Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Hi – Welcome to another Colour Inspiration Tuesday! Today I have chosen a photo that is really already a quilt idea…. I bet you can see where this is going!
Today’s colour palette was inspired by a photo that is so warm that you can almost feel the reflected heat radiating off the beautiful solid brick wall. Today we are exploring these colours in the palette “Sunset Wall”.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Sunset Wall
The “Sunset Wall” colour palette is light lavender, salmon, rose, rust red, orange, dusky purple and dark eggplant. Of course, the bricks are already in a easy to piece layout – either with the light “mortar” sashing, or without.
A simple rendition of Sunset Wall to give a simple quilt design.
This is a very easy design to customise, Add more rows or width of bricks to make the quilt exactly the size you want. Use scraps or yardage to make the bricks. Piece them randomly or according to the layout you want. The less precisely you sew the mortar strips between the bricks, the more rustic your wall will become. Great for a beginner!
Adding extra colours to the Sunset Wall palette adds depth.
I used the “Sunset Wall” colour scheme plus two related colours to design my wall quilt. These were an extra mid-value rose pink and a light orange. Here is my full colour range.
You can also decorate this quilt with appliqué. I was thinking to design a climbing plant or hollyhocks onto mine, when my hubby said it needed a cat on the top.
And for once he is right! hahahaha. So a cat is what it got! I like it. I mustn’t make it though, I am still working on the Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt.
Added some fun to Sunset Wall with a cat!
What would you do with the Sunset Wall colour palette on a quilt? Let me know in the comments below!
These colours too bright? Try using the same colour combination, but in their tones or shades.
Slightly muted Sunset Wall colour palette
Sometimes fabric availability will dictate which shades of colours you can use. Other times you have more luxury of choice. If you are not a “brights” kind of person you might prefer to use a slightly greyed version of this colour palette. This trick works for other colour schemes as well.
Today’s stock photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. If you would like to also use this lovely photo, it was provided by Michal Grosicki via Unsplash for license-free usage. Find more of Michal’s photos here: Michał Grosicki
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.
From the Sewing Room – Sewing the Jewel Tone Diamonds Tumbling Blocks Quilt (Part I)
Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new project stemming from Colour Inspiration Tuesday. It all started with the Jewel Tone Triangles colour scheme.
The Jewel Tones Triangles colour palette sparked an idea that immediately appealed to my daughter. It was a small tumbling blocks quilt design with drifting colour transitions between the blue-greens and the pink-purples. I chose tumbling blocks for the design because this photo cries out for some sort of 3D design. And now my daughter wants it for her bed. ASAP. She loves the colours and is fascinated by the 3D effect. But the design was never really intended to be made, let alone in bed-size!
Coming to grips with the Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design
But it is easy to draw up a quilt plan without any thought to the difficulty of construction. Which is, of course, exactly what I did with Jewel Tone Diamonds. I was primarily playing with colour relationships and colour values. Not intentionally designing a quilt to make.
So I am mildly embarrassed to say, that the shear number of Y-seams in this design caught me a little by surprise. Simply through a lack of forward-thinking. So it wasn’t really until my daughter and I had modified the design to fit her bed, bought the fabric, cut the fabric and laid it out, that the Y-seams situation dawned on me. A fact for which I am actually thankful, because it is a skill I am well-overdue to learn and may otherwise have dodged yet again.
How to sew Y-seams (also known as set-in seams)
Don’t worry if your first attempts at tumbling blocks aren’t great. This is what my first two Y-seam attempts look like!! Meh!
Until this project, I had never sewn tumbling blocks before. So I did a bit of internet research. The most useful resource I found was this video by the Fat Quarter Shop.
Fast forward another couple of weeks, and I am about halfway through sewing Jewel Tone Diamonds. I am now quite confident at Y-seams and actually enjoy sewing them! Figure that!! Not what I expected! There is something about opening up the piece and seeing it lie flat that I find intensely satisfying.
I know that I am not alone in my (turns out, unjustified) fear of Y-seams. There are plenty of no-Y-seam tumbling blocks patterns out there to prove it. But it turns out that Y-seams are not that hard! Easier than matching points, actually. So, I have decided to show you how I conquered them. Stick to this formula and you might be as pleasantly surprised as I am.
My next attempts at tumbling blocks are much better!!
What you will need……
Some fabric diamonds. To get the exact tumbling blocks effect you see here, the diamonds must have 4 sides of equal length and two 60° angles and two 30° angles. The size of the diamonds is completely up to you, but don’t go too small. You don’t want to end up with frustratingly small pieces. Diamonds with 4-5″ sides are easy to work with. I had left overs after cutting my quilt, but diamonds made from scrap fabric will also do. I cut my diamonds with my diamond die and GO! cutter. If this is not an option for you, you can also cut diamonds from fabric strips using a ruler that has a 60° angle marked on it. Accuracy is key though. If your diamonds are sloppy, the piecing will be a nightmare.
A presser foot with a quarter-inch guide for your sewing machine. This method relies very heavily on this. This foot gets rid of the need to mark each and every seam allowance at the corners. I don’t have the time or patience to mark hundreds of seam allowances!
Your sewing machine set to a shorter stitch length than usual. Mine defaults to setting “2.5”. I turn it down to “2” for this. The shorter stitch length is important to make sure no seams start to unravel as you sew in the third diamond. It also helps you stop in the correct place at the corners, without over-shooting the seam allowance by half a stitch.
A hot iron. Quality spray starch is also useful.
Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step One
Take two diamonds and lay them one over the other, right sides together. Starting from one of the pointy ends (30° angles), sew a quarter-inch seam towards one of the wide corners (60° angles).
Sew a quarter-inch seam allowance from the pointy end of the diamond towards a wide corner.
Stop when you get to a quarter-inch before the end. Reverse sew for a couple of stitches and break thread.
Stop one quarter-inch from the edge of the diamond pieces.
How do you know when you are 1/4 inch from the end?! When you think you are close, stop with the needle in the down position and swivel the diamonds so that the sewing line is now down the next side of the diamonds. If the quarter-inch guide rests on the edge, you are in the right place (see photo below). Swivel the fabrics back to the correct position and secure with backstitch.
Swivel your diamonds to pretend to sew down the next side. If the 1/4 inch guide lines up with the edge you are in the right spot. This is perfect. Backstitch along the newly sewn seam.
If fabric peeks out to the right under the quarter-inch guide (see next photo), swivel the diamonds back to the correct direction, stitch the required number of stitches to cover the gap you observed and re-check your position. Secure with backstitch.
If you swivel your diamonds and it looks like this, you have not sewn far enough. Swivel your fabrics back and take another stitch or two.
If you swivel your fabrics and find you have gone too far, there is nothing for it but to unpick the overshot stitches. Sorry. Learn to stop too early rather than too late.
Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Two
Take your diamonds out of the sewing machine. Your first seam should look like this.
See where the seam stops?
Open up the diamonds, lay flat and press the seam open.
Press seams open. Add a little starch if you wish.
Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Three
Layer your third diamond underneath the two joined pieces, such that one of the narrow points lines up with the top dog-ear of the fabric on the left. The top right edge lies along the edge of the diamond on the right and the large corner lines up with the large corner of the diamond on the right. If you have sewn an accurate quarter inch seam in step one, this should be straight-forward.
Layer the third diamond under the sewn pieces so that the narrow corner lines up with the dog-ear of the left diamond and the wide corner lines up with the diamond on the right. (Note: this set is not quite lined up yet. Keep moving the third diamond under the righthand diamond until it is completely covered.)When you have done this correctly, you should see a corner of the new diamond peeking out when you lift the left diamond at the seam allowance you left un-sewn in step two.
Start sewing a new quarter-inch seam from the free narrow corner of the right-hand diamond. In the picture above this is the bottom right corner. You will be sewing towards the end of the first seam that terminated before the seam allowance. When you get about two-thirds of the way along the seam, pause.
Sew the second seam towards the wide corner where the seam terminated at the seam allowance.
Now fold the left hand diamond corner out of the way until it opens up the un-sewn portion of the first seam.Hold the folded corner out of the way as you sew the rest of the seam. Sew to the very edge of the first diamond, including over the seam allowance, but do not stitch into the folded back diamond.
Nearly there. Keep sewing this line until you reach the intersection of all three fabrics. Stop and backstitch.
Secure with a couple of backstitches and cut thread. Your work should now look like this photo below.
When you place your sewing down flat it should look like this. The new seam goes completely from one edge of the right-hand diamond to the other, but absolutely NO further..If everything has gone to plan, you will still be able to lift the corner of the left-hand diamond to reveal the corner of the third diamond, like this.
Open up your sewing, lay the pieces flat and press the seam open.
It is starting to look like a tumbling block, but with one seam still not sewn.
Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Four
The final step! Fold the diamond that has two attached sides in half so that the second and third diamonds line up over the top of each other. It will look like the photo below.
The first diamond is folded in half across the width, which causes the other two diamonds to lay one over the other with their edges aligned.
Sew a quarter-inch seam from the wide corner at the top middle of the photo above, to the thin corner top right. This direction of sewing is important. Doing it this way prevents any excess fabric being pushed to the centre of your Y-seams. There shouldn’t be excess fabric, but if there is a little, it is harmless on the edge of your tumbling block. If it is in the centre, your block will bubble and not sit flat. Remember, sew from the wide to the pointy end, and it will all be good!
Sew from the wide corner to the pointy corner.Your sewing will now look like this
Now you are done with the sewing. Open up your tumbling block and press the last seam open.
Open up your tumbling block and press the last seam open.
Flip your tumbling block over. Press one last time and voila! A beautiful Y-seam.
Finished tumbling block. Time to do a little happy dance!
You’ll be a tumbling blocks/Y-seams pro before you know it!
Once you conquer this method, the Y-seams go together like clockwork. I promise! When I do these steps in this order, Y-seams work every time. It honestly feels a little like magic!
In my next post I will tell you more about how I put the units together to make the quilt top. There is one way I think gets the easiest matching points. And while I am enjoying the Y-seams, I am not celebrating all the matching points! I’ll add the link here once the post is up…. or subscribe to get it delivered straight to your inbox.
Ten Weeks of Colour Inspiration Tuesday: the Quilt Story chapter that was started almost by accident!
What started as a side project has morphed into a regular part of the Clever Chameleon week! Ten weeks ago I published the first Colour Inspiration Tuesday with the intention of occasionally playing with colour combinations I might like to use in quilts. However, it turns out that making colour palettes can be a bit addictive for someone who loves colour. I have found that it is easy to end up with at least one idea a week. So, Colour Inspiration Tuesday has quickly become a weekly post.
Not only that, but the last few weeks I have found myself contemplating more deeply the possibilities of each colour scheme in quilt design. How would I use these colours and for whom? This has led to Colour Inspiration Tuesday now currently including one or more sketches of simple quilt layouts that use these colours. No patterns yet, so don’t get too hopeful. But they are visualisations of where I would start if I was using these colour schemes to design a quilt. Can you see the escalating pattern here?
Maybe patterns will follow?!
One of these colour schemes (Jewel Tone Triangles) has led to a real quilt that I am in the process of putting together. You can read about the process so far in this post: Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt.
To access the colour palettes of Colour Inspiration Tuesday available so far, click on the thumbnails below.
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The Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design:My first quilt to be made from Colour Inspiration Tuesday!
A few days ago I was playing around with an idea that arose from Colour Inspiration Tuesday. Remember this?!
Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt design from Colour Inspiration Tuesday
If not, you can find the origins of this quilt idea in this post here – Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Jewel Tone Triangles. Briefly, I used a fascinating photo by Ferdinand Stöhr at Unsplash.com to generate a colour palette I loved. In addition, the photo itself is very geometric. It immediately brought to mind a quilt of 3D triangular pyramids in sweeping colour changes of purples and blue-greens.
Originally I was just going to create the colour scheme and serve it up for Colour Inspiration Tuesday as per usual. But the urge to design a quilt in this colour scheme was too strong. So I ended up using the Jewel Tone Triangle colours, plus two more related tones, to mock up a quick example of a tumbling blocks quilt. This was the original Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt design above. And that should have been the end of that!
But I am a sucker for: pretty colours, new quilt ideas and my daughter……
As it happened, my daughter wandered past as I was finishing that post, and said she really liked That design for Her bed…..**batting eyelids here** AND I was already considering taking a project with me while we travelled for a week for Paul’s work…… AND a local store is having it’s annual sale which means that Prima solid colour flat fats (50cmx52cm pre-cuts) are $1 each, which is 75% off…..
Fabrics for Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt
So, the Voice in my head that must be obeyed said “If I take some fabric with me, I could have a quilt cut out and ready to sew when we get home next week….”
Then the same Voice said “And with fabric at $4 per metre, it is a Very good time to be experimenting with a new design. Even if said fabric is not the best quality that money can buy”.
And I don’t argue with the Voice. :). The Voice is also right about the very average fabric quality, but this can be a bonus when it comes to cutting time… It is sooooo much harder to make that first cut into a beautiful print or batik, especially on an unproven design!! These will be perfect.
Anyway, to cut a long story short…..
I bought 11 different solid colour 100% cotton fabrics in the colour range covered by the Jewel Tone Triangles colour scheme. This is quite a few more colours than in the original colour scheme of 7, I know. But this is what happens when you use something as an ideas springboard and start quilting your own story!
I started with the basic colours of the colour scheme and expanded the colour set with what looked good in the store. The new colour scheme (Jewel Tone Diamonds) now looks like this:
These colours are slightly brighter than the original design, but that’s fine, my daughter and I love bright. More colours gives me more options for variety in the tumbling blocks, and enough fabric to expand the pattern to a single bed size. Brilliant!
Expanding the Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt design and cutting the diamonds
We have spent this week in Arkaroola, an oasis in the South Australian Outback. So, I have been admiring this view out the laundry door while ironing my pretties ready for cutting! Much nicer than the dismal suburban winter at home!!
It is great being able to share the cutting with my daughter. The GO! cutter allows her to be involved even though she is too young to use a rotary cutter!
I re-designed the Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt to accommodate my 11 fabric colours and to be single-bed sized. I worked out that if I used my Diamonds 4×4 GO! Die, a single bed top would require about 6 diamonds across and 12 rows of tumbling blocks along the length. Then my daughter and I used my GO! cutter to cut out 20 diamonds in each colour for her new quilt and she and I did a test layout of the pieces together.
Passing on the love
My daughter is just beginning to show an interest in quilting, so this project is perfect for her to start participating. Because I have designed this quilt with the diamond GO! cutter die in mind, she is able to help with the cutting. She loves to help cut the pieces by winding the handle. I also got some “help” laying out the pieces. However, since I like to make adjustments on the fly, this is a slightly trickier process to share with my new apprentice!
Diamonds cut out and ready for layout.Starting to layout the Jewel Tone Diamonds.Progress!
Once we had an idea of the number of pieces we would need for each particular colour, we cut more diamonds as needed. This is what our current layout looks like:
In the end we were pretty pleased with our expanded Jewel Tone Diamonds design. So pretty!
Colour Value and the Tumbling Block quilt design
Here’s the most important tip for tumbling block quilts…… It is important to pay absolute attention to the colour values of your fabrics and where you place them. To begin with, you must decide which of the three faces of the “cube” you want to be the lightest, which will be the darkest and which will have an intermediate colour value. Then you have to stick to this decision for each set of three pieces that make up a block. Otherwise the 3D illusion of this design does not work.
My daughter actually grasped this concept pretty well. To help us keep to our chosen regime of lightest value on the top of each cube, medium value on the left and darkest value on the right, we took occasional photos in black and white. This is the easiest way to judge colour value.
To easily judge the colour value of your quilts, take photos in black and white.
A problem and the solution:
The two fabrics on the left and right of this cube unit are actually quite different greens but with the same colour values.
In our colour palette there are two fabrics that I have struggled to differentiate as to which has the darker value. One is fairly saturated in colour (is a hue), and the other is a tone. The toned fabric has been darkened with black, but also diluted with white. So the two fabrics have ended up a similar colour value.
In the end, I have designated the more saturated colour to be the “darker” fabric so that we can be consistent with our layout. Then, when it comes to quilting time, I can help maintain the 3D illusion by quilting the toned fabric with a light thread and the saturated fabric with a dark thread. The overall effect of this will be to darken the perceived value of the saturated fabric and to lighten the toned fabric, preserving the 3D tumbling block design. Sometimes you just can’t get enough absolutely perfect fabric colours when you are shopping for a quilt….. Don’t despair, just think about what else you can do to get the effect you want!
Heading home to sew Jewel Tone Diamonds
Cutting pieces for a quilt, walks in the bush, campfire cooking with the kids and helping with the local war on a Mexican Poppy infestation….. It has been a lovely time away.
Exotic Mexican Poppy weeds are a threat to the Arkaroola ecosystem. Arkaroola is a beautiful rugged landscape and home to the Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby.
It will also be nice to be back at the sewing machine next week. Although…. now that I have all those diamonds cut and laid out, I can see just how many Y-seams I have! Just for the record, I haven’t sewn Y-seams before….. this could be interesting! Anyway, my adorable daughter is being quite insistent that she should sew them. Never mind she has never even sewn a basic seam yet! I have promised to help her to learn how to make a quilt, but obviously (and to her disgust) we will start with something beginner friendly. Now that she is finally showing some interest in sewing, I want her to love quilting….. I’ll keep you posted on that journey too.
In the meantime, we have 680 km to cover to get home. Then I get to have a day at the South Australian Quilters’ Guild Festival of Quilts. The day after that I plan to visit a Tentmakers of Cairo display. What a lovely week to look forward to!
I’ll definitely be checking out lots of quilting stories this week!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Hi – Welcome to another Colour Inspiration Tuesday! When I was first introduced to quilting, the group I met regularly with had a thing about fabrics in rich jewel-tone colours. Specifically, batik collections in saturated turquoise, sapphire, emerald, topaz, magenta and amethyst colours. These were good times, so these colours will always transport me back to the fun afternoons we spent sewing and eating and laughing.
Today’s colour palette was inspired by a photo strong in both geometry and colour. Because the purples, blues and turquoise reminded me of quilts in jewel-tones, we have “Jewel-Tone Triangles”.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Jewel Tone Triangles
The “Jewel Tone Triangles” colour palette is amethyst, sapphire and turquoise in several shades of each. These varying shades allow you to create depth, interest and even the optical illusion of 3D by using cleverly placed colour value contrasts.
It is very tempting to sit down and design a triangle quilt (or a tumbling block quilt) in these colours, using the colour transitions in the photo as a muse. I shouldn’t, due to time constraints…..
Of course, I did anyway …….. here is a free layout as an example of how you could use this colour palette (with two additional shades over and above the starting seven Jewel Tones) on a tumbling block quilt.
Play with it until you find Your perfect combination. I just did!
I’m even tempted to make this quilt….. I could cut the diamonds with my GO! die. My daughter has spotted this post and said “Ooooo, I’d like that on My Bed”. Not sure that I am going to make it bed-sized, if it happens at all. Perhaps she can aspire to have it on her wall…. I’ll let you know if this one gets to the top of the ideas queue.
Don’t need rich geometry today? Try something more subtle.
There are several gentler colour schemes within the Clever Chameleon collection already….. why not take a look at Lily Pad Glow or Purple Tulip?
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. If you would like to also use this lovely photo, it was provided by Ferdinand Stöhr via Unsplash for license-free usage. Find more of Ferdinand’s photos here: Ferdinand Stöhr
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.
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. 
From the Sewing Room – Sewing the Jewel Tone Diamonds Tumbling Blocks Quilt (Part I)
Ten Weeks of Colour Inspiration Tuesday: the Quilt Story chapter that was started almost by accident!
The Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design: 
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
