Annies Crazy World

Altered Books do take take time to do the initial preparation, I found that I had to paste pages together to get the look I wanted and then the pages have to be painted and it takes time for the glue and paint to dry.

Now that most of the initial glueing and painting has been done I am delighted with how it is looking and it is ready for the fun part of embellishing the pages.

Originally blogged on Monday, 11 April 2005

This project is turning out to be more a test of my photography skills than of my stitching skills…I have found that outside, on a cloudy day, without flash gives the best detail…Today was perfect, a lovely sunny day with high clouds drifting across the sky in front of the sun so you can see most of the detail in the photos of these seams….I also spent some of my day digging in the garden which is starting to look a bit like a garden again….and the first of the pansies that I planted last week is already flowering.

I chose a wide lace for this seam because the dark patch is large and square in shape and was dominating the piece and I wanted to tone it down…you can see how I have placed the wide lace diagonally across the seam so that it changes the angle of the seam as well as covering some of the patch…..The top half of the lace was to be held on by colonial knots over the spots on the fabric covered by the lace, the spots look good on the lace but the edge itself still looked unfinished so I carried the Cretan Stitch all the way around…I used a variegated thread to break up the length of the seam…and you can’t really see them in the photo but each outside stem of the Cretan Stitch is capped with a Fly Stitch sealed with a Colonial Knot.

Feather Stitch variation done by making the stitches parrallel with the seam instead of at an angle. The thread is 4 strands of Madeira Decora Rayon thread, I don’t enjoy stitching with Rayon but I like the way it looks when done, it does help to damp the thread before stitchin…I have trimmed it with Pistil Stich done in metallic thread….Pistil Stitch is a Colonial Knot. but instead of going back through the fabric at the same point as you came up you go down a stitch length away so the the knot has a tail.

Narrow Satin ribbon stitched on with a combination of straight stitches, Colonial Knot. and Herringbone Stitch.

Double Feather Stitch trimmed with Colonial Knot.…Whilst I am supposed to be sticking with reds I could not resist this thread which is variegated from burgundy to green giving just a hint of the green to add variety to the stitching.

Whenever I find lace that is made up of individual flowers I buy a metre or more which gets divided and goes into different dye pots, giving me a good variety of colours and sizes which just need a colonial knot or bead in the centre of each to make a lovley trail …my original selection of flowers for this trail had more darker flowers in it but when I stood back to look at the overall piece the cotton lace on the other seam is pinkish and needed balancing so I brought in the lighter coloured flowers.

Originally blogged on Saturday, 09 April 2005

My brief is to keep the stitches simple so I started with Buttonhole Stitch, alternating long and short lengths and trimmed with a metallic thread Colonial Knot, you can’t get much simple but it always looks lovely.

Chevron Stitch in a red crochet cotton trimmed on one side with Fly Stitch and Detached Chain done with metalic thread and Colonial Knots that are barely visible on the other side….another part of my brief was to not make the stitches to even and this row is far from being even but I love how crazy quilting makes even crooked stitches look lovely.

This seam is up and down stitch with a metalic thread Colonial Knot and a row of Chain Stitch…On the back of the dress because I don’t want to have beads sticking into my back when I sit down I am using doing colonial knots with metalic thread where I would otherwise use beads.

It was autumn and the leaves are falling…I will leave you with the red carpet of leaves that fell overnight onto my newly planted seedlings.

Originally posted Friday, 08 April 2005

This is the second end of the Panel…I repeated several of the fabrics and used only 17 of my 30 fabrics…The whales didn’t go in because I would have only wanted a small patch of it and would need lots of patches to hide it amongst and the patches I have used are quite large and not that many of them.

I went through several bags and boxes and gathered all the red/maroon/burgandy threads that I found as well as a few ribbons and the odd bit of lace…enough to get started with….

Originally blogged Thursday, 07 April 2005

For the foundation of the crazy I was going to use a light weight, loose weave fabric but I don’t have any and was going to buy some when I went shopping this morning to look at fabric for the rest of the dress…I got to the shops on time but my sister was held up so we had a coffee and decided to leave the fabric shopping till the weekend and I came home…after waiting 40 minutes for the road service to come and unlock my car as I had left the keys in it oops….though while waiting in the car park I found a wallet that turned out to belong to a young guy that my son knew, so he was delighted to get it back and happy that I was there in the car park to find it….all of that to explain that I got home without any loose weave fabric and decided that the good quality, soft calico (muslin in the usa) that I normally use, would do just fine for the foundation.

I drew the stitching and seam allowance lines for the neck hole onto the fabric, then held the fabric against the window and traced the stitching line onto the back side of the fabric so that I can see it when piecing and have it visible on the back for when I stitch the dress together.

I set the ironing board up beside the sewing machine and started piecing…I started with second patch down on the right side, It is a small piece of silk that must have slipped out of the box yesterday and I found it on the floor today, it was all crinkled up but I liked the mottled colour and when I looked at it I liked the crinkles in it so instead of ironing it I left them there letting the crinkles form pleats in the seam and I will stitch beads into the folds (I will try taking a photo tomorrow in sun light without the flash and see if I can get the detail to show you).

I did only get one end done as I had a quilting group meeting to go to tonight and us much as I would like to stay up and finish it I have got to go to bed as soon as I finish here.

When I arrived at Jan’s she had already posted on her blog that I was coming for a creative play holiday.

Today working from the book ‘Altered books Workshop’ by Bev Brazelton we started making an altered book.

Thus far it has a match box set in as a draw and the hole cut for a shadow box.

I am on holiday…I debated with myself wether to pause the details till I returned or wether to write the drafts ready to post each day but did I have time to prepare 10 details…Then I realized that I could achieve 2 goals in one, when I announced last week that my brides maids dress was runner up in the creative clothing I couldn’t link to where I had blogged the details of its making because my old blog had become password protected when the company made some changes, before that happened I had saved the posts to my computer and have intended to transfer them into this blog and as it is the Bride that I am visiting I thought that it would be appropriate if I used those posts as my details while away…Apologies to those that did see them first time around

A new Crazy quilt Project – Originally posted on Wednesday, 06 April 2005

This morning I had a phone call….would I be brides maid for my friend who is getting married in 5 weeks? Yes….and what colour would I like to wear? she knew that I would say dark red/maroon….She emailed a couple of dress designs and we talked about them discussed what we had time to make, cost, and what would suit both of us…

This is the design she chose, the centre panel of the top (front and back) to be crazy patchwork, hers in creams, mine in maroons…So I have 4 weeks to make an 8″ x 50″ crazy quilted panel….It will be interesting because we have very different styles of work, we have often joked that she is big bits and fast, I am little bits and slow…well she is fast and already has hers pieced but has used smaller patches than she normally would and I will do mine bigger than I normally would and I will keep my embellishments simpler than normal which should speed me up a little.

As I started to pull fabrics I realized that it was also an opportunity to Blog a crazy quilted piece from conception to completion….First up I started pulling fabrics, I went through the box of fabrics from swaps and pulled out all the maroons and dark reds, I then went through my stash and pulled out all that took my fancy at a quick glance, I ended up with about 80 fabrics, far to many…I went through them taking out those that where to dark, to light, to purple or otherwise not right… I reduced it to about 60 which fabrics I packed up and took to Sharon’s when I went to visit this evening, she suggested the removal of several more fabrics, one of which I have kept in for now, it is a piece from a tie that is the right colour with little whales on it, Sharon’s thought was that whales weren’t suitable for a pretty dress for a wedding, I agree with her about wanting it to be pretty but my friend likes whales and I like hiding unexpected bits in my crazy so for now it stays in…when I got home I culled several more that where to pink when I want the overall balance of colour to be dark…I am left with about 30 fabrics which is probably about right for the area that I have to cover.

Besides the fancy, after 5 and lace type fabrics that you would expect my selection of fabrics includes some quilters cottons, a piece of plain polyester and some stretch knit fabrics because they are the right colour and I like the textural difference of putting the shiny, fancy fabrics next to them.

Down Under in Australia Christmas Time is mid summer…Tonights detail is a Summer Christmas which I stitched onto a Round Robin Christmas Stocking that finished its travels in Canada…The image to the right is to show you how I positioned it on the stocking.

The rubber for the thongs in this detail was cut from the side of my friends thongs and they have thread straps because they are the first pair I made….I quickly realized that beads would be much easier and have purchased real thongs to cut them from.

I made the beach towel by painting the beach house on velour fabric and using buttonhole stitch for the fringe.

The coke bottle is from a doll house/miniature shop…the seagull is an iron on charm.

The Santa hat is a cone of fabric stitched down the back with a strip of white felt around the bottom and a white felt pom pom.

I started the details of this piece with aMOP Button Snow Man for Winter Time.

Tonight I finish it with Rubber Thongs on the Beach for Summer Time.

Rubber thongs are classic Australian footwear, personaly I am not very fond of the real thing but when they are only 1/2 inch long they are real cute.

The above image is actual size…In the detail below you can see the pieces of rubber that I cut from a real thong and how I have beaded the straps.

And below is the entire picture.

The group of items in tonights detail is a summary of the Crazy Quilt, Time and Internet Themes that I was working with.

The Book and Computer are Plastic Buttons that I painted with my son’s modeling paints and permanent ink markers…and yes the painting I showed you last night is the one on the computer screen…An image of the piece seemed like a cute thing to put on the screen but I think that I was probably also hinting at the double meanings and the layers of my theme.