Annies Crazy World

When I got the blocks from Sharon they where in the plastic bags that they had arrived in and the first thing that I did was to remove each block from its bag, I wrote the makers name with pencil in the seam allowance on the back so that there could be no mix ups and I pinned the notes and bags of extra beads to the back of the block so that everything connected to each block could be kept together….

I handed the blocks, with its info attached, to my sister who enjoyed having a good look at each block before laying it down on the sheet I spread on the floor to protect them so that when all were done they where arranged in the random order in which they came out of the bags.

I am now going to try and tell you my thoughts as I rearranged the blocks into a visually pleasing quilt…The
All that Jazz blocks varied greatly in colour and style and comlexity and they needed to be blended into a balanced whole…

The first block that I moved was Marty’s, as winner of the popular vote I felt that Marty’s beautifull block deserved to be in the central portion of the quilt which is more a focal point for the eye than the edges.

Janet added no embroidery or embellishment to her block which I thought was going to make it difficult to position but when we read the words ‘Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans’ it seemed obvious that it should be in the bottom right corner like a signature block because the simple message seemed to summarize the feelings of the quilt.

Catherine takes the prize for the heaviest block received and I placed it in the bottom row where I felt that it would be least likely to cause the quilt to sag under its weight.

Willa’s ‘Sunrise in New Orleans’ was the most distingtive block and needed to be carefully placed and that was easy to do as the block told me that it needed to go down the bottom of the quilt where the sun’s rays could rise into the quilt.

Alison’s Lois Armstrong block needed to move to the right side so that Lois would be blowing his Trombone into the quilt. I put it in the central portion of the quilt because Alison’s block is one of my personal favourites.

Linda’s fan is also a distingtive feature and looked best on the left side where it had more space to show it off.

Betty’s peacock with his stunning tail needed to come into the centre of the quilt where it could be framed by the surrounding blocks.

Sharon’s Saxaponist looked a bit trunkated with other blocks around it so I moved it up to the top left corner where he not only plays into sharon’s block but plays into the whole quilt.

Kate’s Angel flew to the top row from where he could keep watch over New Orleans.

Pam I love your block but it did set me a challenge, being the only block to use white fabric, it was the most difficult to position….folding the seam allowances back so that there was less white helped, with less visible white I found the spot down the bottom where it is balanced by the light colours in Alison’s.

Hi dear readers, here I am back again after an extended break…I have just read my last post and a lot has happened since then…I did a few more seams on my katrina block but was making no headway and eventually decided to piece another block, I kept the idea of the stage coach and pieced the block so that the stage coach would have a background and I had started the wistera when christmas activities took over followed by a visit with my family which was to be a relaxing 3 week holiday, I took my stitching with me thinking that I would be able to sit under the mango tree and stitch…did I get that wrong…with from 12 to 18 mouths to feed there was a lot of shopping cooking and cleaning to do, and the Mango tree has grown since I was a kid, there was a lot of leaves to be raked, and then there was new year and a couple of birthdays to celebrate and my brother’s inlaws visiting from Germany, And there was a wedding to be organized for another of my brothers who got married under the Mango tree, which we had lit up with fairy lights, my sister and I iced the wedding cake and I was proud of my son who, besides doing most of the food catering, made the wedding rings…for several days leading up to the wedding it had been very hot and humid but a cool change came through so that their day was beautiful and the rain held off until late in the evening and then it rained for several days, flooding our tent and creating additional loads of wet towels and cloths…my 3 relaxed weeks extended to 4 whirlwind weeks but even though I didn’t get the Rest that I had so wanted, we did eat well with fresh fish my son caught and spanner crabs fresh from the trawlers and I did enjoy the sun, sand and swimming, the walks down to the creek, and the outdoor life that we live up there and I got home feeling refreshed and ready to stitch…

…I unpacked my Katrina block, finished the wistera but when that was done I lost my way again and made ridiculasly hard work of the embroidery, I kept trying to put meaning into every stitch and having to remind myself that the embroidery is the background to the embellishments and just has to look good…maybe I was just delaying because I didn’t know how I was going to do the stage coach, when I first thought of it I had cross stitch over waste canvas in mind but the details on my picture were to small, after much dithering I decided to do the main sillohette with fusible webbing with the details added with stem stitch which worked well…I added the moon in the sky, the red butterfly and the pussy cat found his way into the garden…and then I stalled again, I had lots of ideas and lots of charms to choose from but there was no flow in how I was placing them…I asked my son and his friend if they would choose from the charms and play around with where they could be placed, one of the things my son did was to move the saxaphone up a bit from the corner where I had it because He wanted to put the music notes floating across the sky which created the flow that I had been missing, I also like the way his friend lay the shoe down with one on the side, it not only looks good, it stitche on well and disguised the fact that it is 2 right shoes…in the bead trail I incorperated hammer and nails, scissors and thread as symbles of the rebuilding that will be needed and a clock for the passing of time as our lives go on through the seasons, the highs and lows, the disasters and the triumphs as life goes on…when we had been playing around auditioning the charms I had jokeingly placed the computer charm in the sky saying that it could go up there in cyber space, I then seriously stitched it on there because it didn’t fit any where else and I did really want to put it on because without our computers and the internet this wonderful crazy quilt would not have been created…

…and I am here to tell you that it is a truely wonderful quilt….I collected the blocks from Sharon last week and my Congratulations and thanks to all who made blocks…It is an honour to be entrusted with assembling your blocks into this exquisit and I believe historic Crazy Quilt…

…How I layed the blocks out and prepared them to be joined will have t wait because it is now very late here and I have got to go to bed so I will leave you with my finished block and say goodnight.