Everyday Quilt Inspiration: Nervous Plant

Nervous Flower color scheme from Clever Chameleon

31 days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life

So.

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 — Nervous Plant, Vanuatu. Before 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…..

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!

P.S. You can 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. Enjoy!

September 19, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Strawberry Vines

Strawberry Vines color scheme by Clever Chameleon

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!

Strawberry Vines colour scheme from Clever Chameleon

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….

How to Quilt the strawberry vines motif from Clever Chameleon blog

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 figurine — 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.

Strawberry Vines quilting motif

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.

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:

strawberry flower quilting design — 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.

How to shape strawberries

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?

Bored sleeping cat — “Strawberries! How dull. Wake me up when you are quilting something interesting… like flies! Flies are cool!”

Don’t worry kitty! We are looking at quilting bugs later on this week. Remember the child’s charity quilt with the cute bug fabrics that I stabilised a while back? I have just about finished quilting it now, and I’ll show you how to quilt the various bug motifs I used (no flies though). Stay tuned via email or Bloglovin’ so you don’t forget to come back!

Credits

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

green clever chameleon logo

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.

The Linky parties I have invited myself to this week:
Monday: Cooking up Quilts,, Love, Laugh, Quilt, Sew Can Do
Tuesday: Quilting Room with Mel, Free Motion by the River
Wednesday: Quilt Fabrication, Sew Fresh Quilts

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

September 5, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Hoppy Tuesday!

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – happy, hoppy colours for all your craft projects!!

Welcome back to Colour Inspiration Tuesday! A Hoppy Tuesday!

Well! There was a fabulous response to last week’s colour boards. And many of you liked my dancing macaw as well. I shall have to pull my finger out and get that appliqué design under way. However, this week is Royal Show week in Adelaide, so there could be a few distractions. The Gardner-Stephen household is celebrating two craft wins this year. More on that when I have photos.

In the meantime, I have gone with the fun critter theme for a second week because I found a number of fantastic frog photos on Unsplash.com when I was browsing last.

Don’t you just love these little guys:

Have a guess what my next appliqué creature will be after the macaw?! What? A racoon?! Don’t be daft……. hahahaha. 🙂

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Hoppy Tuesday

Three frogs, three characters, three colour boards today.

Hoppy Tuesday colour scheme from Clever Chameleon — Why Sit on a Lily Pad?!

Why Sit on a Lily Pad when you can parade around in the lily flower instead?!

Actually, this frog is probably wondering why he can’t just be left to sit in peace in his tank, being a (pet) tree frog and all. But it’s a cute photo, and the purple colour against the yellow is stunning. And surely there no nicer green than tree frog green, is there? It is so ALIVE.

Hoppy Tuesday colour scheme from Clever Chameleon

The second of my favourite frogs looks more at home in his surroundings. Frog King of All He Surveys. I just love his expression and posture. Probably the colours in this shot are not what I would use for a cheeky frog appliqué, but the rest of the picture is perfect inspiration.

Hoppy Tuesday color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Last up, we have the photo that actually started today’s frog collection. I love the “Hoppy Tuesday” colours of this frog, and the background texture of the wood he is sitting on. I can just see in my mind’s eye a cheeky green frog appliqué on a cushion background made of improv piecing in red, brown, burnt orange and tan fabric scraps.

For a kid’s frog quilt inspiration you might like this blog post about twin girl and boy frog baby quilts at Lo, Ray and Me.

Or you can follow along with Sandra Healy’s calendar quilt. August’s block featured a cute frog on a lily pad.

Not into frogs? (Really?!) Well, its just gone September, so how about some seasonal suggestions instead?

It’s officially spring here in Adelaide now. Not that you’d believe it this week with top temps of 14 and 15°C for the next few days. So in the hope that the sun is coming, I will remind you of another lily colour scheme we had a while ago: Lily Pad Glow.

Or if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, fall is on it’s way….. Try Autumn Splendour for a new take on fall colours.

Credit

I have already covered this to some extent today, but because I really appreciate the talented photographers who generously donate their art to the world without strings attached, I’m going to tell you again. 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 it is totally deserved. So I would like you to know that the photographers featured today are David Clode and Wayne Robinson. Be sure to check out their collections of photos on Unsplash.

david clode

Wayne Robinson

For colour inspiration for your quilts in your inbox weekly follow along by subscribing to this blog by email in the side bar. You can also follow my blog on Bloglovin’. Or follow Clever Chameleon Quilt Colour Inspiration on Pinterest and pin your favourite colour palettes to try later.

I hop 😉 you found some colour inspiration for your projects or the next chapter of your quilt story in among all these beautiful frogs and Hoppy Tuesday colour boards! Have you ever made a frog quilt? Or maybe you keep tree frogs as pets (lucky you). Let us know all about it in the comments below!

P.S. If you would like to use David’s or Wayne’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.

P.P.S. Linking up this week with Sew Fresh Quilts. Visit for lots of great quilt inspiration in one place.

August 29, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Dancing Macaw

Dancing Macaw color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday – explore with me the endless possibilities of colour for our quilts!

Welcome back to Tuesday! We made it! This past weekend we had a family celebration with my father turning 70, so blogging has had a backseat for a few days. But here we are, on the right day, and more or less on time! Yay!

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Dancing Macaw

About the time I started the Clever Chameleon blog, I also started experimenting with free-motion appliqué. Free-motion appliqué was the homework of my very first Sweet Sixteen monthly meeting. During this time I drew up a number of critters I thought I would like to turn into appliqué designs. One of these fellows was this guy – a cheeky version of a dancing macaw. Macaws are magnificently beautiful, don’t you think?!

Dancing Macaw appliqué design in progress.

Needless to say though, learning to blog has been even more intensive than I expected, and I haven’t yet got back to developing many of the designs into patterns. (Some owls are an exception, more on that another day soon! And I did do a pelican quilt – do you remember him?). Anyway, when I found a photo of a blue and gold macaw on Unsplash.com, I knew I had to do a “Dancing Macaw” colour board.

Dancing Macaw color scheme from Clever Chameleon

The “Dancing Macaw” colour scheme is gold and blue. It is a beautiful example of blue and orange-yellow together. You’ll be hard pressed to go wrong with these colours on a quilt because they are complementary and therefore very eye-catching.

The only downside is that the macaw photo doesn’t really capture all the colours that I want to use for my macaw appliqué. So I went back to Unsplash.com and found another photo that makes pulling out the colours I want easier. So, without further ado, here is today’s second colour board: Summer Foliage.

Summer Foliage color scheme from Clever Chameleon

The Summer Foliage colour scheme is blue, gold and green. Between these two new colour boards, I believe I will have no trouble at all putting together a collection of fabrics to appliqué my dancing macaw. What would you use these colours for?! Let us know in the comments below.

Maybe blue and orange is not your favourite complementary colour scheme….

How does pink and green suit you instead? Last week we looked at how to use red and green colours without accidentally evoking Christmas.

Or you could check out the fun series we had recently – looking at matching colour boards to fabrics to express a variety of summer themes. Start here and follow the links to all five “summer crush” colour boards.

Credit

Today’s photos in Dancing Macaw hues 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 macaw photo was provided by Andrew Pons and the foliage photograph was taken by Jakob Owens. Be sure to check out their collections of photos on Unsplash.

Andrew Pons
Jakob Owens

yellow Clever Chameleon logo For more colour inspiration for your quilts, follow along by subscribing to this blog by email (on the sidebar).

Or follow Clever Chameleon Quilt Colour Inspiration on Pinterest and pin your favourite colour palettes to try later.

P.S. If you would like to use Andrew’s or Jakob’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.

P.P.S. Check out the other hubs of creative activity I am linking up with this week:
The Quilting Room with Mel
Freemotion by the River
Sew Fresh Quilts
Quilt Fabrication

August 22, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Pink Chalice

Pink Chalice color scheme by Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a growing resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.

Hello! Happy Colour Inspiration Tuesday! Did you enjoy the fabric mosaic ideas last week? I think we should do that more often! But today we return to a more normal Tuesday formula….. and we have a magnificent red and green colour palette up for discussion. Let’s chat about the colours in “Pink Chalice”, a colour palette inspired by beautiful crisp pink Calla Lilies.

Red and blue-green look so vivid together because they are complementary colours. This means that they are opposite each other in position on the colour wheel. The brain likes complementary colours, and most people react favourably to these colour combinations. However, red and green also have a strong cultural significance in communities that celebrate a Western style Christmas. So, it can sometimes be tricky to use these colours without accidentally giving your project a christmasy feel. This problem is likely not consistently an issue across all cultures, but it certainly is in mine.

Pink Chalice color scheme from Clever Chameleon

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Pink Chalice

The “Pink Chalice” colour palette is old rose, dusky pink, powder pink, tan, forest green, deep forest green and green to the point of black. Let’s call it midnight green! I really like these colours together with white for a fresh feeling quilt. If I needed more colours other than the standard 7 of Colour Inspiration Tuesday, I would add another green, another red-pink and another neutral.

I haven’t mocked up my own quilt with these colours because I already know of one that I would make if I was going down this path. I really love this half-square triangles quilt by Teri Townley at the Hummingbird Thread blog.

Half-square triangles quilt by Teri Townley

I have collected a few pictures of red and green quilts that I think could be used anytime, not just Christmas. Not that I have anything against Christmas, I just think red and green should be seen other times too! Visit my Pinterest board Red and Green Quilts for more ideas. Follow me on Pinterest….. I have a Christmas board too.

What would you do with these colours? I’d love to hear your thoughts on your perfect green and red quilt combination. Even if it is Christmasy! Drop us a comment below and share your creativity with everyone.

Don’t need green and red today, Christmas or otherwise?

Have you been following along with Colour Inspiration Tuesday for all the colour combinations and quilt ideas you’ll only find here?

If not you can get a quick overview of the colour combinations we have been exploring lately in this review post.

You can also get moving on your fall projects with the Autumn Splendour colour palette. Halloween and Thanksgiving are only just around the corner now, at least in regards to crafting something that will be finished in time to use!

Today’s Photo Credit

Today’s stock photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. These photo’s are gifted freely and without demand, but I like to thank people who live so generously. So, if you would like to also use this lovely photo, it was provided by Ethan Robertson via Unsplash. Click on the badge below to explore Ethan’s other photos.
Ethan Robertson

Clever Chameleon logo in light green Don’t miss a post – follow along by subscribing to this blog. Or follow Clever Chameleon Quilt Colour Inspiration on Pinterest and pin your favourite colour palettes to try later.

P.S. For your convenience, I have placed all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesdays in one place. Find them easily for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.