Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Welcome to our first Monochrome Colour Inspiration Tuesday! I have noticed that quilters quite like monochrome or very nearly monochrome colour schemes. And of these, green quilts are very popular. Among my Pinterest quilt inspiration boards I have one called Monochrome and Analogous Colour Quilts. And on this board it is typically the green quilt pins that receive the most attention. Green is a soothing colour, it is a great choice for a quilt.
To make an interesting monochrome quilt you need to pay attention to the colour value range. If there is not enough colour value contrast, a monochrome quilt will not have much visual interest. So, let’s look at a photo with a great green colour range: Aurora Green.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Aurora Green
The “Aurora Green” colour palette isa range of seven greens – from pale yellow green through to a green so dark it is nearly black.
This colour range is sufficient to capture the glow of this beautiful photo in luminescent quilt designs such as Blooming Nine-Patch or Light in the Valley. See?
Simple Blooming Nine-Patch Layout using the Aurora Green colour scheme.
It also covers enough green colour values to make a geometric quilt with good clean lines of contrast between the design elements. Here is one fabulous example of a quilt that uses a similar colour palette to do just that. Hop over and take a look at this lovely blog post by Pie Lady Quilts.
You can also check out my carefully curated Green Quilts Pinterest Board for more inspiration on how to use green in a stunning quilt.
One final idea: add a little pink and/or yellow as highlights to this colour scheme to make a fresh garden colour quilt. Play with these colours until they resonate for you!
Not into Green? Fair enough….
Why not try some of the other colour palettes in the growing Clever Chameleon collection? Some popular colour schemes at the moment are Red-Eye Flight from a fortnight ago, and a calming blue and red-brown colour scheme called Blue Fox.
Credit
Today’s very green photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” credit-free photos. I am grateful to people who contribute to open source communities, so I would like you to know that this lovely photo was provided by Jan Erik Waider. Visit Jan’s photo collection here: Jan Erik Waider
For colour and layout inspiration for your quilts in your inbox weekly 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. If you would like to use Jan’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 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.
The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise
At our last Handiquilter meeting we were given not one, but two homework exercises!! We are allowed to combine them if we see fit, but I have had no inspiration in this direction. So I am doing them separately. The first mission, should we choose to accept it, is to do a small whole cloth design using changing thread colours as the main design element. I have put this exercise on hold for now.
The second homework exercise is to participate in a project for the upcoming SA Quilter’s Guild Festival of Quilts. The organisers of this project are asking for small modern quilted pieces of 23″x16″ in size. The theme is “modern” and the edges don’t need to be finished. The organiser has a plan to extensively trim and then finish the pieces to make an interactive display.
I have decided to participate in this second project. It gives me a small inexpensive project to do, with a deadline. Perfect for my current mission to actually do more quilting practice, and do it without breaking the bank. Hopefully, I will be able to tell you more about the project after I’ve seen it at the quilt festival in a few weeks. At the moment I am a little short on details, and I’m not sure about how much is public knowledge for sharing. So you’ll have to wait for the whole story.
In the meantime, you will have to settle for a free appliqué template of the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt I made.
My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt concept
“Modern” to me means lots of negative space, bold (probably solid colours), improv piecing and/or heavy on the geometric shapes. I am not doing any piecing for this project. (Just a tactical decision, I quite like improv piecing.) I have decided to appliqué a bold, colourful word (the pretty kind of colourful, not the other kind!!) in the centre of a neutral coloured background. There is a clear need to confine the design to the centre of the mini quilt, due to the aforementioned trimming plan. So lots of negative space also allows for this.
The word I have chosen is “wish”. My mini quilt will have the word “wish” raw-edge appliquéd such that the “i” is the stem of a stylised dandelion clock, and I’ll have several seeds escaping, blown from the stem. Not a totally original meme I know, but I will be drafting it from scratch, and it will be 100% the way I want it.
Here is the scan of my concept drawing:
My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt process
Dandelion Wishes design:
I scanned my original sketch and used Inkscape software to outline the shapes.
My Dandelion Wishes mini quilt appliqué design
If you would like the pdf to print this design for your own use, you can download it here: Dandelion Wishes appliqué pdf.. Don’t forget to reverse the shapes when you trace them to produce a readable design!
Fabric choices:
In my current stash I do not have any large pieces of neutral fabrics I would consider typical for a modern background. I am definitely more a batiks and brights girl. I did find one mottled grey batik that might have sufficed, but in the end I didn’t think it would be right.
Using the reverse side of a fabric if it suits is a valid choice.
So, being short of shopping time, and trying not to buy fabric for quilting practice, I have had to think a bit more laterally. In the end I have decided to use the reverse side of a fabric that I am not overly fond of. The front is a wispy gold brown colour with white roses printed on. However, the reverse is a light cream colour with a sort of dreamy, wispy quality. Not a solid, but I think quite appropriate for the wishes theme.
As for the appliqué…. again, there not many solid colour scraps in my house. I have settled for bright printed fabrics.
Auditioning fabrics for the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt
Appliqué pieces:
I generally print appliqué shapes in reverse onto sticker paper (rather than tracing them by hand straight to fusible adhesive). I do this to save time. Once the fusible adhesive is ironed onto my fabrics, I just stick the sticker printouts onto the paper backing of the adhesive and cut through all three layers. Fabric, adhesive and sticker. When I peel off the paper backing for the adhesive, the stickers are removed too.
I use stickers for printing out appliqué shapes when I am not in the mood for tracing.
Free-motion Appliqué:
Once all the appliqué pieces were ironed into place, I layered the mini quilt top over scrap wadding, pinned it and free-motion stitched 4-5 times around each appliqué shape. I added a stitched spine to each leaf, thread painted the dandelion parachutes and seeds and signed my name. Then I added a backing, ready for quilting.
Thread painted dandelion seeds
Quilting:
So, by this stage, I am not at all sure that this design particularly fits the “modern” theme anymore. I only used one solid fabric in the whole thing, ended up substituting the stylised geometric triangles on the dandelion clock for a more traditional pictorial representation by thread, and didn’t improvise a thing. So I have decided just to quilt it however I want. I have chosen a wavy line design occasionally broken with circles to emphasise the dreamy quality of the background. Is this modern? I don’t know, it matters little.
This design wasn’t as easy as I assumed!
I thought this quilting design would be quick and easy, but today I am having trouble getting a nice even stitch length. I think it is a combination of tiredness (the whole family was sick last week) and the long stretches of stitching. Normally I quilt motifs that change direction frequently, so the quilt doesn’t travel far in any one move. So the awkwardness of this was a bit of a discovery, and more “practice” than I had anticipated. Which obviously is a good thing, after I have moved on from the mild frustration of suddenly wishing I had a stitch regulator on my HQ Sweet Sixteen….
Be careful what you wish for…. I don’t really wish for a stitch regulator, what I really want is not to need one!
Anyway, it is now all finished and trimmed to size. Obviously, if I was finishing this as a normal mini quilt, it would need a binding of some sort. Or I could turn it into a cushion…..
The Dandelion Wishes appliqué design fits nicely on a throw pillow.
So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!
A Tailwind Tribe just for Quilters and Quilt Bloggers.
If you are guilty of being quilty, I hope you are going to love this new quilting Tailwind Tribe!
Today I am embarking on a new side-project – sort of a little brother for the Clever Chameleon blog! I love helping other quilters find resources and inspiration for their quilt story. I have plans to slowly grow Clever Chameleon into a rocking quilting resource that will point you to all sorts of quality quilters and their blogs and knowledge. This will take time. But I have taken one more step in this direction today…..
I have launched a Quilting Tailwind Tribe for Pinterest. If you know all about Tailwind Tribes and want to join one specifically for quilters right now, here’s the invitation link: Patchwork and Quilting Tailwind Tribe.
If you want to find out the what, why and how first, read on!
Clever Chameleon on Pinterest
I love Pinterest….. I can look for, store and easily find again, articles that point me to quilt inspiration, quilt patterns, quilt book recommendations, tutorials, videos….. all sorts of quilting treasures! And I also love browsing the quilts that other people are making and showing. The variety and the talent out there is breathtaking. So a little while ago, I reorganised and rebranded my Pinterest account to match my fledgling blog’s aspirations…. Clever Chameleon on Pinterest is slowly becoming a large resource of links and inspiration for quilts of bold colours, fun designs, fascinating textures and innovative embellishments.
Helping get the Quilting word out……
In my recent blogging adventures I have been looking at methods of gaining blog exposure.. There is not much point in making a fantastic resource just for me, is there?….. Anyway, I have come across the concept of Tailwind Tribes. Of all the resources out there, I am liking this one because it is free (currently at least) and it encourages community and participation. It is also completely compatible with my goals of helping you guys discover resources to help you Quilt Your Own Story.
For those of you not in the know, Tailwind is one of several automated pinning services for Pinterest. Tailwind Tribes are collections of like-minded pinners who agree to share each other’s pins in order to get more pin exposure for everyone involved. It is a fairly young service, and seems to be a huge success. (It is currently a little slow to load due to its unforeseen popularity),
My Experience so far with Tailwind Tribes
Spread the love….
I have so far tried out two Tailwind Tribes. I have already removed myself from one of these because it was too general in topic and I couldn’t find any pins offered that fit my Pinterest boards. The second tribe is generally craft-related and is great. However, it is still very broad in topic and I am finding that I am spending too much time looking for pins to share that relate well enough to my Pinterest board. I can only usefully pin one in every few hundred pins. This means pinning takes longer than I really want to spend. And since I have been unable to find a tribe more specific to my needs, I have decided to create one.
On that note…. Tailwind Tribes are not always easy to discover…. you have to find their invitational gateway link. I can’t find any tribes that are primarily for quilting and patchwork. If anyone knows differently please let me know!
In the meantime, I have started a quilting Tailwind Tribe. I have called it (most imaginatively(!)) “Patchwork and Quilting”. If you are into quilts or closely related crafts/techniques and would like to join, you are welcome and invited!
A Preview of the Small Print for the Patchwork and Quilting Tailwind Tribe
One thing I have found with Tailwind Tribes is that the rules of each tribe are a mystery until after you sign up. This is not a really big problem, as you can remove yourself from a tribe if you wish. However, it did make me slightly uncomfortable before I made the plunge to join. So, assuming that some of you guys like to know what is going on before you commit to things, I am going to let you know the current tribe rules before you get there.
The Patchwork and Quilting Tailwind Tribe rules are:
1. Quilting, patchwork and closely-related posts ONLY please. All quilts welcome – bed quilts, wall quilts, lap quilts etc. Pieced/quilted/appliquéd pillows/cushions, bags, pincushions, quilted clothing, table runners/mug rugs are also encouraged. Tutorials and quilt theory, patterns, books, embellishment techniques, quilting tips/motifs, fabric dying and painting, fabric manipulation, thread painting and embroidery are welcome if they are quilt related. Quilt eye-candy wanted!!
2. Vertical pins with quality descriptions please.
3. Only pin content you own the rights to share. It should go without saying that if it is not family friendly it doesn’t belong here, but I will say it anyway.
4. For each pin that you add, you MUST schedule someone else’s pin (more if you wish). If you do not play nicely you will be removed.
As things stand at the moment, if you are new to Tailwind and you join the Patchwork and Quilting Tailwind Tribe you and I will both be offered a $15 discount (one free-month) on any commercial Tailwind services you may like to try. I am not currently a Tailwind customer and my opinions of Tailwind and Tailwind Tribes are purely my own. What I do want though is lots of easy to pin, awesome quilt pins. Sound good?
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Why not try some of the other colour palettes in the growing Clever Chameleon collection? Some popular colour schemes at the moment are Red-Eye Flight from a fortnight ago, and a calming blue and red-brown colour scheme called Blue Fox. 
For colour and layout inspiration for your quilts in your inbox weekly 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. 
The Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design: 
If not, you can find the origins of this quilt idea in this post here – 
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!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise
So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!
A Tailwind Tribe just for Quilters and Quilt Bloggers. 
