Welcome to Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Where we always find something interesting to inspire a quilt!
A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I took the kids to see the Christmas lights display at the local brewery. The display is a bit of a South Australian icon, and has been running for 58 years. The link I have supplied gives quite a good overview of the event, if you would like to see it. Like many other Adelaide locals, I do very much like our brewery lights display. But this year the take-home memory was actually a little plant growing in the council strip nearby.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Lovely Leucadendron
Many years ago, my mother grew lots of Australian natives and other plants that thrive in similarly poor, dry soil. Among the non-natives that my mother grew were quite a number of leucadendrons. So I tend to notice leucadendrons on my wanderings. But I have never seen one like this before!
I was struck by the beauty of this small bush, perhaps only 40cm high. Oh, the colours…. like a dusky sunset! I have called this colour scheme “Lovely Leucadendron”. Maroon stems, green and aqua lower leaves, graduating through lavender and lilac, peach, orange to yellow-green at the top of each stem. Once those yellow leaves open up there will be an insignificant flower cone in the middle. But it is the leaves that this plant is usually grown for. You can see why!
A Lovely Leucadendron Quilt?
If I was challenged to make a quilt inspired by this plant, it would have to be a string quilt. One with long thin-ish pieces like the strappy leucadendron leaves. It would be a scrap-busting quilt. And of course, made in the colours of the “lovely leucadendron”. After all, it was the colours that stopped me in my tracks in the first place!
If you arrange the string blocks like this you get leucadendron stems. Or peacock feathers….. 🙂 That’s ok, I like both. You could graduate the colours through the same sequence as the real-life bush, or just scatter them randomly…..
These colours would also be great on the Regatta Quilt (currently featuring in Home Sewn with Us’s no pressure sew along). I have started my Regatta Quilt. It’s not being made in these colours though. I had an orphaned jelly roll which has finally found its destiny. More about that in a day or two.
Are you joining in the 2018 Monthly Colour Challenge? I have seen a few Red Bears popping up in social media this week. You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that people are actually making my red bear pattern,. I’ll round up a few I/ve seen in a post for you later in the week. They are all different and it is amazing the variation in techniques and tweaks that have surfaced so far. What a clever bunch of quilters you all are!
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. Thanks for your support!
Welcome to the last Colour Inspiration Tuesday before Christmas! Only one more and that’s it for the year!
Yesterday I hinted that I had recently found out about an Australian flower that is even more strange than my Hoya wax flower!
The astonishing little plant in question is Caleana major, commonly called the Flying Duck Orchid.
The Flying Duck Orchid
Have a look at it. What else could it possibly be called?!? I have never seen one of these in the flesh, even though they are reportedly endemic to the areas where I spent my youth. Apparently they tend to go unnoticed due to their small size. And they are not particularly common, being one of about 20 Australian native orchids now being seed banked by the South Australian Botanic Gardens to ensure their future.
But if its shape isn’t enough for you, its behaviour is fascinating too. Apparently the flower is vibration sensitive and the duck head part moves to trap insects inside the flower for a short period. This is to ensure the insects collect and transfer pollen before they leave. But those poor panicked insects were lured there under false pretences in the first place…. this sort of attention seeking in the plant world is known as being “sexually deceptive”. Oh, the secret sordid lives of sawflies and flying ducks!
Where will the Flying Duck Orchid lead?
I love the sunset colours that I have pulled out of one of Peter Woodard’s Flying Duck Orchid pictures that he has kindly placed into the public domain. At their brightest, Flying Duck Orchids exhibit these rich purple, red brown and peach tones. Of course, there are also the bright greens and yellows in this picture that I could play with.
Another of Peter’s pictures has more muted colours, colours that I also adore.
I think you might understand when I say that I have my plate full at the moment. We all do, this time of year! But I definitely have to bookmark this idea, as I’d love to make an appliqué version of the Flying Duck Orchid sometime later. A cushion project perhaps.
Or perhaps I could use these colours to make something like this fabulous Migrating Geese quilt by Sandra of Musings of a Menopausal Melon- mmm! quilts. That seems appropriate! Sandra has done a fabulous job of her latest flimsy. Go see!
Before you go….
Just to quell any lingering doubts about whether the Hoya from 2 weeks ago is real……. the flowers do perish eventually. ….
And there are fresh buds coming. I like these nearly as much as the flowers themselves!
Wishing you many blessings in the lead up to Christmas and New Year.
Another Colour Inspiration Tuesday – and finally, that ornament tutorial…..!
Well, thanks to you guys, I have learned another new thing this week! As you are probably aware by now, I have been working on writing up a tutorial on the Christmas Bells ornament I created for last week’s Colour Inspiration Tuesday. But I still wanted to give you a mood board this week, and somehow link it all together.
So, this week, when I noticed that my Hoya plant is in flower, all my bloggy wishes came true…… I got a photo for a mood board and another idea for an ornament using the same technique as for my bell. For my Hoya carnosa has star shaped flowers, and stars are definitely relevant to Christmas. I stole the shapes and colours of my Hoya’s flowers and plagiarised them into this:
And in the process of working through this week’s Christmas Stars idea, I found out something. Did you know that Hoya carnosa (also known, among other names, as the common Wax Flower) is an Australian native? I didn’t. I had always assumed all Hoyas were exotics. It turns out that there are at least seven Australian Hoyas, and Hoya carnosa is native to Queensland (Australia) and several other locations in Asia. I love learning new things, especially happy things.
Perhaps you like learning new things too. Then you might like to try making your own Christmas ornaments like those I have been making this week….. Christmas Bells, Christmas Stars and Christmas Trees. Oh yes, I made a Christmas Tree version as well…… if an idea is fun, you should flog it til it’s dead, right?! Of course! hahahaha 🙂
How to make “String Art style” Christmas Ornaments
The inspiration to make Christmas decorations in a string art-like style came to me from a fusion of ideas that started many many moons ago. The first seed was planted when I discovered Deb Layt, an Australian quilter who at the time was embellishing her quilts with a netting made from pearl cotton couched onto soluble stabiliser. She calls this netting geoweb. If you have ever made freestanding lace on soluble stabiliser with an embroidery machine, it is essentially a cruder, hand-directed version of this. I have dabbled with this technique over time, making the occasional bookmark and adding highlights to art quilts such as the hot air balloons on the quilt I entered into this year’s local state guild show.
Now, I have many times eyed off string art pieces as pre-cursor ideas for thread painting or quilting designs, but to date, I have never acted on these ideas. But in seeing Emily’s ornament, I was reminded – hmmmmm, I could make “string art” tree ornaments with that geoweb technique…….
And then the idea sat there in the gloomy depths of unresolved creative thoughts until last week. When I suddenly fused it with the ideas that I have already laid out for you in the Christmas Bells Colour Inspiration Tuesday post. Here is how I did it (and how you can do it too).
You will need:
A sewing machine set up for zigzag/satin stitch
A thick thread for the backbone of your ornament. I suggest starting with a size 3 pearl cotton, but I have also successfully used thinner (size 8) pearl cotton, as well as thicker cotton twine from the hardware store.
Sewing machine thread – rasant, poly-cotton or 100% cotton will do. Put the same thread in the bobbin as you have running through your needle. This is a good opportunity to use some of those old or cheap threads you have somehow accumulated that will (should) never end up on a quilt – you will have the most success if you match the colours of your thread to your pearl cotton and don’t use fancy threads (rayon, metallic etc) until you are comfortable with the basic technique.
water soluble stabiliser (sorry, I don’t know the brand of mine, I purchased it as yardage off a roll and have had it a long time). The stabiliser I am using was originally purchased to facilitate machine embroidery on towels. It is 100% soluble and clear, it is not the disintegrating fibre, opaque type sometimes used for appliqué.
a biro, and a paper template if you do not wish to draw your own design freehand. I have supplied you a downloadable sheet of Christmas templates for the 3 shapes I used. Update: there are now also instructions for a Christmas Bauble shape option in a guest post on Days Filled with Joy.
beads and ribbon for decoration and hanging.
What to do:
Step 1
Trace the outline of your shape onto the water soluble stabiliser. Biro works well for this and doesn’t leave traces after washing out the stabiliser. I have tried using permanent markers and found they partly transfer from the stabiliser to the couched threads.
You do need to know that your finished ornament will end up slightly smaller than your original design. How much smaller will depend on the thread you are couching onto the stabiliser, the brand stabiliser you are using, the tension settings on your machine and how tightly you can keep the stabiliser stretched while you are sewing.
Trim the stabiliser around your traced shape, leaving sufficient margin that you can comfortably sew around the edge of the design while not sewing your fingers! Cut out a second piece of stabiliser the same size as the first and lay it on top of the first. Secure the two layers together temporarily using pins.
Step 2
Set your machine to a very small zigzag stitch. I set mine on the lowest width and stitch length possible when I am couching pearl cotton. I used the decorative foot, which has a wide groove underneath so that it runs over raised surface stitching more easily. While using a foot that has the centre line marked is very helpful to see where your pearl cotton should lay, a special couching foot is totally unnecessary for this project.
Lay the pearl cotton on the outline of your design, starting in a position where you will not be required to immediately turn any corners. Leaving a tail, sew enough stitches along the length of the pearl cotton to secure it to the design. Snip off the pearl cotton and thread tails.
Continue couching the pearl cotton around the main shape until you reach the beginning again, overlapping the start point slightly to secure the beginnings of all threads. Ignore the hanging loop and any projecting shape outlines (like the bell ringer) for the moment. We’ll come back to them.
Once you have stitched all the way around the main shape you can remove the pins, as your stabiliser layers are now fixed itogether by stitching.
Step 3
With the needle in the down position, turn your work so that you will next sew across the design. It is easiest to make couching turns if the needle is down on the inside of the corner.
Sew across the design to the opposite edge. Make sure you catch the edge couching with a few stitches, then turn again and sew across the design in another direction. Repeat until you have filled the design. Make sure you catch the edge each time you finish crossing the design.
As you travel around the design you will eventually end up near a feature that needs adding….. take the opportunities to do this as they arise.
Step 4
Once your couching is dense enough to look great, secure the end with a few backstitches and trim off the threads.
Thoroughly wash your piece to dissolve the stabiliser. If you have stitched correctly, the couched shape will be quite stiff, self-supporting and require no further treatment. Dry your piece and decorate as desired.
Decorate as desired……
To the bell ornament I added a green bell off an old cat collar plus a remnant of purple ribbon. I think the ribbon was about 30cm long…. I am not going to remove it now to measure it. You know how long it takes to make bows look good!
To the top of the Christmas Tree ornament I added a cherub button left over from an Advent quilt I made many years ago. I would have preferred a star, but I am trying to be good and use what I have. I also added beads from my collection and three rings as “ornaments”. Do you know what the rings are? Eyelets! I stitched the decorations on, but you could use glue.
Adding a hanging ribbon to these ornaments is easy…. Just thread it through one of the holes at the top!
Tips for making the “Christmas Stars” ornament
For the ornament to match the Christmas Stars mood board, I decided to see how far I could push the boundaries of this technique. So I used cotton twine for the backbone, with rayon thread for the white and yellow sections, metallic thread for the maroon centre and also a pink rasant thread for the detailing. The rasant is stitched over the finished ornament – I did not couch any thread under this stitching. The pearl beads and bead cap in the centre were inherited from a friend’s mother.
Using the twine and fancy threads was more difficult than pearl cotton and standard sewing thread. My tips? For twine use a wider zigzag. For fancy threads make sure you drop the upper thread tension on your machine. And sew slower.
When I wanted to change thread colours I did not cut the cotton twine, I just anchored the couching thread, swapped the top thread and started again where I left off. For the star I used white sewing thread in the bobbin regardless of which thread I had on top.
And there you have it!
I hope these instructions make sense….. if not, please ask questions. Because if you are wondering something, it is likely that others are also wondering the same thing.
Enjoy your creative time leading up to the holidays. If you make a string art-style ornament I would love to know….. there are so many shapes you could try…. what about a dove, a snowman, baubles, a stocking, a snowflake…..? You are really only limited by your imagination, (and time of course). And just so you know, shapes with corners are easier than those with curves.
Wouldn’t these make fabulous decorations to finish off a special gift?! Speaking of gifts, I am off to Days Filled with Joy to see what else Joy has put on her 12 Days of Last Minute Homemade Gift ideas list. Don’t forget to keep an eye on this too.
P.S. If Suffolk Puffs (Yo-Yos) and hand sewing are more your thing, why not give my friend Evija’s Christmas Ornament tutorial a try? Evija was my partner in the 2017 Ornament Exchange, and she sent me these two beauties that are now on my tree. Enjoy! 🙂
Toasty Teal: More Colour Fun with Stitched in Color
Do you remember, waaaay back in August, we had a lot of fun with a fabric and colour challenge? Every so often, Rachel of Stitched in Color teams up with an online fabric store to run a mosaic contest where you are challenged to choose 9 fabrics to best represent a particular theme and present it to the world. Last time we explored the theme “Summer Crush”. Now you and I have the opportunity to do it all again! But this time the theme is “Toasty Teal”. I really hope you will join in the fun!
Toasty Teal……?
I love the colour teal. I also adore aquamarine and turquoise. And I am not always entirely sure which is which, or where the boundaries are, all being stunning variations of blue-green. It probably doesn’t even matter a great deal for this exercise, as teal is just the starting point for our inspiration. But just to silence any worries, here is the colour that Wikipedia defines as Teal: hex#008080. Teal is the deepest of the three related colours.
As Rachel so ably points out in her preamble to the challenge, teal is a very magnificent and versatile colour. It is fabulous with copper and rust and orange. I also like to pair it with purples or with variations of it’s complement, maroon. Teal sings with dusky pinks and peachy hues. For me teal is strongly associated with water and beaches, and as a regular performer in the most spectacular of sunsets. This teal challenge was triggered by Rachel’s thoughts around autumn, but it is early summer here, and we have already done our fair share of sweltering. But that’s ok, teal works great for toasty summers too. 🙂
My first round of fabric choices….
So with all this in mind, I perused the fabrics at this challenge’s sponsor’s shop, Bobby Lou’s Fabric Factory to make a mosaic that captured these sentiments. Of course, I also preserved my natural tendencies towards fabrics that celebrate playfulness. So, without further ado, I present to you my first mosaic: All Creatures Great and Fall!
Did you notice the pineapples I slipped in there? If you don’t know why, you have some catch up reading to do about the Pineapples vs Quilters conspiracy. hahaha 🙂 Start here to follow this slightly silly thread right back to the beginning, which was actually the post “Digging for Pineapples“, from the last mosaic challenge. Hmmm, anyway, moving right along……
My decision process…..
I started with the Lil Fox print from Michael Miller Fabrics. I really love the little toadstools in among the happy foxes, and the touch of purple of their coats against the teal. Nothing says autumn to me more than fungus. I can never resist taking pictures of curious fungi.
Then I added the buck heads (Art Gallery Fabrics), the petite raccoons (Blend Fabrics) and the hexagons (Art Gallery Fabrics) to emphasise teal and other blue-green tones in the mosaic. At this point there were 3 animal prints already, so I decided to see if I could find more. A seahorse print in coral pink? Perfect! And jellyfish in marine tones? Oooo yes. The jelly fish also pick out the yellow green of the flowers with the foxes. Both of these picks are Michael Miller Fabrics.
Now, to get some colour continuity I wanted to pick out some more fabrics with coral colour……enter the llamas and a hot desert sun by Free Spirit. I just loved adding this fabric, as it not only added support for the coral on the seahorse fabric but added some dark contrast, and extended the blue and blue-green colours by adding green to finish the analogous colour series. And of course, it is just. plain. fun. 🙂
I then added the stripes (called Trinket in Blush by Art Gallery Fabrics), that look like they should be on the llamas’ blankets. These stripes tie a lot of the colours together in one print. Happiness! For the ninth fabric I originally chose a cute snail and leaf print by Free Spirit that added more purple to the palette and screamed autumn to me. But it was really just a tad too busy. Then I found the aforementioned pineapples in oasis by Me+You. As if they were not going in! Sorry snails, you are out. You would make a great backing though!
A very hard choice……
And then, at the very last second, I relented of the pineapple silliness, because I found this beautiful bird print from Art Gallery Fabrics instead….. and if I was lucky enough to win this set, it would make more sense to create something with the birds rather than the pineapples. But I have to admit to being quite torn between them. Perhaps I’ll put the pineapples in my second mosaic…… Of course, let’s be honest, if I was in store right now I’d just buy them both. Hahahaha. 🙂 Here is the selection that I finally uploaded to Stitched in Color….
Want to join in? Come on, it’s fun and good practice!
There are several great reasons to join in this challenge, including two chances to win a fat quarter of each of the fabrics you use in your mosaic! You have until the 10th of December to enter up to two Toasty Teal mosaics in the contest for your chances to win. You can find all the details and the linky here.
Really you shouldn’t need another reason…. But apart from a chance to win fabric, I particularly like and recommend this exercise because it is good for the creative grey cells. As it happens, one of the photos Rachel used to set her mood was the 100th winner of a regular photography challenge run by Mark Wilson at Gizmodo. And Mark’s philosophy towards challenges with tight boundaries is this:
“I was always frustrated by the weekly assignments I’d had in my college video classes, never understanding why I was forced to tie one hand behind my back, creating a story in a single shot or without use of dialog. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized I’d had the rare opportunity: to do isolated workouts for my creativity, to play with a single idea for that single idea’s sake, and, sure, to sometimes fail but have a fantastic excuse as to why I did.”
I see Colour Inspiration Tuesdays and related activities, such as Rachel’s mosaic challenges, in much the same light. Stretch yourself creatively, just a little, often. Gradually, you will grow your design skills, become practiced at finding inspiration and develop your own authentic creative voice. So, don’t pass up this easy opportunity! Do it!
Credits
The photos I used to set the Toasty Teal mood in this post are all from Unsplash. If you would like to use them for your own purposes, they are available to you, no strings attached. You don’t even have to acknowledge the artist who provided them, although I think we should if possible, don’t you? Follow the individual links for each photo, or you can easily find all of these photos and more in my Colour Inspiration Tuesday collection.
Until next time…..
Don’t forget to head over to Stitched in Color for your chance to win a set of 9 Toasty Teal fat quarters.
Also, stay tuned for my Christmas Bells tutorial coming this week. See you again soon!
P.S. Here are two more fun things I think you should know……
Secondly, Joy at “Days Filled with Joy” is running a short series of 12 Days of Last Minute Christmas Gift ideas. Head on over to see what you can make for the people on your Christmas list. Or if you have a suitable tutorial, let her know ASAP, as she is currently looking for projects to feature. You’ll like Joy, I promise!
If you would like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I 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. Thanks for your support!
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.
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.
I’ve also had my work quality controlled by the expert and it was approved…..
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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. 🙂