” was the result of a thought experiment that started with a green paper star on top of our Christmas Tree and ended with a sewn patchwork block and another quilt design.

And finally, Tuesday just gone we had “Christmas Bells”. This was a response to an Australian native tree near my house that comes out in a profusion of pink bells at this time of year.

I ended up using the ideas that flowed from this exploration to create a new ornament for our Christmas Tree. My intention is to finish writing you a tutorial on this project next week. So stay tuned!

Christmas Bell ornament

Beyond Colour Inspiration Tuesdays

Another of my aims for this month was to make sufficient progress on my Vanuatu Turtle quilt for the Splash of Color Quilt Along. I shared up to the stage shown below on Busy Hands Quilts. The red inner border is now attached but I don’t have a photo to show you yet. I will show you that at the same time as I report how the turtle appliqué overlay goes…… The flimsy deadline for this quilt along is before mid December, so I will getting to that very soon!

Vanuatu Turtle quilt progress

And I was also part of the 2017 Ornament Exchange and Tutorial Blog Hop at Erlene’s blog: My Pinterventures. I designed and shared a drum ornament that you can make from your quilting scraps. In return, I received two fabulous Suffolk Puff ornaments for my tree. If you are looking for something to make for your tree, or a loved one’s tree this year, there are currently 106 (!) projects in this collection.

Drum ornaments for Christmas

And last, but not least for November, Clever Chameleon finally hit Facebook. A move that was overdue, but better late than never! I will be endeavouring to keep a log of more informal updates on the Facebook page in addition to the blog posts here. “Like” Clever Chameleon on FB to follow along!

Phew. So that’s a wrap for another month! To think that the next roundup is not due until after Christmas! Where did 2017 go??!

I’m sharing my OMG success on Elm Street Quilts. If you are participating, I look forward to finding you there. Or let me know directly how your November went. I’d love to hear from you.

Wishing you all a very safe and festive December. 🙂

P.S. Also sharing on:
Freemotion by the River, Quilt Fabrication, Midweek Makers, Sew Fresh Quilts, Finishing Stitches, The Inquiring Quilter, Free Motion Mavericks, My Quilt Infatuation, Crazy Mom Quilts.

November 2, 2017January 19, 2024

UFO Attack November 2017

Gonna Finish This Sucker! One Monthly Goal with Elm Street Quilts

To be honest, this month I already have a couple of quilt and crafty deadlines. Firstly, I have to make some reasonable progress on my Vanuatu turtle quilt so I can link up with the Splash of Color quilt along. By now the schedule says I should have about half my blocks sewn. Hahahahahaha! Okay……..

And secondly, I have a Christmas ornament tutorial to get prepared for you by the 16th. Thankfully, this project is progressing more or less on time to date. I will be sharing it in the 2017 Ornament Exchange. If you like making your own Christmas ornaments, you most certainly do not want to miss this blog hop! 47 projects are lined up this year. It’s gonna be huge!

So what to nominate for November?

pink and green charity quilt — My November OMG quilt

But I feel it would be cheating to nominate either of these projects for the Elm Street One Monthly Goal, because they have to be finished anyway. So, for my November OMG I am nominating a charity quilt currently in my possession. It is not large, so it really should only take me a coupe of sessions to quilt. I didn’t piece it, I have just been entrusted to quilt it. This little quilt is very pretty in pinks and greens, and I want to try my allover strawberry vines FMQ design on it. It would be great for the charity to have it back by the end of the month.

So, thank you Elm Street OMG and you, dear readers, for keeping me accountable and motivated. With any luck, someone in need will have this quilt before Christmas.

Do you have a quilt goal for November? If you do, share it with us here in the comments below. And consider joining us at Elm Street Quilts for some accountability (and be in the running for a prize as well!).

I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. Also linking up with Quilt Fabrication, The Inquiring Quilter, Sew Fresh Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Crazy Mom Quilts.

October 24, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Bougainvillea Surprise

Bougainvillea color scheme from Clever Chameleon

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.

Purple Bougainvillea color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Bougainvillea Surprise

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.

Bougainvillea FMQ motif — 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:

Bougainvillea quilting idea — 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.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts.

October 12, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Pineapples and Other Art

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

It doesn’t matter where I go, or how far from my sewing machine I am, there always seems to be a little voice that follows me around saying “Look at that…. you could put that on a quilt……” Of course, that little voice is actually startlingly loud at the moment. Since I am documenting one such instance everyday for this series, I have entered a kind-of hyper-vigilant quilt-inspiration-observation state! But, while noticing quilt patterns in the everyday is not unusual for me, recording them is. Usually the ideas come and then they depart, with no real effort to record them for when I might want them later.

pineapple stencils on wall — Pineapples stencilled on the kitchen wall in our Vanuatu accommodation

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 12

One good thing about travelling is that you get exposed to a lot of new art. Even if you don’t visit art galleries and museums. There are new sculptures in public spaces to notice. There are artworks on the walls of cafés. Murals on buildings. Tiles in the public restrooms…. oh yes, I spend much more time than I would care to admit contemplating the merit of floor tile designs while I am attending to business.

green floor tiles — Floor tiles in a local Indian restaurant

So for my last ad lib post from Vanuatu, I am going to tackle the idea of finding inspiration in the artworks displayed around me. I have chosen three ideas from my recent unintentional brushes with art.

How am I inspired by the art around me?

Firstly, the pineapples…..

I have a thing about pineapples. I am certain that there is a pineapple-inspired quilt in my future. This is mostly because there is a story from my family history that revolves around pineapples – not because I have some sort of bizarre fetish for pineapples. (You can read about the pineapple story here.) Actually, I don’t even particularly like pineapple, except on pizza.

I think my pineapple quilt will be an abstract representation related to my family’s pineapple story. But the pineapple art stencilled on my kitchen wall is reminding me that it also wouldn’t be that difficult to appliqué a pineapple on a quilt. 🙂 And it just so happens that the village we worked in today has a large pineapple patch in their garden…..hence the pineapple colour board. It is actually possible the pineapples are stalking me….

Secondly, the floor tiles…..

I spotted these tiles at an Indian restaurant here in Port Vila the other evening. I was very taken by the continuous design evident on these tiles when they are laid edge-to-edge. Wouldn’t it be fun to do something like this with a repeated quilt block? For no real reason except that we can?

And thirdly, a carved sculpture……

I haven’t ever considered incorporating ideas from sculptures into a quilt before. There have been some lovely wood carvings here in Vanuatu, as well as carved tree fern trunks. I could definitely free-motion quilt a representation of this guy. Maybe this would be a good idea for quilting my black, white and red Vanuatu quilt.

It suddenly occurred to me to look for quilt designs in sculptures thanks to Yanicka and her contribution to the current Art with Fabric blog hop. I love all the entries in the blog hop so far, but Yanicka got me thinking with a quilt called “Our Fragile Vessel” which was inspired by a spherical sculpture by Donna Marcus.

Speaking of the Art with Fabric blog hop…. tomorrow is finally my turn to show you my art-inspired quilted contribution! I have been waiting to publish this post for ages! It is doubling as my Everyday Quilt Inspiration series slot for tomorrow, so I hope you will come back to find out what I did. And I hope you will visit the blog hop and enjoy all the other art-inspired quilts as well.

See you tomorrow!

October 11, 2017January 19, 2024

Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Barking Geckos

barking geckos in Vanuatu

31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

One of the things I really like in Vanuatu is the barking gecko. Actually, I like all geckos, full stop. They do the job of spiders without being anywhere near so nasty about it. We have geckos at home in Adelaide, and there are geckos in many of my favourite destinations in Australia. All different sorts and shapes of geckos, but all a variation on the non-threatening, insect-eating, big-eyed and big-toed small nocturnal lizard. Most geckos make noise of some description, but the barking geckos in Vanuatu are LOUD. It is unbelievable how much noise a tiny lizard can make!

barking gecko

Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 11

I have been intending to add Vanuatu’s barking geckos to my everyday quilt inspiration series pretty much since the beginning. I would love to be able to FMQ their shapes onto a quilt such as the Tanna Island quilt design from Monday, or maybe even the black, white and red quilt I am planning for the Splash of Color QAL. They would also make great silhouette shapes for appliqué. For that matter, appliqué is an easier place to start with a new shape because it does not require drawing skills in real-time. You can edit until you’re happy. 🙂

barking gecko

How was I inspired by the Barking Geckos?

To start me on my gecko journey, I photographed several barking geckos as they hunted their evening meal by the light over our backdoor. Then I traced their forms. This gave me instant shapes I can use for appliqué silhouettes, but also a place to start working out a formula to quilt them freehand.

Would you like some gecko shapes for appliqué? Here are the six that I traced today. They are small so I could fit them all on one pdf page, but you can enlarge them as you need. Download my barking gecko silhouettes pdf here: Barking Geckos

How to quilt Barking Geckos

What makes a shape a gecko? Well, for these geckos it is a distinctively shaped head, the angle and size of the legs, the bulbous toes, the fat tummy and a tail that is about the same length as the rest of the lizard combined. When I can recreate these shapes with relative ease, I will be able to quilt barking geckos.

Here is my first attempt at free-hand drawing a barking gecko. Only happy with one of the four legs…..

barking gecko outline

Here is my second attempt.

free-hand barking gecko outline

Better. Three legs are great. The head is right. The tail could be a touch longer, but who would notice? Actually, if I could quilt geckos that looked no worse than this reliably I would be happy. If anyone is analysing my quilting shapes that closely and critically, we are not likely to see eye-to-eye about life’s priorities! So, my conclusion is…. with a bit of practice I think I will be able to quilt geckos. Yay!

barking geckos, Vanuatu

I hope you like geckos. I do! If you like quilting critters, you might also like my post in this series about hermit crabs.

You can also find the start of my 31 Days of Everyday Quilt Inspiration blog post series here. And you can find the Write 31 Days website here, for hundreds more 31-day series on all sorts of topics.

Also, the Fall 2017 Art with Fabric blog hop is now well underway. You can find Day 2 here. My favourite blog post from this set of artists is by Heather about her quilt “Dancers”. She describes how she takes her inspiration and turns it into an abstract representation. If you are looking for more ways to turn your everyday observations into quilt designs, I think you might like her post.

See you tomorrow!