storm at sea Archives - Clever Chameleon Quilting

November 5, 2019January 19, 2024

Safe Harbour Seahorses: Island Batik Blog Hop

Blue Sea colour board at Clever Chameleon

Finally! The Blue Sea quilt reveal is here!

And with it, your gateway to a month of eye candy and lots of chances to win luscious latest release batiks from Island Batik. Welcome to Colour & Inspiration Tuesday meets the “A Piece Of….” blog hop!

November is blog hop month for half the Island Batik Ambassadors (specifically, the half who did not hop in August). Our theme this time is “A Piece Of…..”, open to any interpretation we wish. The instructions given were to make a quilt, lap size or larger, showcasing as many fabrics as possible from our allocated collection. And so today, after weeks of threadful teasing, and awful puns about sea-cret sewing, I can take pity on you. Today we finally have the Blue Sea quilt “big reveal”.

If you’ve been following along, you already know a little of what the Blue Sea fabrics look like. You probably also know the basic pattern that I’ve chosen. And you likely even know that the Chameleon has been messing around. But do you know what my Blue Sea Storm at Sea morphed into? Nope? Well, let’s take a look-sea! I hope you’ll enjoy my “Piece of” the deep Blue Sea that is now called “Safe Harbour Seahorses”. And enter the competitions to win Island Batik fabrics. Good luck!

October 22, 2019January 19, 2024

What’s all the stink about?! Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

Voodoo stink lily colour board at Clever Chameleon

There’s no gilding this Lily!

I don’t, as a general rule, do Halloween. Except for this! This is a Dracunculus vulgaris, a Stink Lily. Also known as a Voodoo lily or Dragon Lily. It grows green and lush in winter from a fascinatingly hideous tuber thing, and has the most amazingly beautiful leaves and dappled stalks. And then it flowers in Spring with huge purple lilies in mid-late October. Just in time for a naturally stunning Halloween display of offensively stinky flowers before it dies back down to avoid the Australian summer.

Don’t let appearances fool you!

This is one of five flowers I’ve had this Spring in my Dragon Lily patch. And it reeks. The air has been super still here the last two afternoons , and the backyard has smelt remarkably like a rotting carcass. A big one! As you can see in the picture I took yesterday, there are flies on the lily. It is a carrion flower – it smells like a zombie and relies on flies for pollination. As soon as pollination is complete the flower then suddenly stops reeking of death, and starts looking like it instead. No mucking around.

I went out to measure this one for you this evening, (50cm/20 inches long BTW) and it is already odourless and just a little droopy. Job done, apparently. Of course, the flies get nothing out of the pollination deal…. no rotting meat for their eggs after all. Such is life, I suppose, when you cavort with the undead!

Appearances can be deceptive in sneak peeks too……

Something else in my life nearly as purple and just as beautiful, but far less on the nose, is the Blue Sea fabric collection from Island Batik. If you remember from last Tuesday, I am making a Storm at Sea quilt. I have made good progress, and today’s sneak peek is likely the last until my latest quilt design appears here on the blog on November 5. Did I mention that it’s not “just” an ordinary Storm at Sea pattern? It’s got a sea-cret twist. 🙂

Well, surely you weren’t expecting a normal Storm at Sea quilt…. the Chameleon is many things, but we rarely get accused of being normal! 😀

October 15, 2019January 19, 2024

All at Sea: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

All at Sea colour board at Clever Chameleon

…. or perhaps, Teasing You Tuesday

I’ve not a lot to show you today, but I’m teasing you anyway. Since I finished off the turkey, much of my quilting time has been dedicated to secret designing and sewing. This is because the ambassadors who did not do the Island Batik blog hop in August are scheduled on a hop in November. That includes me, and I am slated for early in the lineup. So it is head down, tail up, madly sewing for the Chameleon for the fore-sea-able future. Give or take a couple of balloon animal appliqué pattern posts that I will publish as light relief.

But today, while I finalise October’s Love with a Twist offerings, and try to prevent my sewing machines from sensing an impending deadline, enjoy this taster for my stop on the “A Piece of” blog hop. Let’s sea what I’ve started!

Welcome to the Clever Chameleon Blog

Hi and Welcome! I am Dione Gardner-Stephen, writing to you from outback Australia.

You have found Clever Chameleon…. an inspirational and colourful space to help you quilt with more joy and confidence. I understand that you want to make quilts that reflect yourself and that your recipients will love. This is my passion too!

Join me as I regularly explore colours, textures, embellishments, designs, quilting and techniques that you can use too.

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