Wandering Camera – October Stories

 

Clearning Storm Sunrise Watercolour / Stormy Sky Sunrise Watercolor | Whims And Fancies

 

 

Every October, my attention gets blown around like a leaf in the wind and I continuously find myself in the midst of stories, but not necessarily stories made of words.  This Wandering Camera reflects that.

One late afternoon, with rain clouds outside my window, I was practising painting a sunrise after a clearing storm over the mountains of a distant land.  Unintentionally I tend to I create shapes in the painted clouds.  This time I painted a peacock.

 
 
 

Lego Harry Potter Halloween Feast | Whims And Fancies

 

 

I set up little patches of decorations everywhere that tell little stories.  I shared with you the Lego Winter Village before.  For October, I have the students back at Hogwarts.  They are getting ready for their Halloween feast. 

 
 
 
Wine Country Raibow And Hot Air Balloons | Whims And Fancies
 
 
 
 
One morning I found a beautiful rainbow right outside my backdoor.  I wondered what it would be like to follow one.
 
 
 
 
Solitary Rose And Ticking Clock | Whims And Fancies

 

 

I have a weakling rose plant in my garden that gives one beautiful flower every year.  This one was too heavy for the stem, so I brought it inside.  One of my cats knocked the vase over trying to eat a leaf, so I moved it to the mantelpiece where the clocks are (I collect clocks).  That in turn made me think of a story about a solitary rose and a ticking clock.

 
 
 
Shattered Star Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies
 
 

 

 
Earlier this month I showed the quilt block I made from my new pattern, Shattered Star.  I got the idea after seeing ice shards floating away as we admired the Esmark Glacier up close near Svalbard.  That block was about stars and nebulae
 
I made this block using the vibrant colours of Halloween.  The swirls in the fabric and the shards in the design make me think of the mysteries of smoke and mirrors. 
 
 
 
Bookshelf Of A Magician - Ink And Watercolour Painting | Whims And Fancies
 
 
 
My beloved ink-and-paper magician is brilliant, but is having trouble procuring books.  So I am building a bibliotheque for him.  Quoting my friend Dixie – a bibliotheque filled with books on practical magic, spells, and alchemy.  As soon as I bring everything to life with a bit of colour, he can have it all.
 
 
I love the romanticism of magic and fairy tales.  With the help of the autumn wind, October brings them a bit closer to me and sweeps me off my feet every time.
 
 
 

Charlie Cat On Harry Potter Quilt | Whims And Fancies

 

Charlie’s Adventure – A little Halloween story

 

Charlie and the rest of us wish you a Happy All Hallows Eve, whether or not you celebrate Halloween!

 

Camera And Photography Linky Party | Whims And Fancies

 

 
As my monthly goal was to finish the block,  I am linking up with One Monthly Goal hosted by Elm Street Quilts.
 

I am also linking up with the linky parties on my Events And Links page.  Please pay a visit to some of them.

 

 

 

Leave a comment

 

Raindrops On Flowers

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

 

Purchase Stained Glass Flower Patterns

 

Old stained-glass window panes set in stone-grey abbey walls bordered with red tapestries were the inspiration for my Flowers Of The United Kingdom wall hanging.  That was the original name because the flowers are the Scottish Thistle, the Welsh Daffodil, the Irish Flax and the English Rose.  I started working on this wall hanging with the Scottish Thistle in February of 2013 and slowly worked my way through the other three blocks.  The flower quilt patterns took me some time to draw exactly the way I envisioned them.

 

 

Welsh Daffodil paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase Welsh Daffodil Pattern

 

Welsh Daffodil was the hardest one for me to design but the easiest to stitch. I wanted a symmetrical design for these blocks and this little flower put up a good fight. This design went through a few iterations before I fell in love with this one.

 

 

Scottish Thistle Paper Piecing Quilt Pattern

 

Purchase Scottish Thistle Pattern

 

Having visited Scotland twice very extensively and having fallen in love with it, I really wanted to make a thistle quilt block. This wild flower instigated the idea of a wall hanging in my mind. Unlike the daffodil, I knew exactly how I wanted to draw this one. Because of the nature of the thistle flower having a lot of corners, this one is the most complex of the four designs.

 

 

flax_bag_front

 

 

Flax for Ireland was the next one I worked on.  I didn’t want a to make a shamrock for Ireland.  After asking a couple of friends and looking up reference material, I came up with Flax.  This flower was the easiest to draw.  You probably already saw this one where I used this block for the first tote bag I ever made.  I removed the yellow parts in between the petals from the original design since that was causing the block to have too many points to line up when stitching the two sections together.  I wasn’t ready to give up on the original design yet, so I used this extra block for the tote bag and went back to my drawing board.

 

 

Irish Flax paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase Irish Flax Pattern

 

I ended up redesigning the block using Y-seam even though I didn’t know how to stitch Y-seam before I worked on this block. I looked up how to stitch Y-seam and trusted my ability to draw a pattern without ever having sewn using that technique before. Y-seam is really not as hard as I thought it would be and it worked out exactly as I envisioned. I couldn’t be happier with the result.

 

 

English Rose paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase English Rose Pattern

 

Last but not least came the English Rose because I had absolutely no idea how I wanted to draw it. The daffodil was a little easier to draw because of its limited number of petals, whereas I had to work with the shape of the rose. I like what I have here, it was easy to sew and I love the little gingham fabric I used for this one. It was a lucky find!

 

 

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Patterns

 

Purchase Stained Glass Flower Patterns

 

As you can tell, they all share some design elements.  I also added some extra details on each side of the flowers, but they can easily be substituted with a single piece of fabric for simplicity.  Each central flower block is 6.5″ x 8.5″ with seam allowance and the overall block measures 10″ x 10″.  Some of you may remember my showing these finished blocks last year.  Then I got stuck at how to quilt this wall hanging and it sat unattended in the cupboard until very recently.

 

 

Daffodil Quilt Pattern

 

 

One day I was reading in the living room and it started raining outside.  As I saw the the raindrops falling and splashing, I had my quilting motif.  I drew a set of 0.5″-spaced concentric circles and cut them out with my small rotary cutter.  I used them as templates to draw out every single circle before I started quilting them.

 

 

Circle Quilting

 

 

Once I finished quilting the wall hanging, the name Raindrops On Flowers sounded so much better.

 

 

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

 

 

I took my time with every single part of this project until it felt right to me and I am so happy that I did.  I have never hung any picture over our bed because we live in California and I am afraid that it might fall and injure us during an earthquake.   After experiencing an M6 earthquake in August, I was very happy about my decision.  That very day of the earthquake I had finished painting our bedroom a shade of light buttery-yellow and a mossy green accent colour on the bed-wall.   Now I have the perfect wall hanging for that wall.

 

As my friend Susie said so aptly shortly after the earthquake, “I can’t help but think that this quilt that you are finishing, reminds me of nature and beauty… with earthquake shocks moving through them…”

 

Happy Sewing,
-Soma

 

 

 

Leave a comment

 

Enter your email to receive new inspirations, product reviews and pro-tips
icon
error: Content is protected !!