New Crazy Quilt Happening

I have retired from full-time work.........yayyyy, clapping hands.........so at last I can get back to my crazy quilt which I started over five years ago.  I have just finished the first four blocks with about twenty more to go.  I have put my cream-on-cream crazy quilt on the back burner for now because I need to remove all of the gold brass charms and replace them with gold thread embroidery. As the charms tarnish and go dull and dark, there is no way that I can clean them without marking the cream fabrics and laces - I don't know what I was thinking of, putting metal charms on the blocks. To see the cream-on-cream blocks check out the post for May 22nd 2011.

So I am back to the coloured one and I'm really having fun. I have no idea when I start stitching just what I am going to finish up with. It's like the blocks are telling me what they want putting on them next. Here are photos of the first four blocks which may all get sewn together into a very colourful and busy crazy quilt or they may get separated by strips of black velveteen fabric. Definitely NOT black velvet though or the house and my nose will be full of little specks of velvet pile.

Block One. Peacock is hand-dyed and sequins added to his eye and tail. I thought he went well with the Peacock Feather fabric to the right of the bird.

Block Two.  Angel block.

 

Block Three.  Floral Bouquet Block.  The floral embroidery in the centre was recycled from the lid of a trinket box which I did for a magazine article featuring Rajmahal Threads. The embroidery was all worked in a single thread. When the black fabric box got shabby from use, I unpicked the lid and used it on this crazy quilt block.

Block Four.  Fans Block with some gold metal fans which started life as a pair of earrings.

Lorrie's Poinsettias and Purple Tree Skirt

Lorrie in Canada sent me two wedges to work on.  My favourite was this one with patches in purple, cream and Red Poinsettias with green leaves.  I can hardly wait to get started on this challenging colour combination.

And here is the finished product - lots of purple, gold, red and green with a little bit of cream to balance the colours that Lorrie used.  She wanted "Royal" and what could be more royal than three crowns at the top representing the three Kings from the Orient who visited the Christ Child, bearing gifts.  It was quite difficult keeping the red and green down to a minimum as well, my natural instinct told me to keep adding more and more but I resisted, LOL.

Oriental Tote Bag finished - another UFO hits the dust!!

I spent the day sewing the tote bag with the front and back panels from the SouthernCrossCrazies Tone-on-Tone Round Robin.  This bag is for a Chinese/Malay workmate called Debbie who loves the bright colours that I used in the two panels.  My thanks go to the girls who worked on the RR - they all did a fantastic job.  Debbie wanted a bag with short handles that could also convert to a shoulder strap........here are the photos of the finished bag.

Debbie's tote bag FRONT view

The BACK view

The bag with the shoulder strap out and the little handles tucked away.

Rebecca's cq bibs in the CQI FFT18 Swap

I have joined the Fabulous First Timers 18 round robin, (FFT18 RR) and for the last month I have been sewing on Bec's bibs.  Bec made two bib shaped blocks, one cream and the other BLINDINGLY bright.  They will go on the front of singlet tops when she gets them back.

I chose the bright one to work on but had trouble getting going because of the large floral patch of bright stylised flowers.  First of all I chose to sew in one strand of DMC cotton with 2 strands of Kreinik Blending Filament but it was too heavy.  I unpicked the flower and did it again but by half way through I could see that one strand of Rajmahal Art Silk with two strands of the Kreinik was still too heavy.  Finally, I stitched the whole thing in just the two strands of Kreinik Blending Filament and it was fine.

Bec had used a huge piece of floral fabric which swallowed up the embroidered flower so I took the liberty of adding another piece of fabric in the same orange colour as another flower which had also become lost.  The two together blended well so then I put some metallic gold lace along the two seams and added little irridesent blue flower beads.

I didn't take Bec's fabric from under the orange piece because I thought that if she had particular ideas for the large floral piece then she could unpick the orange piece and get back to what she wanted.  I remembered the Golden Rule of Round Robins - never do anything to someone else's block which can't be undone by the owner later.  Fortunately Bec loved the orange bit so I was lucky and it will stay now.  Here are the photos of the block - naked and dressed, LOL.

The two photos at the top are of the naked and dressed block and below is a close-up of the embroidery (long and short stitch and blanket stitch) with the Kreinik thread plus Kreinik very fine braid for the outlines.

1956 Fabric Stash from Aunty Amy

I met my cousin Jackie for lunch this week and she gave me another box of treasures from Aunty Ame's stash. For those who haven't read my previous blogs, Aunty Ame died in March 1970 and her boxes of fabrics, trims and laces ended up with my cousin who has kept them all these years just as they were 40 years ago.  Aunty Ame was my Mum's eldest sister and made dolls' clothes for Pedigree and Roddy dolls for a man who owned several toy shops around Perth and Fremantle in the 1950s and 1960s.

The contents of this box of tricks also included patterns for dolls' clothes cut from newspaper - dated 26th September 1956!!! I didn't know that before she made the dolls' clothes, she obviously did alterations for people so included in the box was the complete circular bottom 6 inches of a wedding dress with the hem on one edge. It had been shortened for someone and was a beautiful ivory satin fabric with a tiny rib pattern, perfect for crazy quilting.

Perhaps the greatest treasure as far as I was concerned were several cut-out bodices for Pedigree Walky-Talky doll size dolls where my aunt had probably cut out eight at a time and only needed seven.  There were lots of taffetas, satins, crepes, georgettes, voiles and unknown rayon type fabrics among the scraps and never having seen the light of day in 40-50 years, they were as bright and crisp as the day they were put in the box.  The only casualty was a gorgeous piece of grey voile fabric with a floral design in black flocking. The flocking had disintegrated into fine black "sooty" powder in some parts and landed all over my table, my clothes and the other materials in the box........rather than breathe in a lung-full of black flocking, I reluctantly threw that out.

It is so nice to meet Jackie and reminisce over our Aunty Ame, her boxes of iron-on transfers, cupboards of fabrics and drawers of laces and braids.  She was also a talented pianist with a dance band and was a wonderful cook. I can't believe it is 41 years since she brightened our lives with her lively personality and interesting stories which may or may not have been true.  Perhaps the best part was the smell - that fantastic smell of material from 1950s when the lid was taken off the box.  Sadly, now that the material has been ironed and allowed to breathe the fresh air again, the smell has gone - but it was Heaven while it lasted!!!

Inheritance from Aunty Ame

Click on each photo to see the contents clearly.

Mum's oldest sister Amy (my Aunty Ame) died in March 1970.  Her house and everything in it was left to my four cousins including a large box of laces, braids, ribbons and scraps of fabric. Aunty Ame was a professional doll's clothes maker during the 1950s and 1960s so every month or so, a man would leave dozens of naked Pedigree and Roddy dolls in their boxes at her house and he would pick up the previous lot, fully dressed in knickers, petticoats, dresses and bonnets. Some were dressed as brides and Bo-Peep while others were dressed as little girls in their Sunday best but all of them were absolutely gorgeous in their taffeta and flocked nylon frocks. I am not sure if this bloke owned a chain of toyshops or whether he was a toy wholesaler but this business transaction went on for several years that I know of.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my sister and I met several cousins for lunch on Sunday and I shall always be indebted to my cousin Jackie who has hung on to the box of bits for over forty years. They have not been touched........until today, when we met for lunch and she gave me the box.  I think I have died and woken up in Crazy Quilter's Heaven!!! I have just been going through the box and I actually remember some of the braids but the part that really spun me out was several little bundles of short length of laces and braids (obviously scraps) tied in bundles with ribbon.  I REMEMBER doing that when I was about ten or eleven and I was staying with my aunt and uncle during the school holidays.  She was sewing and I was bored, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I found them.....just as I had left them over half a century ago.

Right now, I am so delighted and stunned by all these treasures, some will undoubtedly find their way onto crazy quilt blocks.  I can never repay Jackie for her generosity nor can I repay my aunty for stashing all this stuff in the boxes and winding a lot of laces and braids onto cut pieces of cardboard from old Pedigree Doll boxes. Here are some photos of the stash which has not seen the light of day in over forty years.

Christmas Block number 15

I finished the Christmas block this morning and would like to thank Colleen from CQInternational because if she hadn't suggested "Chains" as the April mini-challenge, I never would have thought of doing a Christmas block.  When it was finished but "missing something", I asked DH what he thought it needed.......he suggested the gold star above the Christmas tree with the lines running from it and a gold charm of some sort in the bottom left hand corner (I found a bell, candy canes, a ginger bread man and a snowman) and the bell seemed to fit the best. I included the strip of broderie anglaise with the ribbon threaded through it because it represents a child in a nightgown anxiously waiting for Santa Claus.
So, moving on to block 16 with the May mini-challenge of Stripes.

My Work on Florence's Tone on Tone block and Kiko Flowers

The Tone on Tone Round Robin was organised by the Australian and New Zealand Southern Cross Crazies group. This block was a difficult colour for me to work with, especially keeping within the limits of the tone on tone.  For the first time I tried out Kiko flowers and I'm hooked on them.  From now on, there will be Kiko Flowers everywhere. I covered four seams, one with an embroidered motif which I got from Flights of Fancy ages ago and thought that I would never have a use for those muted tones and when Florence's block arrived, I knew I had found the perfect place for that motif. On another seam I used a piece of hand-dyed sparkly ric-rac braid with additional stitching on either side and I tizzied up Florence's scalloped lace with chain stitch, sequins, beads and detached chains.  My favourite seam was the Kiko Flowers and lazy daisy leaves which were darker than I would have done but I felt that I had to balance up with Sue's embroidery which was already on the right hand side of the block.

Cream on Cream Block 13 finished

The apples in the centre of this block reminded me of high Summer, which means butterflies, dragonflies, bees and flowers. This was a quick and easy block to do probably because of the Summer theme and once the butterflies were stitched in place, it was just a matter of covering the seams.  One seam treatment was a row of tiny butterflies in cream thread with gold bodies and gold antennai and wing tips.  I made the stitch combination up as I went along then I thought maybe other people might like to use it as well so my next blog entry will be a step-by-step how-to on the butterfly seam......I don't know how it will look in colour but it looks fine in cream and gold.

Sendai Block is Really Finished

This is the block after I have worked some more Bamboo on the left hand side, thanks to Gerry's wonderful suggestion and the gold work on the Crane completed.  It will be winging it's way to Leslie in America before the day is done, (the block, not the Crane, LOL).

Hearts and Hands for Sendai Block Completed

This afternoon I finished my Hearts and Hands for Sendai block.  I'm happy with it (I think) although DH suggested I should put something in the corner with the crane.  As far as I am concerned, the Crane is so big and so glitzy that it doesn't need anything else in that corner. I will now post this block off so that it can be included in the fund-raising quilts for Sendai.  What shall I do next?  I guess I should finish off the "Found Objects" cream on cream quilt block while I wait for the next block in the Tone on Tone Round Robin to turn up......plus every time I get one of those blocks on which to work my 1/5 of the embroidery, I also do 1/5 of the hot pink/red block for Debbie's tote bag.

I have also been out in the garden today and picked aother sixteen mushrooms from underneath the grapefruit tree, which is where I picked a dozen or so last week.  I have scoured the rest of the back yard but there are no more in the other places where I found them last week.

Naked Block for the Japanese Fundraising Quilt

I came home from work today and went straight out to the studio for three hours to sort through my fabric stash for some suitable jewel coloured fabrics for my block.  I even found two Japanese storks which I didn't know that I had and attached one to the block with fusible web to keep it in place until I can stitch around it.  Anyway, I think this naked block will give me lots of scope for incorporating Japanese icons such as Cherry Blossoms, bamboo, maple leaves, pagodas, fish, fans - I am looking forward to starting the embroidery on it now. Here's my naked block with only the pink bird iron in place.  The middle piece looks like water to me so I might start with a bright orange Koi.  There is not a lot we can do to help the people of Japan at this time apart from offering our prayers of support so hopefully when we have finished the quilts, the money raised will go a long way towards making life just a little bit more bearable for some.

2011 Tone on Tone RR

Yesterday I received Susan's naked block in the Southern Cross Crazies Tone on Tone Round Robin. I had no idea just how much stuff in the teal/purple/pink colour range I had in my stash until I started looking. Wow, it was like Christmas come early. Anyway I sat up last night sewing and again this morning and here is the end result. My only problem was remembering that there are four other people besides me that will work on this block and to make sure I only did 1/5th of the area.  I hope Susan likes what I have done because before I started, the block looking oriental now it looks floral.

PARASOLS Block 12 Cream on Cream Crazy Quilt Finished.

These are my Parasols for the March Victorian Symbolism Challenge for CQI but it is also Block 12 for the Cream on Cream Crazy Quilt.  I have had the hand-made broderie anglaise circular lace motif for ages - it consists of the circle in the centre, the flowers joined on individually with a few over-sewn stitches and finally the ovals around the outer edge were sewn on separately at the end. I kept picking it up and deciding that it just didn't suit any of the crazy quilted blocks until this one. It made a perfect parasol top!!  First of all, I appliqued the lace motif to cream satin and attached the tatting around the edge. It was still a bit ho-hum boring so I cut the parasol shape out of the cream satin and appliqued it to some darker fabric which matched the lace.  It was still missing something so I added the pearl beading and that's how it stayed while I finished off the rest of the block. This morning I added the parasol spines, ending each one with a 'grain of rice' pearl and a round pearl in the centre and voila! A parasol viewed from the top. 

The other parasol is the one that I embroidered last week while watching the DVDs of my nephew's wedding. Because I didn't want to take away from the parasols, I concentrated on the seam treatments and on some really unobtrusive flowers which hopefully will remain in the background.

Block 9 Completed

I have finished block 9 which started out with no particular theme and finished up being one of the main blocks in the quilt.  When I'd finished adding an elephant, a heart, a butterfly and a bouquet of Roses plus embroidery, the block was suffering an identity crisis but then my husband suggested that I turn the heart into a "cartouche".  A what?  "A Cartouche!" says he again.  He loves watching Antique Roadshow on TV and often in the jewellery section, Victorian watches, lockets, trinket boxes, serviette rings and cuff-links have a shape such as a heart, circle, oval etc in the gold or silver where people could get initials or names engraved.  So, I added my own initials VMG and the year 2011 in the blank section of the heart shape, in my own cartouche. I'm a bit disappointed that the heart edging has a "bulge" in it, it isn't straight. I tried to fix it but it's the way the motif was stitched originally and I can't do much about it. Suddenly though, the block felt complete, it looks happy again........I keep saying and it's true, these blocks develop a personality after awhile!!

Yesterday was actually a horrible day for doing anything, including stitching.  The temperature reached 40 degrees celsius which is 104 degrees farenheit and the humidity was revolting.  Everything felt hot and sticky until about 3.30pm when I decided that I really would have to brave the yucky weather and go shopping. The Heavens opened and heavy rain bucketed down accompanied by rolling thunder then just as suddenly, it stopped and it was still as hot and stickier than ever.  Today we were supposed to be hit by Cyclone Bianca but thankfully it has now been down-graded to just a heavy storm which hopefully will cool things down a bit. 

Block 8 "Spinning" Block completed.

I call this a spinning block because I started off with spiders for Good Luck - I finished up with two.  However, that made me think of spiders spinning and I remembered the lace motif I had of a lady sitting at her spinning wheel, spinning.  I think she was a tourist souvenir from Belgium because I saw a lot of lace motifs framed in gold frames when we were in Bruges but they were so expensive that I didn't but any, I just admired them.  When we returned to UK I went to the charity shops in Anlaby near Hull and found the lady, squashed between a piece of dark green velvet and a piece of glass in the mandatory gold frame.  Unfortunately the green dye from the velvet had bled into the lady's dress but with gentle washes in Sard and Napisan stain removers and then a diluted bleach solution, I managed to get most of it out.  There was still a slight green tinge to the back of her dress so I covered it as best I could with cream leaves and flowers. I also found the length of lace braid which looked a bit like a row of spinning wheels. This was also a good opportunity to use some of my antique mother-of-pearl buttons. Now on to block 9!!

Block 5 Cottage Garden block

I didn't realise just how pale this block was. It certainly doesn't look this pale in the flesh!! However, I made use of an antique bird motif which my husband says is on it's way to sh*t on the head of the lady busy in her garden......NOT TRUE! My antique bird would not do a thing like that. The lady is a lace motif which I bought when I was on holiday with my lovely friend Mary Lewis, I think I got her in a haberdashery shop in Milton or Ulladulla in NSW which has since closed down....shame that, it was a delightful old-fashioned habby shop. The flower beads are clear with a slight irridescent look, they are not all the pastel colours that show up in the photo. So block 5 finished, block 6 will get started in the train to work tomorrow.

Cottage Garden Block 5 Autocorrected

Today the temperature was over 100 degrees farenheit or 38 degrees celsius AGAIN....day after day of shocking heat. It's too hot to do anything other than sit in the studio or in the familyroom, under air-conditioner and stitch. This block has taken me all of yesterday and today to do but it's finished and I can start a new block tomorrow on the train.

Right! The stars come off!!

Having seen the photos of block 4 on the blog, those stars are definitely coming off. They are horrible to the max!!

Cream Crazy Quilt Block Four finished....

New Year's Day and I've spent two wonderfully relaxing hours working on block four of my cream on cream crazy quilt. This block contains two of my favourite pieces of lace. The large motif on the right hand side was bought for me by my lovely friend Jill Taylor in an antique textiles shop in Somerset, UK and has very fine organdie leaves which are over-embroidered with veins and in the centre is a 3-dimensional rose which is just over 1 inch across. I also love the very fine netting lace at the top left hand corner with the sprays of circles on stems.

While I am not a fan of sequin stars, the centre needed "lifting" and because there were already stars woven into the brocade, I added some more. I'm not sure about them though so they may come off at some stage in the future. The Angel button was given to me on an international crazy quilt block exchange and I loved it so much, I poached it for my quilt.