Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
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    This is Annie Whitsed's Crazy World a world where I stitch the joys and chaos of life into beautifull crazy quilts. email annie@loopylace.com
March 2024
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A Clue… November 30th, 2005

I have had a response to my challenge to find all the charms on my jeans bag.…and the feedback I get from it is great, I wanted things to be hidden in my garden but because I know where they all are I can’t access wether they are hidden or not and I am thrilled that from the charms that weren’t on the first players list I can tell that I succeeded at hiding and losing things in my garden.

To assist anyone else who wants to play I have put BIG images of the front, back and sides of the bag into my website Gallery so that you can see how the images of the details fit together…

…and A Clue…key This image is a key to the sort of detail that you are looking for.

Life gets in the way November 24th, 2005

Well I was sitting here one night over a week ago sorting out images showing the detail of the charms on my bag but because of the curve of the bag and the dimensions it was difficult to select images that showed the hidden details and took me longer than I thought it would and before I got back to them the next day I hurt my back which has immobalized me for nearly a week…life does get in the way sometimes, I was just glad that I had finished my bag before my back went…it still hurts but it is on the mend and I can move again and have been able to sit at the computer for long enough to finish selecting images of the details…I ended up with 18 images and have put them up in three pages.
Charms page 1,
Charms page 2
and Charms page 3

When I have caught up on a few other tasks I will come back and add descriptions beside each image but before I do those of you who like playing games may like to go through them and see if you can count how many Charms I did use?…And because I would be interested in feedback as to how much detail is clear in the photos and how what you see is interpretted I will send a squishy to the person that sends me the most comprehensive list of the charms I have used…For my count I defined charm as anything that I stitched on other than flowers and leaves….send your list to mailto:annie@loopylace.com before 5th Dec so that I can post the squishy on Mon 7th Dec so that it should reach the winner before christmas.

And have you seen all the other Bags made from Jeans at the
Bags of Fun Gallery.

The grass did grow! November 16th, 2005

while I have been stitching on my bag we have had lots of rain interspersed with sunny days and when I was looking out my studio door today and realized that while I have been inside playing in my fairy garden outside the grass has been growing….

the grass grew

And for those of you wondering about the charms I am sitting here choosing, cropping and resizing photos to give you a detailed look at them.

How Many Charms? November 15th, 2005

The first thing I did today was baste a piece of organza over the garden so that the thread didn’t keep getting caught around the buttons and charms, it protects them while I am constructiong the bag.

protection

I was hesitating in stitching the binding down because I felt as if I wanted to anchor the handles to the base but I don’t know what I was using for handles, I solved this problem by getting sam to make me 4 square links that I stitched to the base of the bag so that I can attach hanldes later.

loops for handle

The binding is stitched down with Back Stitch done in a matching thread.

Back stitch

As for what to do for a handle, I asked Sam for another piece of wire to try stiffening a handle but what I was thinking of didn’t work…in the meantime I twisted a hook onto each end and hooked them over the links in the bottom of the bag and I think that I like the bare wire look, I will decide tomorrow if I like it or not…I have stitched the back half of the lining in place so that I can photograph it tomorrow as finished.

the handle or not

And how many Charms did I use…Not telling yet…

November 13th, 2005

I am inventing the pattern and how to make this bag as I go and method that often requires a rethink as in….last night I made a pattern for the bottom of my bag…found the legs from the jeans…Ooops I practiced painting the wall and path on the bits that were big enough to cut the base without a seam, guess I will just have to use them anyway there is enough bulk without adding extra seams and nopbody should be looking at the bottom anyway…I cut the base out and pinned it in place, perfect fit but the base needs stiffening so I put it away till today…Today I unpinned it, found some stiff stuff and a bit of lining, repinned it and started hand stitching it in place…half way around I dediced that the back needed stiffening and that it would need to be stitched into the base seam, so I unpinned the back portion added the stiff stuff, stitche it on down the side seams and around the pocket, I then repinned the base seam and continued stitching it…while stitching the back seam I reluctantly decided that the front also needed stiffening which meant unpicking the seam, putting the stiff stuff in and repinning and stitching the seam.

I had hoped to do some of the stitching by machine but it is so thick and awkward that it all needs to be done by hand..O well on with the job and I stitched the binding on but because the stiff stuff is so thick the binding wont go on in the normal way so I have turned it back on itself and stitched it flat to the base…which is as far as I have got tonight…next thing to do is to stitch the the edge of the binding through the base as well, which will cover all the raw edges leaving a neat finish but that will have to wait till tomorrow

the base

The Cow didn’t jump over the moon November 11th, 2005

Instead he found a shady tree to rest under.

The cow is in the field

The Charming Garden November 10th, 2005

I made a Guitar Strap by sticking silk ribbon to the back of the guitar with clear nail polish and tied it to tiny teddy so that he could play his golden guitar by the pond…I stitched him in place and wasn’t sure whether I liked him or not, he looks fine in this photo but he didn’t fit the bigger picture so when the nail polish failed and the strap came unstuck it was any easy decision to take him off.

here last night

I will put up photos of the other charms on the weekend…In the meantime I have done the lining for the fly pocket…

Fly Pocket

seam on bag

And stitched the back seam, it is the middle on of the 3 in the Photo. I was a bit concerned that the seam would be very bulky with all the layers but I did a variation of a flat fell seam and it has gone together very neatly.

I added another bush to cover the end of the wall and some of the seam and a few gold lfowers will finish it off

And then it should have been time to stitch the base on…but I was led astray or maybe I should say that I was led up the garden path…I visited Sharon and she actively encouraged me to add a few more charms… When I got home I couldn’t help poking in Boxes to see if I could find any that I had missed the first time…and to my delight I found several little stashes lurking in brown paper bags as well I thought of places to put a couple that I had rejected first time round, my son Sam who has named my bag The Charming Garden, helped me reduce 90 odd extra charms back to about 15 which I now have to sew on…tomorrow

Taking a short break November 9th, 2005

My Nowra Crazy Quilt report will have to wait until I have finished my Bag of fun because there was to many other things to do at Nowra and I only got 3 charms stitched on, I have been stitching on it since getting home, it is slow work because of all the layers of pockets but I now have 50 charms stitched on and am taking a short break before stitching the last few or 20 on…and then I have to construct the bag…In the mean time you can see a couple of retreat photos over at Two Cents

Spot the difference November 2nd, 2005

This afternoon I was stitching with Sharon Who did think up this challenge? sitching on denium is crazy, I have a sore index finger from yanking the needle through and now I have a hole in my middle finger…mind you I will thank her next week when it is finished and my fingers have healed because I do love how my bag is developing…

BeforeAfter

and what I spent the afternoon doing is unpicking a flower to move it down just 1 cm…I hesitated before making the change becuase I am running out of time but I am glad that I did, in the higher position it was next to the wistera and looked To Big…in its new postion it looks like it is in front of the wistera and so the scale looks right and it creates a better line, bringing the eye down into the picture.

bottom right corner

I have added a bit more to the Garden in the bottom right corner.

and I have learnt how to put text beside photos.

Pond

Some reeds around the pond and the background is done and it is time to add charms…below are some that my son Sam has painted for me.

And Below

charms 01
Carms 02
Charms 03
Charms 04

Moonlit Garden November 1st, 2005

I have added a silvery moon to the sky so I now have a Moonlit Garden…I have also painted the cloads on and added tiny gold flowers across the bottom of the right side garden, so enough wasn’t enough lol… Both gardens looked nice but because I did different style gardens they didn’t match, adding the tiny flowers across the front of both gardens has united them so that they now read as the same garden…I have put a large image on flickr

Moonlit garden

I also had problems with the colour of wistera because I had not used any mauve in the garden, Sharonlooked through her thread collection for me and came up with a pale pink/mauve/blue varigated thread that still looks like wistera but is pale enough to blend in….I must say that I was pleased to finish the wisteria as denim is very hard to pull the needle through at the best of times and even harder in the limited space of the pocket.

Wisteria