last year the Canberra Krazies planned to make a group crazy quilt to enter in the Canberra Quilters Annual Exhibition and it was decided to keep our quilts making a secret and I was banned from blogging my block until after the exhibition opening…we wanted to make a Quilt which would show off the beauty of crazy quilting and with the environment in mind we shared cream fabrics from our stashes and each made a diamond shaped block, 2 blocks where modified to have a rounded edge and one block was extended at one end so that when the blocks were put together they form the shape of a leaf.
 As we were making our blocks they became a tribute to our group member and friend Lynne and the quilt will be donated to the Hospice where she spent her last days…We named our quilt Peace in Pieces because crazy quilting is made up of little pieces and we beleive that it is in the little pieces of life that we can find peace.
The Exhibition opened today and we were all delighted to see a blue ribbon beside our quilt, it won first prize in the group quilt exhibition and I can now blog my block which I will do over the next week.
Notes on how we constructed the quilt: The following links are a step by step guide to how I construct crazy quilts…step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4
The edge of our quilt is faced, I had never done a facing on a quilt before, I had worked out how to to the shaping at the top but would have had difficulties tring to mitre the bottom corner but as it happened I didn’t get to that worry because when I came home after spending the day, with friends, basting and tying the quilt, I logged on to find a track back link which was Alison Aller thanking me for the how to construct the layers of a crazy quilt and when I scrolled down through her post there where instructions for facing a quilt including how to easily get beautiful neat corners so thank you Allie.
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 The last time I posted I was about to head off on holiday and I had a lovely week away, the image is me enjoying Fairy Floss at Berry Market.
When I got home I was somewhat distracted and it has taken me a while to get back into the routine of stitching and blogging…some of what I have been up to will be revealed as I get back to blogging my sampler which I have now begun to update.
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It has been hot for4 days now and today was so hot that my glasses have been fogging up and if that is not bad enough, when I tilt my head forward the glasses start to do a slow slide down my nose, makes it nigh on impossible to sew and to think that Melbourne and Adelaide are even hotter…
A quit job I have found to fill in some of the day is to update my Blogroll and I would like to introduce the 2 Blogs that I have added
The first blog is Story of a Sampler, Mandie started her sampler on the 21st November until then her stitching history was limited to cross stitch and black work, She started her sampler with these stitches that she did know and then went on to work her way through the stitches in the ‘Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Needlework’, I think that choosing a book to work her way through was a great ideas for teaching herself and it has been exciting to watch how quickly her stitching has improved…If you are a beginner wanting to start a sampler read this post and then browse through Mandie’s other posts and be inspired to get started…Mandie also has a list in her sidebar of other blogs that are making band samplers.
The other Blog is Time Out Stitching, a quilting blog written by my sister in law so I can tell you that she has been a fine stitcher since school days…
I hope that you enjoy these 2 blogs
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 I cut the base fabric for my box top into 5 odd shaped pieces and tonight I have stitched the third join, I have photographed the back because it shows where the joins are more clearly than the front does.
At this stage the cream oval looks a bit wonky but lace will smooth out the top edge and I have a crazy quilted heart that will overlap onto the cream in the bottom left corner that will cover the irregularity of the piecing in that area
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The 1st of December is the beginning of summer…I have used a bright summery coloured thread and will tag summers with Thong charms.
This year on the first of December Venus, Jupiter and a crescent Moon lined up to form a Smiley Face in the sky…For the dark background I used watered down acrlyic paint which I sponged onto the fabric after I had stem stitched a frame to contain it.
The end of December is Christmas which I have tagged with a Santa charm.
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For the last 2 years I have resolved to blog regularly ALL Year and have successfully kept that resolution…I thought about making the same resolution for this year but really I think that my blogging has become enough of a good habit that I don’t need the resolution to continue regular blogging…So what to resolve to do, I have had lots of thoughts of grand things that I would love to achieve but I think that a resolution has to be doable, if it has any chance of being kept, so I thought a bit more about the more modest things that I would like to achieve, amongst them is a project that is well started but untouched for more than a year, I do think that it is time it was finished and I hereby resolve to FINISH my Crazy Quilted Box Top before the end of 2009.
My Garden has provided me a lovely new years day treat with this, the first of my Lilies to blossom.
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I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and I wish one and all a Happy New Year.
To end the year I leave you with an image of a beetle that I photographed in the garden a couple of weeks back, the size (about an inch long) and shape as a Christmas beetle but even more vibrantly coloured than any I have seen before, he really is One of Natures Jewels.
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Above are the finished Twin Stockings you can see larger images on my website Here and Here and below they hang above the fire place with the rest of the family’s stockings.
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This seam is a Buttonhole stitch variation and is already on my sampler.
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Today it is Sam’s Birthday, he cooked his own cake and after I picked my niece Lily up from school we iced and decorated it…again we were working with what I had in the house looking around for ideas I found the dinosaur button and when I showed lily she said we can put him in the middle and he can be standing on a hill with clouds in the sky and she was away.
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