For the last few weeks I have been casting around in my head for an idea of what I could do for a class sample that I need to make….my head is full of ideas but all of them would take more me to long to stitch and be to intricate for this project…I needed something that would be uncomplicated and quick to stitch…the solution was delivered by the postman…I am in a christmas cracker swap and one of the crackers I received was wrapped in a pretty pink and cream piece of crazy patchwork… when I was showing Sharon, we commented on how lovely it was to receive a pieced wrapping and started speculating on how I could use it …Light bulb moment…I knew how I could use it but because I needed it before christmas I did have to cheat a little, Sharon did conspire with me by rewrapping the cracker in another piece of fabric while I turned my back so that I couldn’t peek inside.
 
Debbie’s block is partially embellished leaving empty areas for me to work on.
The first thing that I had to do was adjust the size of the block to fit my project…I could have done that by trimming off one end but that would have meant moving embellishments and loosing most of the dark pink fabric and I didn’t want to do either so I decided to cut off one side and add it to the bottom.
 
When I stitched the piece across the bottom I wanted to include as much of the pink fabric as I could which meant that I had a whole in the pieceing, I covered it with 2 roughly leaf shaped appliques.
 
I started the embroidery with a row of buttonhole stitch with seed beads and covered another seam with herringbone stitch worked over rick rack braid and trimmed with colonial knots and pistol stitch…At that point I felt compelled to straihten the edges because I like to know exactly where the edge of patches is….I used the grid on the cutting board to get it square.
The next thing that I did was make some praire points so that I could use the bits of fabric that I had cut off when adjusting the block to size. Praire points are usually made from a square but mine are made from rectangles because the bits of fabric were not quite big enough to cut squares.
By this stage I knew what I was doing…in keeping with the block I am doing only the basic stitches and not over embellishing…Normally I fight with keeping things simple but with this block it has been easy, I think that it is because the colours and embellishments on Debbie’s Block reminded me of my first quilt, and how much I enjoyed the stitching on it, with these thoughts in mind I have enjoyed a contented days embroidering the rest of the seams…tomorrow I will add just a few embellishments and the block will be finished…
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December 26th, 2005 at 3:12 am
Hi Annie
What a great idea! Your work is lovely. I have been in a Christmas Cracker exchange this Christmas with a group of crazy quilters on the net. we each made one cracker and filled the inside with stitching goodies and sent them to our secret sister. It was such fun.
Some were heavily embellished and others were not, but they were all gorgeous. What you have done here would be a great way to save them and enjoy them for years to come. I can send you pics of the one I did if you would like to see it.
Merry Christmas.
Shari Masson
Regina, Sask
Canada