Annies Crazy World

From memory the diamond sides of the diamond are 10 inches and the diamond is about 8 inches across and peiced from cream fabrics.

Detached Chain Stitch done with a thick Rayon thread.

Spanish knotted Feather Stitch done with a size 5 cotton pearl thread.

Wheatear Stitch done with 6 strands of cotton embroidery thread.

last year the Canberra Krazies planned to make a group crazy quilt to enter in the Canberra Quilters Annual Exhibition and it was decided to keep our quilts making a secret and I was banned from blogging my block until after the exhibition opening…we wanted to make a Quilt which would show off the beauty of crazy quilting and with the environment in mind we shared cream fabrics from our stashes and each made a diamond shaped block, 2 blocks where modified to have a rounded edge and one block was extended at one end so that when the blocks were put together they form the shape of a leaf.

As we were making our blocks they became a tribute to our group member and friend Lynne and the quilt will be donated to the Hospice where she spent her last days…We named our quilt Peace in Pieces because crazy quilting is made up of little pieces and we beleive that it is in the little pieces of life that we can find peace.

The Exhibition opened today and we were all delighted to see a blue ribbon beside our quilt, it won first prize in the group quilt exhibition and I can now blog my block which I will do over the next week.

Notes on how we constructed the quilt: The following links are a step by step guide to how I construct crazy quilts…step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4

The edge of our quilt is faced, I had never done a facing on a quilt before, I had worked out how to to the shaping at the top but would have had difficulties tring to mitre the bottom corner but as it happened I didn’t get to that worry because when I came home after spending the day, with friends, basting and tying the quilt, I logged on to find a track back link which was Alison Aller thanking me for the how to construct the layers of a crazy quilt and when I scrolled down through her post there where instructions for facing a quilt including how to easily get beautiful neat corners so thank you Allie.

From time to time when visiting Sharon we delve into her books to look at different kinds of samplers and the map samplers always stand out as being interesting and I thought that the caravaning holiday that I went on in may seemed like a good opportunity to try a map.

After Easter I took a break to quilt with a friend, we made 2 quilts which I bloggged here.

The Gone fishing sign is printed onto fabric which I attached to some real thick stiffening before ironing it onto the sampler, a couple of stitches at the top, that look like they hold the chain on, do anchor the sign to the sampler.

To intigrate the ironed on photo I added embroidered photo corners and wrote under it as if it was in an album.

I forgot to check my list before I embroidered the next bit on the sampler and had forgotten to include ANZAC day, I want to include certain days so that when I look back through the sampler I can mark the passage of the years by those days so they don’t have to be fancy, they just have to be there so I tucked a comemorative pin into the bottom left corner.

I have just about finished catching up the stitching on my sampler and now it is time to catch up on the blogging.

Easter Monday was a sad day with the news that a very dear friend had passed away…

Across the top where I had a seam in the fabric to cover I worked a beaded fringe, the idea to weave a pattern into the fringe came from the beaded lamp shade fringe that my friend introduced me to wearing as a necklace (1 1/2 meters of lamp shade fringe wrapped loosly round the neck like a scarf), looks wonderful and feels exotic.

I finished my memorial with a butterfly and a single pink rose…

I miss her and I am just so greatful that our life paths crossed and that I knew her as friend.