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
February 2005
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I like this knitted metre February 25th, 2005

For my third knitted Meter I wanted to get away from the stripes of the first 2, I prefer asymetrical design and below is what I ended up with…I approuched it in much the same manner as I do my crazy quilting, that is I started with a vague plan in my head and then let it develope and change, which it did a lot of as I picked up wrong coloured balls of yarn and ran out of other colours, miscounted and miscalculated which I did several times as I had myself tied up in knots trying to manage up to 9 balls of yarn at a time…one thing that surprised me is that I chose to use orange, a colour that I have never liked and not only did I use it but I even like it, I think that as I have got older I have become more comfortable with useing colour.

Knitted metre #3

Anchor Embroidery Stitch cards February 23rd, 2005

Monday night I went to my quilting friendship group and had a lovely night which got even better when I was given these Anchor Embroidery Stitch cards.

Anchor Embroidery Stitch Cards

I have never seen anything like them before and can only guess that they are very old…they were being thrown out from a deceased estate of an 80 year old and my friend rescued them…lucky me…

Reducing the number of UFOs February 22nd, 2005

20six is doing some sort of update and I was unable to post last night and tonight I am unable to add images which blows what I was going to show you and I will just have to keep that for another night, so what I will tell you about is an idea I have had for merging 2 UFOs into one.

UFO #1 On my website I have a few little journal quilts, the idea is to make one a month and I love the concept but some months have so much to Journal that they have no time for doing it, other months I may have the time but nothing happening to journal, other times…well for one reason or another only a few get made.

UFO #2 Many, many years ago I started a Fabric Book…The Base was 8″ by 10″ Calico (Muslin) Pages, using a variety of different patchwork techniques, each page records something about me…..I have always thought of them as “glympses of my life”…They have come to light in my clean up and when I look at them now I realize that they are journal quilts.

Today when I was thinking about them I thought it is a pity that they are a different size when it occurred to me that they could be, by adding a border to the old pages to bring them up to the A4 size of the more recent ones thereby merging 2 UFOs into one….and if I make a box to keep them together as a set and think of them as Glimpses of My Life then I can enjoy adding to them as I have the inclination to make one without the pressure of having to make one every month.

»14:3

Making progress February 20th, 2005

As updating my website is listed as one of my UFOs I have made some good progress this morning and have more stitches to show you.

Clutch Purse

This is my clutch bag that the stitches from the last couple of days have come from and I now have it in my Gallery with a detail photo and information about the stitches and embellishments on it. I have also found a few odd pages in my site that I have now linked to my Gallery Catalogue.

A Pretty Bow February 19th, 2005

As well as helping me to get my studio cleaned up and reorganized Blogging has resparked my interest in my website and I have been photographing the seams of a clutch purse to put into my Gallery…one of the seams is below.

A Pretty Bow

This satin ribbon bow covers 2 seams…I tie the bow and then twist the tails stitching them in place with tiny tacking stitches and then go back along it covering each of my tacking stitches with a colonial knot or bead.

Learning to knit February 18th, 2005

Until 2 years ago I was not a knitter…I knew how to knit, I had knitted a scarf and matching beanie, a dolls jumper from hand spun fleece after a farm visit with a kindergarten class and this piece for my dolls house.

Miniature knitting….Actual size.

You can see a Magnified 100% view at flickr …I used Broder thread and knitted it with a needle (so that I could knit off both ends) and a tiny crochet hook and then transferred it to the pins (which have started to rust as pins do in this humid climate).

The reason that I didn’t knit was that I didn’t have the patience for it, all that time with no guarantee that the garment would fit when you did finish, it probably didn’t help that mum had one of the very early Knitting machines….After the wildfires in Jan 2002, when 500 homes were lost in Canberra, Quilters made quilts and knitters made woolen blankets for those that had lost there homes…A friend was knitting squares and I told her that if she supplied me with wool, knitting needles and instructions I would knit one of the 7” squares…I knitted 22…I discovered that when it was only a small piece I enjoyed knitting…and when the bushfire blanket appeal was over I started knitting squares for myself, another of my UFOs, I have enough squares, they just have to be joined up….

As I was doing them for myself I started to play around with texture, pattern and design (you can see the influence of my patchwork background in my designs), below are the first 12.

My first 12 knitted squares

Another thing that I have discovered is that I can knit when I am stressed and can not concentrate on doing other things…which is where I started this tale, when I was stressed earlier in the week I started knitting another metre which I finished knitting today.

My 2nd knitted metre

Leaving the best till last February 17th, 2005

Box top stitch 7

Gone from my table are the sorting boxes for the laces beads, charms etc…set aside temporarily and replaced by piles of paper…This change was forced upon me earlier in the week as I was looking for a small piece of paper with a number written on it…I did not find the number that I was looking for which did cause me some stress but after much phoning and running around town I was able to do what I had to without actually having the number… although I didn’t find the piece of paper I did find another thing that I had been looking for and because I had done a systematic search and some preliminary sorting as I went at least I had achieved some progress so all is good…. and I don’t mind that it means that I deal with the papers before doing the laces, beads, buttons and charms because they are going to be the fun bit, something to look forward to, a reward for doing the boring bits…It is like when I used to do Tapestrys I would do all the background first and then when my initial enthusiasm was waning it was OK because I had the good bits to re spark my interest.

Stumpwork February 16th, 2005

Tonight I learnt how to put a portrait in the side bar of my blog and have chosen a Self Portrait to show you….It is part of a Stumpwork sampler…below is the full self portrait which I did after learning how to do the stumpwork hands in ‘Raised Embroidery’ by Barbara and Ray Hirst. The needle is the eye end cut from a size 12 quilting needle, the skirt is the same fabric as one I wear, I used needlelace to make the little black top to go with it and the hair is stitched from strands of my own hair…. You can see the full sampler, which measures 12cm x34cm (5″x 13″) on my website Crazy Quilt Studio.

Stumpwork Self Portrait

Visual Journal rescues my memory February 12th, 2005

Cretan stitch, gathered ribbon roses and detached chain stitch

I have photographed all the seams that I have embroidered on my Blanket Box Top and have put 23 seams on my embroidery lesson page…When it came to putting the stitch names in I was glad that I had recorded them in my Visual Journal because I had to look up what several of the stitches were called…It is not the first time, nor dare I say the last time that my Visual Journal has come to the rescue of my memory.

Feather Stitch with looped Bullion Stitch and beads

My first finished metre of knitting February 12th, 2005

My first finished metre