Annies Crazy World

Double Feather stitch trimmed with beads.

Chevron Stitch…and yes you can barely see it, I didn’t want an obvious stitch sticking out the top of the lace so I did the seam red on red so that the seam is embroided but it doesn’t distract from the lace.

A simple but effective Buttonhole stitch variation trimmed with detached chain stitches.

And here is the 4th block in mums quilt. it is a photo of my sister as a teenager with one of the several family cats that where all named Ginger.

I already had one of these lace motifs on and have added another one to lead the eye across the seam, which is yet another way of breaking up a long seam.

The above seam court my eye when I was looking at my second Quilt ‘Butterflies” it is a combination of herringbone stitch and twisted detached chain stitch…I chose a seam on my box top for it but it needed more so I did another row of twisted chain along one side…I really like the pattern it created but it wasn’t blending the seam in like I wanted it to, I think the mistake I made was choosing a matt thread when I actually needed a metalic thread for what I wanted…Ahhh that was the problem…

…I didn’t choose a metalic thread because I didn’t want any more metalic because I don’t like the metalic patch, when I realized what the problem was the Fix was easy, I unpicked the seam and covered the patch with a new fabric…appliqueing a patch over the seam is a quick, effective way of breaking up long seams.

This is another seam on the crazy quilt that I am making for my mum.

Cretan Stitch trimmed with Fly stitch on one side and Fly stitch alternated with beads on the other side…I like trimming each side of a stitch differently.

I have filled a small gap in the long seam, on my Box Top, with a trail of little lace flowers stitched on with beads.

Well I slept on it, thought that I might add a butterfly in the top left corner but then couldn’t find a butterfly that wanted to be there so the block is officially declared finished…

You can see a bigger image on flickr

Today I have added a charm at the top because I liked the way the brown stone complemented the brown Patch.

I then thought that it needed something else brown in the bottom left corner to balance the brown…a tip from a florist many years ago was to have 3 spots of colour in the arrangement and I have found that it also works well to balance crazy quilt blocks….what I found was a violin charm, which also picks up on the tamborine that my Gypsy girl is holding…The violin is an old brouch that my son painted for another project and then I didn’t use it, the bit on the back of the violin is bulky so I pushed a hole in the fabric for it and stitched it on from the back of the block…

Above the violin I did a bead trail which creates a strong line to lead the eye down and around the block.

And then to balance the weight of the beads I used a fan charm with a few more beads trailing from it in the bottom right corner.

And When is a crazy quilt block finished? answer When the maker thinks it is…as the maker of this block I think that it is now finished but as I want daylight to take the final photo I am going to sleep on it and take another look in the morning before I decide for sure.

For the last seam on this block I have used a piece of braid and 2 folded ribbon flowers from the Heavenly Embellishments Bag…

I scrunched the braid just enough to be able to twist it back and forth across the seam and then used the ribbon roses to as a focal point…I find that some of the purchased ribbon roses are loosly folded making them a bit floppy and they are also somewhat bigger than I like so I altered them before stitching them on, I ran a gathering thread around the back of the rose pulled it up tightly and used extra stitches to hold it in place to make them smaller and more compact. I finish I picked up on the beads in the seam above and added a couple of seed beads at the bottom.

Now for a look in the button box and charm draws…