It’s the last day of the Spring 2018 Art with Fabric blog hop, and my turn to show you my quilt interpretation of the hop theme “1+1=3”.
What does “1+1=3” mean to you and how would you quilt it? My first thoughts were to produce a set of quirky critters that captured the essence of a young family. But May has been seriously crazy and I had neither the time nor energy in the end to whip up such a pattern from scratch.
The other connotation I was strongly drawn to was the mathematical impossibility of the “1+1=3” statement. And this led me down the path of optical illusions and the deliberate act of placing shapes and colours such that the brain sees things that don’t exist. So that is what I have explored.
I ended up with this mini quilt, which I have called Illusions of Christmas.
Let me tell you more about this little quilt, the inspiration source and how it came about.
Psst…… If the green pieces in this quilt look square and straight to you then the illusion isn’t evident. If this is the case and you want to see the illusion right now, get out of your seat and stand back from your screen. When you are too close to the quilt your eyes are not fooled into seeing what is not there.
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away…
(Hughes Mearns, public domain)
Welcome to the first day of the “Wish Upon A Star” Blog Hop
Carol at Just Let Me Quilt has organised for you a HUGE treat this week! A supernova of a blog hop, and it all kicks off today. Carol has rounded up 44 quilt bloggers to show you their star-studded sewing projects. Pieced stars, appliqué stars, star-shaped projects, big stars, little stars…. who knows what you are going to find on the Wish Upon A Star blog hop today? And, for that matter, every day this week until Friday! All sorts of fantastic creations, that’s what… and all of them with a star on them somewhere!
I get to help kick off this fun week of sparkly goodness today. And since you’re here, that makes it my turn to help you see stars. So, I am showing you a quilt I made for a very special toddler in my life. I made this quilt a while ago, but when Carol announced this blog hop, I knew it was time to share it on the blog. Designed especially for a little boy named Lucas, it is called “Three Wishes Monkey”.
It’s been a bit of an education for me, designing and releasing the Beary Colourful Bear patterns. I’ve certainly made my share of errors. But I am proud to be always learning!
And there is someone else I’d like to introduce you to, who also values life-long learning….. the Green Bear! Please welcome May’s Green Bear of Always Learning to our growing Beary Colourful family.
The fifth bear in the Beary Colourful Quilt BOM series is a little more serious than some of the most recent bears, but not in a bad way. Always Learning Bear has a thirst for knowledge, understanding and wisdom. And he’d love to be stitched on a quilt to encourage someone to develop the same passions!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: The next Colour in the 2018 Monthly Color Challenge is Green!
It’s that time again…. the Colour Inspiration Tuesday featuring our next colour of the month. So, here it is: May is Green! The colour of the month here at Clever Chameleon is defined as our monthly focus colour for Jen Shaffer’s Monthly Color Challenge and blog hop. So, next week we are moving on from orange to a very popular colour, green. In the meantime you have a week left to get your orange creations done for April and linked up at Patterns by Jen to be in the running for a Fat Eighth pack of Pumpkin Patch fabrics from Island Batik.
Green. Our next colour of the month is soothing, healing and relaxing. Time to take a breather from the recent warm stimulating colours of our monthly challenge and chill out with green.
May is Green. The colour of growth and prosperity and frogs. I hope the month of May brings you much as luck and peace as its colour promises.
Welcome back to Colour Inspiration Tuesday! Today we are exploring a new FMQ mini tutorial “She’ll be Apples”.
Last week I was suddenly inspired to quilt my next charity quilt. I’ve had the pinned quilt in my possession since before Christmas, but I always knew it wasn’t going to get touched until January. Partly because December is a ridiculously busy time of year, and partly because it wasn’t “speaking to me”. In fact, it was confusing me slightly…. apples and roses on one side, autumn leaves, nuts and berries on the other. I quite like both sides, but struggled to choose one quilting theme to make sense of this quilt.
Here is the charity quilt before quilting….. I nominated it as my January One Monthly Goal.
After musing over this quilt for some time, on and off, and getting it out several times and putting it away again, inspiration finally struck. I was in a right-brain kind of mood and scrolling through photos on Unsplash over a coffee when I spotted the picture of apples I have used on today’s mood board. And it all somehow just fell into place. I *just knew* I had to quilt apples, but not just any apples. Apples with a little bit of cheeky thrown in!
The “She’ll be Apples” FMQ Motif
I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and started doodling. First I started with a continuous line apple motif.
Then I thought, what if the apple has a bite taken out of it? Well, that’s easy.
And it’s no more trouble to take several bites, is it?
But what if the apple has a worm in it? A friendly worm, of course!
And of course, I couldn’t resist…… The worm and the bite combination! This one’s for my daughter, who is at that age where one of her favourite jokes is “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” “Half a worm…..” Hahahaha Snort. Oh the joys of childhood! Anyway, I was mostly well behaved….. I only put this combo on the quilt once. And I did overrule my daughter’s request for the apple and half a worm motif…..
She’ll be Apples Quilting in Real Life
Here are some pics of the quilting up close, and of the little charity quilt all done. Sorry, the quilting does not show well – which is exactly how I wanted the quilt to be, but it is excruciating to try to photograph.
Apple FMQ motifThe apple with a bite FMQ motifApple core motifThe apple with a friendly worm motifAnd the one instance of an apple with both a worm and a bite
It didn’t take very long to quilt this little lap quilt. Once I had got the hang of the basic apple shape, I found quilting these to be quite quick and easy. In fact, I had the whole thing finished before I realised that there is another apple variation that I could have added. The half apple. No matter, I will save this idea for another day.
If you would like to give the apple motifs a go, I have made you a printable reference page, which you can download here: She’ll be Apples pdf
And here is the finished quilt. The quilting has made it crinkly and cuddly. 🙂
So, that’s my January One Monthly Goal done and dusted! I promised you I’d had a lot of fun with it!
I hope you have enjoyed this little project and might put some apples on a quilt soon. My daughter is currently requesting apples on the Regatta Quilt I am making for her. Yes, complete with a half-worm apple. It’s not what I had in mind at all……. the big question is…. “How old will she be before such a thing becomes “cringe-worthy”?” The Regatta Quilt is supposed to take her forward into her teens. Then again, maybe I should just do it. Kids are not young for very long. are they? And there’ll be plenty more quilts. Thankfully there is still some thinking time on this until I get to the quilting stage of the Regatta Quilt. I’ll see what she thinks when I actually get that far.
P.S. Photo Credits
The photo which sparked the apple motifs was supplied for free by Marina Khrapova via Unsplash. You can find this photo, as well as many others I have used for Colour Inspiration Tuesdays here. They are all available for free for you to use in your own projects however you wish.
Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here.
And there is someone else I’d like to introduce you to, who also values life-long learning….. the Green Bear! Please welcome May’s Green Bear of Always Learning to our growing Beary Colourful family.
