Annies Crazy World

I thought that the block needed a quite, simple seam to balance Yesturdays seam and chose a seam of
wheat stitch positioned end to end.

Some of the images for this quilt have been easy to choose, others have been quite difficult…The image for this block has been one of the most difficult…This is my son Sam and I am thinking that maybe I just have to many photos to choose from…I had been hoping to get an adult photo of him but he is light sensative and it is almost impossible to get a photo of him with out sun glasses, today I got out the photos I put together for his 21st birthday and got my sister to help me choose a suitable image of him.

For the TAST Stitch I liked Sharon’s sample with 3 basque stitches hanging off the end of a stem stitch and adapted it to a seam treatment…

I can’t decide if I like it or not, it is certainly different, unlike anything I have done before…even though my seam doesn’t actually look like them I keep thinking of Triffids!

Sharon has lent me a pair of size 14 knitting needles…they were to big for the thread I had been using so I seperated the threads of some wool so that I had a single ply…it is bigger than the piece I knitted on the skewers but for this seam bigger may actually be better and it was much easier to knit with the metal needles…Sharon also suggested that I put coins in the photo to give an idea of relative size.

I have been Tagged to reveal 7 things about me by Sharon.

7 things about me, where do I start…Many things have come to mind since Sharon told me today that she had tagged me (see #6 of Sharon’s things)…It is the sort of question that I am prone to think to deeply and procrastinate about but tonight I am fighting that instinct and have made a quick random selection covering different times in my life.

1. Age 5 I had open heart surgury.

2. In the early seventies I could make a skirt from half a yard of fabric.

3. There is a watering can in the corner of my kitchen to recycle water into the garden…pre children I did 1/2 of a Biology Degree which was enough to make me a ‘think globally, act locally Greeny’.

4. My favourite book is Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

5. My home has been called a living Museum…The decor is eclectic, I love old things and have an extensive collection of small collections including a lot of ephemera.

6. I started doing crossword puzzles hoping they would teach me how to spell…I didn’t learn to spell but did learn how to use a dictionary.

7. I am a Night Owl.

Sharon said The second part of the meme is to tag a further 7 people I can’t quite decide if these memes are the equivalent of internet chain letters so I want to say people should only respond if they see it as a bit of fun…I do have mixed feelings as to wether such memes are chain letters or not so have decided to have the fun of listing 7 things about me but not tag on (if the tagging is a method of finding new blogs, those I would tag are all in my blog roll.)

Above is my Visual Journal sketches for this kite scene seam, which wasn’t working untill I added the cloud…

The cload is a piece of cotton batting stitched on with buttonhole stitch.

An appliqued kite with embroidered cross bars would have been just as effective but I couldn’t help myself from making a miniature kite from wire and fabric.

A bead doll is flying the kite.

I like this seam because it is the first of the scene seams that I have been able to work onto a vertical seam…

Below is the finished block 23…7 to go.

Above is the sketch in my visual journal for a knitting scene seam…I can remember my mum knitting, she did it because she had to but she hated it, until she got a knitting machine…A knitting machine would be very difficult to embroider but I reckon hand knitting will remind the family of the knitting machine that mum did love.

I used an emery nail file to file the ends of skewers to make needles small enough for the miniature knitting I need for this seam, The first piece below is a practice run to get the feel for the size, the second piece to work out the pattern that I want to do…The pattern is in memory of a much loved jumper that mum did hand knit from scrapes of wool, it had rows of diamonds about an inch high and was passed down from child to child.

I started this seam with the ric rac braid held on with herringbone stitch and the colonial knots…I then went looking for beads that weren’t a circle and came up with bugle beads, when I tried the red ones the seam looked christmassy so I used the irridescent ones (left hand side) but they looked a bit dull so I added the red beads to them anyway, it still looks a bit christmassy but that is OK because there is many family christmasses to be remembered.

I realized that I had not done any of the Whipped Wheels from this weeks TAST challenge so I have rectified that by doing a seam of them…I varied the sizes and I used a couple of different varigated threads to make them a little different…Whipped Wheels always remind me of Star Fish

I didn’t get any stitching done today but even when I am not stitching I am still thinking about mum’s quilt…One of the Seam Scenes that I want to do is a cloths line and the image below is part of my inspiration…The image is of a Miniature Quilt (5 x 6 inches) that I made in 1985.

Today I found a photo of a nephew that I have been trying to find for the last couple of months only to find that the image was just to small for what I need…The other place that I might have a better quality photo of him was from when he was page boy at my wedding, it only took me a couple of hours to find that lot of photos and I was rewarded for the search with a lovely image so I was able to get another block pieced today.

When I had the block pieced I felt that the bottom right fabric was a bit bright and that it would need a wide stitch in a neutral colour to tone it down a bit, this Cross Stitch from TAST week 9 worked to do just that.