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
January 2009
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Hard to stitch with foggy glasses – updated my blogroll January 30th, 2009

It has been hot for4 days now and today was so hot that my glasses have been fogging up and if that is not bad enough, when I tilt my head forward the glasses start to do a slow slide down my nose, makes it nigh on impossible to sew and to think that Melbourne and Adelaide are even hotter…

A quit job I have found to fill in some of the day is to update my Blogroll and I would like to introduce the 2 Blogs that I have added

The first blog is Story of a Sampler, Mandie started her sampler on the 21st November until then her stitching history was limited to cross stitch and black work, She started her sampler with these stitches that she did know and then went on to work her way through the stitches in the ‘Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Needlework’, I think that choosing a book to work her way through was a great ideas for teaching herself and it has been exciting to watch how quickly her stitching has improved…If you are a beginner wanting to start a sampler read this post and then browse through Mandie’s other posts and be inspired to get started…Mandie also has a list in her sidebar of other blogs that are making band samplers.

The other Blog is Time Out Stitching, a quilting blog written by my sister in law so I can tell you that she has been a fine stitcher since school days…

I hope that you enjoy these 2 blogs

My Band Sampler 145 – Detail 852 – Australia Day January 29th, 2009

Australia Day on my SamplerI wanted to get the last panel finished before going on with this new one so I am few days late with this detail, Australia day is the 26th January…I used a silk thread and stem stitch for the outline of the map.

My Band Sampler 144 – The first 6 panels – Getting harder to photograph January 28th, 2009

The first 6 panels of my samplerPanel 6 is the longest of the panels yet and I am thinking that it will be the longest that I will do because it is to long to photograph easily…we did try and get a photograph of joined panels unrolled on the floor but it went through 3 rooms with 3 different light conditions and did not photograph well.

Below is an image of the rolled sampler, I held it in my hand to give an idea of scale. On the top of the roll the dark red binding is the first 10 feet the gold binding the second 10 feet and the last 2 1/2 feet is green, you can also see how the tags show along the edge of the roll.

The first year of my sampler rolled up

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My Band Sampler 143 – Detail 851 January 27th, 2009

Crow\'s Foot Embroidery stitch

A friend saw this stitch on one of my crazy quilts and I got the book, The Complete Stitch encyclopedia by Jan Eaton, to show her the directions and decided to do a few samples of it while I had the book out…The stitch is called Crow’s Foot.

My Band Sampler 142 – Detail 850 – Starting the 2nd Year January 23rd, 2009

Start of A new panel

I will use sewing equipment charms to tag my samplers anniversaries…I use the Tags (charms) down the side of the sampler as I would use bookmarks in a book.

At this point I would have liked to have a photo of All the panels from year 1 but it will have to wait untill tomorrow because I am still putting the ribbon down the sides of panel 6.

My Band Sampler 141 – Detail 849 – A Samplers interpretation of A Year in My Life January 22nd, 2009

Summary of 1 year of samplingTomorrow is My Band Samplers 1st Anniversary, when I told my son he asked how long?…To wrap up the first year I have done a summary of my samplers statistics…

And how long is it? It is 22 1/2 feet which for metric users is 6.75 metres (Australia converted to metric measurements in 1970, I can work in metric but as all my Quilting rulers, imported from the USA, are imperial I tend to work in imperial.)

The end of Sampler Panel 6The fabric that I have used for this panel was 72 inches wide so it is a very long panel which I am nearly to the end of and while I was stitching the summary I decided to cut the last 7 inches off the end because it is getting impractically long to keep in one roll and by finishing a panel at the end of the year and starting a new one I will have the option of rolling the panels in one year rolls.

My Band Sampler 140 – Detail 848 – An Historic Day January 21st, 2009

Celebrating the Inauguration of Barack ObamaI had to think about the date to embroider on this one because where I was watching the TV coverage in Australia it was 4 am on wed 21st but that date doesn’t work because History will say that Barack Obama was Inaugurated on the 20th January 2009 and an historic day it is, certainly for the USA and I think that it will go down as a an important day in World History which is why I have recorded it on my Sampler.

get together

This afternoon I picked Sharon up and we went to the Botanic Gardens to meet up with Doreen who is also from Canberra and Judy who is visiting from Adelaide, we had a lovely afternoon of show and tell and chat…see Sharon up and we went to the Botanic Gardens to meet up with Doreen who is also from Canberra and Judy who is visiting from Adelaide, we had a lovely afternoon of show and tell and chat.

My Band Sampler 139 – Stitch Explorer o4 – Detail 846 – Chicken Scratch January 21st, 2009

Miniature Apron with Chicken Scratch EmbroideryMiniature Apron with Chicken Scratch Embroidery Actual size

Before I started doing samples of chicken scratch the only way that I could think that I would use chicken scratch would be if I wanted to make a miniature apron and before I knew it I was making a miniature apron using 1/16th inch gingham and simplifying the pattern to single cross stitches…The only model that I could find that was the right scale (5.5 inch high Doll) was dressed as some sort of super women, an outfit that doesn’t quite go with and pink apron but you get the idea.

Chicken Scratch on my Band samplerThat is all the chicken scratch that I am going to do so I have taken a photo of the whole chicken scratch section.

My Band Sampler 138 – Stitch Explorer o3 – Details 842 and 845 January 20th, 2009

Chicken Scratch variations

I think that I have mixed feelings about Chicken Scratch, it is not a stitch that I would have chosen for crazy quilting (and crazy quilting is my main focus of stitch chose on my sampler) and I do find it a bit tedious to work but now that I am playing with it the patterns that can be formed are sucking me in…Umm with waste canvas I could add them to crazy quilting…

My Band Sampler 137 – Stitch Explorer – Details 840 and 841 January 19th, 2009

Reverse Chicken Scratch

What a difference a change of colour makesThe next obvious variation of chicken scratch for me to sample was reverse chicken scratch, the image on the right shows the chicken scratch and reverse chicken scratch together, I love how the change of thread colour has the appearance of changing the colour of the ground fabric.

I then did chicken scratch as a counted thread, next to that done on the gingham background I thought this line looked almost to perfect…If you look closely the left side is slightly different to the right side because some directions laced the thread around twice and other directions only laced the thread around once, so I just had to try both….for the first 4 laced stitches I wrapped the thread around twice and for the last 4 I only wrapped it around once, I prefer the double wrap.