Welcome to my stop on the Inspired by Nature Blog hop featuring Island Batik summer 2020 collection. The fabric I am featuring is Tropicana Twist designed by Kathy Engle. As you can see, it has most colors of the rainbow with a clearly tropical vibe.
The theme for this blog hop is Inspired By Nature. With bright yellows, greens and turquoise, and a name like Tropicana Twist, what comes to mind? A tropical paradise with warm sands and sparkling water? A coral reef with seaweed and brightly colored fish?
My inspiration comes from a place over 2000 miles from any tropical paradise. It is the Morning Glory pool at the Yellowstone National Park. This is a picture of the pool from our trip to Yellowstone in 2014 (photo by Anil Deo). More on this pool and its colors at the end of this post.
To showcase all the fabrics in the collection, and to mimic the gradation of colors in the pool, I chose a sea glass style quilt. One of my fellow Houston Modern Quilt Guild member, Allie McCathren (@exhaustedoctopus), makes these incredibly beautiful and artistic sea glass quilts. Checkout her Instagram feed for sea glass quilts of all sizes, shapes and colors.
She recently published a digital class for her technique. The class includes several examples, videos where she discusses fabric choices, tips for getting a random assortment of sea glass shapes, and so much more. I highly recommend the class.
The mess you see here is from all the cutting and peeling. Rest assured this was all cleared up and fusibles were not served for dinner.
Once the bits of sea glass are cut and fused to the background, I took it to my long-arm and sewed around each piece multiple times. Precision is not required. You are allowed to color outside the lines. Allie recommends using two layers of batting, which I did. I used two layers of Hobb’s Heirloom cotton batting that had left over from another project. This makes the sea glass pop and give a very nice texture.
This quilt measures about 36″ x 40″ and uses all but one fabric from the collection. I used Aurifil 50 wt cotton thread in canary for all the quilting.
About the morning glory pool: This pool was originally a clear blue like the morning glory flower. The color comes from thermophilic microbes that thrive in the pool’s very hot water. Over the years tourists to Yellowstone threw coins, bottles and other trash into the pool which partially blocked the vents and reduced the temperature of the pool. The orange and yellow comes from other microbes that thrive in slightly cooler temperatures. The gradation of color is surely beautiful but it is yet another example of how we fill everything in nature with our trash. The park has many other pools with varying temperatures and different colors. The morning glory was unique for its clear blue hue but we will never get to see its glory again.
I am giving away two sets of nine 5″ x WOF strips from this collection – one on this blog and one on Instagram. To enter, just leave a comment on this post. Visit me on Instagram @storiedquilts314 for the other giveaway. Both are open for a week. I will pick a winner on December 2nd.
The rafflecopter below is for a giveaway sponsored by Island Batik. It is for a FQ bundle of Tiki Punch. It is open till end of this week. To enter, visit all IB ambassadors sharing their projects this week and leave a comment. Visit the Island Batik blog for more details.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Your quilt is absolutely gorgeous! I hadn’t heard of that technique. So I’ve also learned something.
Michelle
https://mybijoulifeonline.com
Beautiful quilt, love how you used the fabric.
Very pretty quilt! I first thought of pebbles when I saw the picture, but sea glass is perfect for the fabric. It is a shame that the color of Morning Glory pool will never show the blue it started as.
Ooooh!! This is awesome and gorgeous!! I love it and really want to make one too!!
Your quilt is beautiful and a wonderful representation of Yellowstone’s Morning Glory. Congratulations.
The colors in that IB palette are gorgeous! Of course, it’s fun to see your creative work. I’ve been watching those sea glass quilts; so tempting. Using the pattern and fabrics for the Morning Glory pool quilt was a great idea!
Love the fabrics and how you show them off with your great design.
Wow! You sure did a lot of work on this! Beautiful!
Your quilt is beautiful and the fabrics were perfect to show off your design. I loved reading the info you shared. It is such a shame people destroy some of our most beautiful sights with their trash. Thank you for sharing and for your giveaway.
Your quilt is beautiful!
Yowzers…GORGEOUS. I’m obsessed with this technique…gotta make one!
Great technique! Thanks for sharing.
Wow your quilt is gorgeous. All that work has really paid off. And what a wonderful memory of your visit. Thanks for inspiring. Need to go look through some of my photos because I know I have some interesting ones. quilting dash lady at comcast dot net
WOW!!!! Your quilt is simply beautiful! Now I wish I could visit your source of inspiration. I bet it’s breathtaking.
Pretty quilt, great job matching the colors of the pool.
Thank you for sending a message about the utter disregard humans have in general for our precious planet. So many many beauties we have destroyed and continue to destroy. The day I posted my trees quilt, I read that since 1970, we have lost 50% of the planet’s species. Fifty. Percent. Your quilt is beautiful, but packs a punch to the gut with the true story. I too bought Allie’s class and cannot wait to make quilts; like you I have ideas as to how to expand upon her brilliant idea! I loved the ‘not served for supper’ quip!
Love your Quilt and its inspiration. The pools at Yellowstone are so gorgeous! I saw them as a child and can still remember what they look like.
Hi Vasudha! WOW. Seeing this piece just gives me the chills. Your inspiration comes through loud and clear, and oddly enough I recognized it as soon as I saw your thumbnail photo. Yellowstone, I thought to myself. What a gift you have and I am thrilled to be able to experience it. I had to giggle at the thought of serving up some nice, fresh fusible pieces for dinner. Yum. Not. HAHA! Beautiful and your quilting also adds to the voice rather than shouting over it. {{Hugs}} Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. ~smile~ Roseanne
Love this! Such beautiful colors, and your inspiration photo really comes through. I will look into the sea glass technique, that looks really interesting. What a great entry for the Inspired By Nature theme!
Love how you used the sea glass technique, beautiful!
This piece is so beautiful and such a unique creation! I’d love to try this technique…thank you for the tips!
duchick at gmail dot com
Gosh, how cool looking
this is. Love the rock
looking fabric cuts.
Carla from Utah
Wow…amazing work. It must have taken forever to prep and then quilt. Well done.
Wow! What a lot of small pieces to cut and fuse. But the end product is beautiful! So sad about the Morning Glory pool, though.
I love your quilt. I love all the sea glass quilts I have seen on IG. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the opportunity to win.
Your quilt is beautiful! That is an interesting construction method. Thanks!
You did a wonderful job on your quilt! And I learned a lot from your post, too. Thanks so much for sharing!
Again, just stunning! I love the inspiration and your rendition of it. I definitely see one of these in my future (I have sea glass tile and pebble shower tile) so I am a little obsessed. This makes me even more obsessed. So glad the remnants weren’t served for dinner!
Thanks for sharing your sea glass quilt and its inspiration. I’d never heard of the Morning Glory pool and I appreciate learning about it. Yes, it is sad that it will never be seen in its full glory again. I’m glad that it served as inspiration for your quilt though – this is so beautiful! And I can just imagine the fun you had arranging all those little bits. The quilting is also stunning! I just love looking at this. Thanks for your delightful post and for all the other inspiration that you share on your blog!
A pool of beautiful fabric that shines and pops with your quilting , truly stunning
I love your quilt. It’s really unusual
Very creative use of fabric to recreate the pool
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Your quilt is wonderful! It would be fun to play with those batiks.
Your quilt is gorgeous. But I am even more struck by the story you shared. I’m so glad you used your platform to inform us about the environmental damage we have done; perhaps you will cause each of us to think and to change our actions in ways small or large.
Wow! Wonder work! Lot of patience! Your work is an inspiration!
Wow!!! That is such a cool quilt, and the colors – I love where your inspiration comes from – one of my favorite parks!
I love Yellowstone and all of the unique pools there. I have never seen a quilt done in a style like this. How pretty!
Beautiful quilt! The story of the reason for the pool changing colours is so sad and frustrating but the colours are still incredible. Thank you for sharing both the quilt and the story.
This quilt is awesome! I love the colors, inspiration, and quilting!
What a lovely quilt and such a clever use of the fabric. Thanks for sharing on Wednesday Wait Loss.
Hi Vasudha, what an amazing quilt. I saw your post when you linked up to Free Motion Mavericks (thanks!) but had do come back and read and savour it 🙂 I also followed your links and now I am registered for the course. Such a technique could be incorporated in many quilts – although the first one will be my own sea glass quilt. I’ve never seen sea glass but I’m going to ask my sister-in-law or neice (from Denmark) so see if they have any. Getting to the sea from here is not an easy thing since we are sort of land locked. Take care and thanks again!