Today I did something a little bit different. I attended the unveiling of a new pair of plaques honouring all the war veterans who came/come from the Karoonda district. Karoonda is a small country town in South Australia where my only surviving great aunt lives. And where my maternal grandfather and grandmother first met and courted many decades ago.
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 15
After travelling so much for the last two weeks, I was very grateful to share a ride to Karoonda (about an hour and half away) with my aunt, uncle and a cousin. As well as attending the memorial and unveiling ceremony, I was thrilled to visit my great aunt. Aunty Dorothy is the original rabid quilter in my family. As you can imagine, we always have a lot to talk about. I wish she lived closer!
When my great aunt is not quilting, she is gardening. And today her garden was a mass of spring flowers. Roses, irises and poppies. Lots and lots of beautiful poppies.
How was I inspired by the poppies?
After being away from home for 2 weeks, I have been a little surprised by Spring. It definitely arrived while we were away! And yesterday, Aunty’s garden was in full-bloom.
Poppies and more poppies!A colour board from Aunt Dorothy’s garden
So it seemed more than appropriate to do a Spring mood board from Aunty Dorothy’s garden.
But more relevant to the theme of today’s visit to Karoonda, it turns out that Aunty Dorothy also has a patch of Flanders Poppies that she grew from seeds gifted to her. Flanders Poppies are the distinctive red and black flowers from France that are now used widely in Anzac and Remembrance Day ceremonies in Australia. There weren’t many open Flanders Poppies to see in her garden, because she had donated them all to today’s ceremony.
Flanders Poppies at the unveiling ceremony, donated from my Great Aunt’s garden.
Here is part of one of the new plaques. My Grandpa’s name is on there (F.A. Longmire, WWII). As is my Great Uncle Geoff’s (WWII) and a great-great uncle’s (WWI). A fourth very distant relative is also named, but the connection with him is many many generations back. I do know where he fits in the family forest thanks to someone else’s hard work, but I won’t bore you with the details.
Karoonda honour roll
More than just colour inspiration
Between the two new plaques is the main gate to the town’s oval. I was also quilt-inspired by these gates, with their plastic poppy tributes and rosemary attached.
Poppy and Rosemary tributes at the unveiling
This geometric design would make a great quilt border, especially adorned with poppy appliqués. It’s not often that I get inspired to make a quilt border without having a clue what the centre of the quilt should be. But that is the case this time!
What would you place in the middle of a quilt with a really strong, geometric border design like this? Do you have memorial traditions that would translate to a meaningful quilt?
Comments make my day and I and would love to know your ideas. Thanks for dropping by today. Hope to see you again tomorrow!
There is nowhere like home! It’s nice to be back in Australia with my sewing machines and fast internet. And my furry quilting helper! The second half of my Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday series is likely to be be much more everyday than the first half. And in my house, there is nothing more everyday than a children’s book. I read to both my kids before bed most evenings, and have done since they were babies. Like my mother did for me. That is a lot of bedtime stories!
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 14
A significant proportion of the world’s quilts seem to be made for children. Babies on their way, babies just born, sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews….. etc etc. And I find that kids love a good size quilt…. for sleeping, emotional comfort, cuddling on the couch, picnics, making cubby houses… wherever their imagination takes them.
So today I want to briefly discuss a common source of inspiration I often see used on kids’ quilts. That is, popular characters from children’s books and movies. There are upsides and downsides to using your child’s favourite story characters as quilt inspiration, as we shall see.
Why do people like characters on quilts?
There are at least three good reasons why people consider kids’ story characters for quilt inspiration:
The first is that the illustrations in many children’s stories are relatively simple, so they make great shapes for appliqué and paper-pieced designs.
Secondly, if your child loves a particular book character (or TV/movie character), they are going to love the quilt. So you get to simplify your process, and impress the little person in your life in one go!
And thirdly, there are often licensed prints or panels that you can pair with your creations to make the quilt bigger or to use as the perfect backing.
Why shouldn’t I make character quilts?
Despite these attractions, I recommend caution if you are considering making character-based quilts. There is one massive reason to be very careful. And that is, unlicensed fandom quilts featuring copyrightable characters are a form of copyright infringement.
That said, fan art is usually tolerated as benign unless you are prolific and/or profiting from your creations. Fan art is even encouraged by some copyright holders to increase the public interest in their original works. But not everyone feels this way. So, if you must make a quilt featuring a character or story, get permission if possible. Only make character quilts as one-off love gifts for children in your immediate circle. Keep the process private….. it is unwise to share your patterns with the intention of strangers making it too, or to sell your adorable creation on Etsy. Please note, none of this constitutes legal advice, just common sense. Any fan art you create is at your own risk. You can also read an interesting article about the tensions between fan art and copyright here.
How can I be inspired then?
A more ethical way to use children’s stories to inspire a quilt is to use general ideas to create your own works. There is no hazard in making a caterpillar quilt with nibbled food-stuffs. As long as it isn’t The Hungry Caterpillar. Likewise, you can safely make a pattern for a quilt with a puppy doing something fun on it – as long as that puppy is not Kipper or Spot… or a myriad of other distinctive fun-loving puppies.
But I acknowledge this isn’t really possible for all characters. My son would love a Pokémon quilt – only actual Pokémon need apply. And I have long thought that the Mr. Men would make great appliqués. “Mr Generic Persons” isn’t really going to cut it. But if I do ever make either of these quilts, you won’t find them here. That’ll be between me and my small friends!
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.
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.
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.
So…. I think it’s probably time to start playing fair again. 🙂 Finding quilt inspiration in volcanos might be fun, but as I admitted earlier, it is hardly everyday for most people, and certainly not for me. That said, you can take any landscape that you love and turn it into an abstract half-square triangle quilt like I did for Tanna Island. All you need is a grid of half-square triangles (HSTs) and some coloured pencils, or Inkscape software (a free open-source program similar to Illustrator).
As a small thank you for reading along, I am adding a downloadable pdf today of the HST grid I used for the quilt design I showed yesterday. You can download the grid here: HST grid and use it to design your own abstract landscapes.
I am also happy to share the .svg file for this grid if you are using Inkscape, to save you drawing up your own. However you will need to contact me with a valid email address, as WordPress does not allow direct uploads of .svg files. The advantage of using Inkscape (or other drawing software) rather than pencils and paper, is that you can colour in the triangles with the colour picker and change them easily until you are satisfied.
Anyway, I probably should have thought of these additions yesterday, but it was 10pm before the internet here would accept my post. And I was feeling seedy from a travellers’ tummy bug thing. So here they are now. And I am feeling much better, so it’s time for…..
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 9
I have to admit that I woke up uninspired for a topic for the Everyday Quilt Inspiration slot today. For the first time. Usually I have to choose from ideas, thankfully. But this situation didn’t last long, as my children decided to play a game of chess. And that reminded me of a set of quilts that I have wanted to make for a very long time. Picnic quilts that double as games.
Which Picnic Quilts would I like to make?
The possibilities are almost endless, but here are some of my favourites that I think would make fun picnic quilts:
Hopscotch
Snakes and ladders (or any variety of this game)
Chess and/or Checkers
Chinese checkers
Backgammon
Othello/Reversi
The trick is to make it big! Small picnic rugs are a pain for everyone except romantically inclined couples. And who doesn’t love an oversized game? Not many kids, that’s for sure! The playing pieces could be made as quilted discs (appliquéd with details if required for games such as Chess) or as beanbags or similar. Or use your plates as playing pieces!! 🙂 Coleslaw takes the sausages! LOL.
I would make my quilt with storage pockets, or even as a quillow with carry handles. The hardest decision is which game to make first?!
Chess is probably a good one to start with…. the board is super simple, and could be made from practice FMQ quilting squares put together as quilt-as-you-go. Any two contrasting colours will do, so you can make it to suit your preferences. Only trouble for me is, chess is the one board game I detest. Always have. Maybe I should start with backgammon…..
Which board game would you most like to turn into a picnic quilt? Or a play mat. I just suggest perhaps not to put the hopscotch quilt on the bed……. 🙂
See you again tomorrow… it’s Colour Inspiration Tuesday!
P.S. Are you following along on the Art with Fabric blog hop tour? Start here to see all the fabric art creations on this quilt-hop-with-a-difference.
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
Did you know there are an amazing number ways of achieving the stuffed quilting known as trapunto? When I was at school we were only taught one method. Snip the back of your work after stitching the trapunto outlines, stuff in some extra padding and sew the hole back up again. Of all the trapunto methods I now know, this would be my least recommended!
Trapunto quilting can be achieved by hand or machine. If you want to do trapunto by hand, read this fabulous article by Quilts A Lot and watch this video she recommends. This is a much nicer method than the slit and stitch I was taught. I would like to give it a go, “one day”.
Actually, even if you don’t want to do trapunto/french boutis by hand, these links are worth a look. The trapunto wedding rings quilt of Quilts A Lot is amazing, and the more techniques you know about, the more idea resources you’ll have to use in all your designs. 🙂
Machine Trapunto
Probably the most common method of trapunto I see these days is created by machine free-motion stitching onto fabric layered over polyester wadding. The wadding is then clipped to the trapunto shape before a quilt sandwich is made. There are many experts out there on this, including Geta Grama. I am not one of them, but I have given this type of trapunto a go recently on my Dream Big mini quilt. Now I am playing with shadow trapunto.
Shadow Trapunto
Shadow trapunto is when the top fabric and clipped wadding is laid directly over a second fabric rather than straight onto the quilt batting. The fabric between the polyester wadding and the quilt batting is expected to show through the top layer, except where the trapunto lies. Here the wadding obscures the fabric design underneath, creating a “shadow”. Thus the trapunto design has even more visual impact than ordinary trapunto.
Cross-section through a shadow trapunto quilt sandwich
The remainder of this blog post is a description of how I did the Dandelion Shadows trapunto with felt.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: materials
What you need: which fabrics to choose
The first step of a shadow trapunto project is to choose the top fabric and the feature fabric. The main requirement for the top fabric is that it needs to be partially see-through. You can use very transparent fabrics like tulle, or more opaque fabrics, like cotton lawn. Choose white or a very pale colour. For this project I wanted a subtle effect, so I choose white cotton lawn for its partially opaque nature.
The most important requirement for the feature fabric for shadow trapunto is that there is good contrast within the print. Light coloured prints often perform very well. Saturated prints that look bright but have low colour value contrast do not give very pleasing results. If in doubt, lay your top fabric over potential feature fabrics until you find one that shows through as you would like.
The feature fabric for my Dandelion Shadows project practically chose itself. While I was out shopping I noticed this hexagon print fabric, and it sparked an idea. It is “Grecian Bath House Tiles” by Emma & Mila.
Grecian Bath House Tiles fabric by Emma and Mila
Don’t forget, of course, that you’ll also need quilt batting and a backing for your project, seperate from the trapunto supplies.
What you need: which trapunto stuffing to choose
Finally, you need a material for the trapunto stuffing. To do a project with the method I am describing here, you will need a thick non-fraying fabric that you can cut into shapes without stitching it down first. I used felt, but thick fleece or similar would also work. The result is a much flatter trapunto effect than the traditional method…. perhaps it is “modern trapunto”. I like both effects…. but I would use them in different contexts. Choose a colour that works with your feature and top fabrics, because the idea is that you will partially see the trapunto stuffing through the top layer.
How much of everything you will need:
For this cushion (about 42cm square) I used:
– 50cm WOF of the feature fabric, cut into 2x 50cm² pieces.
– 50cm² white cotton lawn
– scraps of yellow and white felt
– 50cm² low-loft polyester batting
I didn’t use a backing because I intended to make a cushion out of the trapunto piece, so a backing would just be hidden inside the cushion. However, if you wish to back your trapunto, by all means do so.
My furry helper approving materials for the shadow trapunto.Time to do something else for a while. These materials are taken!
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: creating the trapunto quilt sandwich
How to create your trapunto shapes:
Once you have chosen your trapunto materials (and rescued them from your furry quilting friends), the next job is to produce the felt shapes to make the trapunto design. I chose to overlay the printed hexagons on the feature fabric with felt hexagons of the same size. You could exploit any medium or large scale fabric print in the same way. Or you can create any original design that you are willing to cut out and glue down onto your feature fabric. Either draw your design in reverse onto the back of your felt, or trace your reversed design onto freezer paper and use these templates to cut out your felt pieces.
Freezer paper adheres really well to felt…. who knew?!
I used freezer paper. This was actually a bit of an experiment, because I thought that the freezer paper would not stick to felt more than once, due to the great amount of fluff that remains on the freezer paper once the felt is peeled away. But I got at least 4 re-uses out of each freezer paper template, and it would have been more, but I didn’t require any more felt hexagons.
Attaching the felt to the feature fabric:
Elmer’s glue works well to tack the felt shapes down, but use it sparingly.
To get the felt accurately attached to the feature fabric I used a very thin smear of Elmer’s school glue (available in Officeworks here in Australia) to position the pieces. Once the glue was tacky enough that the pieces couldn’t shift, I flipped the project over and hot ironed from the back. This sets the glue hard so it cannot damage my sewing machine. However, if I want to re-position any pieces, they just gently peel off. Elmer’s glue is so fantastic!
Take care to use just a little so it doesn’t soak through to the front of the felt, especially if you are using a highly transparent top fabric…. but if it does, Elmer’s glue washes out, so as long as you can wash your project, it shouldn’t matter.
Once the pieces are securely attached and ironed dry, layer your work over the quilt batting and backing (optional for cushions). Then layer the top fabric (cotton lawn) over the top of everything else.
Cotton lawn laid over my felt shapes glued to my feature fabric, and the quilt batting.
Secure all layers with your favourite basting method (in my case, quilting pins).
Dandelion Shadows trapunto pin-basted
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: quilting
Now it is time to quilt. I chose to quilt around the trapunto with a pebble, spiral and feathers design I saw on Karen Miller’s work posted in the Free Motion Quilting Frenzy facebook group (if you are into FMQ – join this group!!). There was no particular reason to use this FMQ design, except that I really wanted to try it. Any dense fill you like will do.
I densely quilted the background around the trapunto to help the feature fabric show throughClose-up of the FMQThe pebble quilting is easier to see from the back
I finished off the quilting by adding some stems and leaves to the trapunto flowers and dandelion clock. These are quilted in a very pale grey-green. The idea is that they don’t detract from the trapunto and are only really noticeable if you are closely looking at the piece. Ghost details, if you wish.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: finishing off the cushion cover construction
Once I was happy with my trapunto piece, I squared up the sides. I cut the remaining piece of my feature fabric in half and hemmed one long edge on both pieces. I then sewed these pieces to the sides of the trapunto sample.
Dandelion Shadows trapunto with fabric attached for cushion envelope.
I then folded the flaps over the trapunto piece, right sides together, so that the cushion backing pieces overlapped by 3-4 inches. I then sewed up the top and bottom of the quilt cover and trimmed the excess from the seams.
Envelope Cushion cover ready to sew.
Here is the back once it was turned right sides out and filled with a pillow form.
And the finished cushion 🙂
I hope these instructions are clear enough. If you have been following my blog lately, you’ll know that I am writing things in a bigger hurry than usual. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll endeavour to answer and/or edit to clear things up.
Shadow trapunto with felt is a lot faster and less stressful than the more traditional kind. No risk of accidentally snipping fabric or stitches. But it does give a different effect, so it’s not a replacement for stuffed trapunto. I really like the effect this gives. I will be doing this again, for sure.
What do you think? Are you going to give this a go? Have you already done trapunto using this method? I’d love to know what you made.
Now, I’m going to have to love and leave you….. we have a family day in between all the work we are doing here in Vanuatu. Going to see an active volcano!!!!!! I am hoping tomorrow’s “everyday” quilt inspiration slot will be anything but! xx
31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life
There are at least three good reasons why people consider kids’ story characters for quilt inspiration:
Despite these attractions, I recommend caution if you are considering making character-based quilts. There is one massive reason to be very careful. And that is, unlicensed fandom 
31 Days of Finding Quilt Inspiration in Real Life
And thirdly, a carved sculpture…… 
So…. I think it’s probably time to start playing fair again. 🙂 Finding quilt inspiration in volcanos might be fun, but as I admitted earlier, it is hardly everyday for most people, and certainly not for me. That said, you can take any landscape that you love and turn it into an 
I am also happy to share the .svg file for this grid if you are using Inkscape, to save you drawing up your own. However you will need to contact me with a valid email address, as WordPress does not allow direct uploads of .svg files. The advantage of using Inkscape (or other drawing software) rather than pencils and paper, is that you can colour in the triangles with the colour picker and change them easily until you are satisfied. 
Which board game would you most like to turn into a picnic quilt? Or a play mat. I just suggest perhaps not to put the hopscotch quilt on the bed……. 🙂
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
