Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
  • About

    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
M T W T F S S
« Nov    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
Locations of visitors to this page Subscribe with Bloglines
 
A Cot Sheet – Inside Exhibition November 24th, 2011

But not just any cot sheet… As a follow up to the Australian Government’s 2009 National Apology to Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants,  The National Museum Australia has mounted an Exhibition “Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions” http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/inside/

The Exhibtion designers took the many stories that had been collected and set about working out how they could be displayed for the exhibition…They envisioned one story written on a cot sheet, they found an old metal hospital cot, chose cursive script and I was recommended to them for the job of embroidering the story onto the sheet.

First task was to find a white cotton sheet that could be embroidered, most sheets are so tightly woven that I would not have been able to push the needle through them, my fingers where saved by a friend who had a much worn, soft cotton sheet that was lovely to work on.

I embroidered the cursive script with stem stitch using 3 strands of DMC in an old blue ink colour. When the embroidered sheet was put into the cot it made for a very poignant display.

ABC TV 7.30 ACT vidio review

 

Below is the text embroidered on the sheet

Text on sheet

Cake of Cards August 8th, 2009

Jack and Ace of Spades CakeMy niece has turned 21 and tonight she had a House of Cards fancy dress party and my sister and I made her a Jack and Ace (total 21) Cake…

We shaped the cake so that the Jack was lower than the ace and we used royal icing to get a smooth white surface and a tube of black writing icing to add the detail…we had a few problems with the royal Icing but it all came together when we added the black details.

Two Quilts May 1st, 2009

The Granny

Leading up to Easter with the help of my sister and my friend we had blitz the house getting it cleaner and more organized than what it has been for many a year, then after Easter with the house still clean I decided that it was time for some stitching. I wanted to make my friend a couple of small cuddle quilts for her to give to her grandkids.

As it turned out we ended up with two not so small quilts because we decided that for one of the quilts we would finish one that I already had peiced and partly quilted…after we had finished the quilting and bound the edges and finished it as a quillow, I added a few small appliques to personlize it a bit…the fish down the bottom seems to have got himself a little lost….

Nine Patch and quarter square triangles

For the second quilt we started by using the same design as the first and made up the red and green nine patches, when we had them done and started looking for fabrics to go with them we decided that squares would suit this quilt better and with the help of another friend and her stach we chose enough fabrics for the squares, while looking for the fabrics for the squares we had pulled out the fabric that we ended up using for the borders.

And now my friend has gone home I won’t be getting straight back into blogging because bright and early tomorrow morning I am heading off with a couple of other friends for a 2 week caravaning holiday.

Nine Patch and Squares

Our 2009 Painted Easter Eggs April 12th, 2009

2009 Painted Easter Eggs

My 2009 painted egg

These are our 2009 Painted Easter Eggs (prior years eggs can be seen here.)

This year I painted my egg into a Kokeshi Doll, I had the idea last year when I visited the Cowera Japanese Garden and saw there display of Kokeshi Dolls and thought how well there simple shapes would fit around an egg.

Eggs are a unique shape and over the years that we have been painting eggs it has been interesting to see how the egg shape can be used, it makes some things are really difficult to represent other things fit quite naturally onto the egg shape.

This year my sister also thought of an idea that fitted naturally onto the egg, she is reading the Cadfael novels by Ellis Peters which inspired her to paint her egg as a monk complete with tonsured head and I love his little sandled feet.

Janice 2009 painted eggJanice 2009 painted egg bottom view

Lily 2009 painted eggThe egg shape also fitted my niece’s idea, when she was young I made her cups of tea in a miniature china tea set (cup is about 1 1/2 inches high), when I bought the miniature tea set she was unable to say cuppa and would ask me if she could have a Pucka tea, she has fond memories of those occassions and wanted to make her egg into a Pucka Tea Cup…As I said the egg shape was suitable for making a cup but it was not so easy to achieve because it required sawing the egg in half across the weakest area of the shell, I broke a few eggs trying and in the end we used one that I repaired with paper machae and then reinforced around the rim with finger nail Acrylic, I also used the finger nail Acrylic to attach the wire handle, the saurcer is made from cardboard.

Hard to stitch with foggy glasses – updated my blogroll January 30th, 2009

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

Blankets of Love January 17th, 2009

Today My Quilting friendship group got together for a sewing day to make Blankets of Love…Blankets of Love are small quilts made to comfort the family’s of still born babies, a 24 inch square quilt to wrap the baby and a matching 6 inch square quilt for the parents to keep.

Jenny and I made this pair starting with a wonderful fish fabric and then raiding Jenny’s fabric stash for what would go with it.

Blankets of Love

And Now I Have Too… May 13th, 2008

A couple of weeks ago I posted about dying the lining for a lace cape, when I had it rinsed and dry it had washed back to a pink colour which was far lighter than what I wanted, last week I got to the shops to get a different dye and have now redyed the lining…

Now I like the colour, only problem is that I put a piece of the lace in the dye bath just to see what colour it would go and it took the colour so well and looks so lovely against the lining that I am now going to have to dye the lace too.

The dyed lining and lace for my cape

Posted in Not Crazy || 1 Comment »
Hubble Bubble April 16th, 2008

Cutting out lace for capeAt last months crazy quilt meeting I was given a bundle of lace that a friend thought that I might be able to use to make some clothing, when I measured it there was 15 metres of it and I decided that it would make a good cape.

The lace is only 80cm wide so I had add a couple of seams to the pattern that I borrowed from Sharon, to fit it on the fabric, it was easy to do and I have the lace cut out.

The lace is a beige colour and I want to put it over a burgundy lining but the light weight cotton fabric that I want to use for the lining only comes in white so I have had the dye pot out to get the colour that I want.

Dying lining for cape

Posted in Not Crazy || 1 Comment »
The postman delivered a blast from the past April 4th, 2008

1969 was my first year at high school, the year that I learnt to use a sewing machine, the year I learnt to sew and one of my first non school sewing projects was to make ‘quilted’ pencil cases for my self, brothers and sister…My eldest brother looks after his things, he used his for the next 25 odd years and when he did retire it he kept it still and now 39 years after giving it to him he has given it back to me, it was a real blast from the past when I opened the package that the postman delivered.

pencil case that I made in 1969

A Buzy Day April 1st, 2008

Their first painted egssIt was a buzy day, I had a visit from a quilting friend, who was passing through town, and we had lots of catching up and quilt talk to do…as well my son had a visit from a friend and her 4 year old twins.

The egg painting stuff is still out on the table and I thought it would be nice to let them paint an egg, I found painting smocks and as it was a lovely sunny day they sat outside to paint their first eggs…

I photographed their eggs in the garden because they had both come and told me that I had a lovely garden because it had lots of hiding places for the fairies.

Their first painted egss