Hi dear readers, here I am back again after an extended break…I have just read my last post and a lot has happened since then…I did a few more seams on my katrina block but was making no headway and eventually decided to piece another block, I kept the idea of the stage coach and pieced the block so that the stage coach would have a background and I had started the wistera when christmas activities took over followed by a visit with my family which was to be a relaxing 3 week holiday, I took my stitching with me thinking that I would be able to sit under the mango tree and stitch…did I get that wrong…with from 12 to 18 mouths to feed there was a lot of shopping cooking and cleaning to do, and the Mango tree has grown since I was a kid, there was a lot of leaves to be raked, and then there was new year and a couple of birthdays to celebrate and my brother’s inlaws visiting from Germany, And there was a wedding to be organized for another of my brothers who got married under the Mango tree, which we had lit up with fairy lights, my sister and I iced the wedding cake and I was proud of my son who, besides doing most of the food catering, made the wedding rings…for several days leading up to the wedding it had been very hot and humid but a cool change came through so that their day was beautiful and the rain held off until late in the evening and then it rained for several days, flooding our tent and creating additional loads of wet towels and cloths…my 3 relaxed weeks extended to 4 whirlwind weeks but even though I didn’t get the Rest that I had so wanted, we did eat well with fresh fish my son caught and spanner crabs fresh from the trawlers and I did enjoy the sun, sand and swimming, the walks down to the creek, and the outdoor life that we live up there and I got home feeling refreshed and ready to stitch…
…I unpacked my Katrina block, finished the wistera but when that was done I lost my way again and made ridiculasly hard work of the embroidery, I kept trying to put meaning into every stitch and having to remind myself that the embroidery is the background to the embellishments and just has to look good…maybe I was just delaying because I didn’t know how I was going to do the stage coach, when I first thought of it I had cross stitch over waste canvas in mind but the details on my picture were to small, after much dithering I decided to do the main sillohette with fusible webbing with the details added with stem stitch which worked well…I added the moon in the sky, the red butterfly and the pussy cat found his way into the garden…and then I stalled again, I had lots of ideas and lots of charms to choose from but there was no flow in how I was placing them…I asked my son and his friend if they would choose from the charms and play around with where they could be placed, one of the things my son did was to move the saxaphone up a bit from the corner where I had it because He wanted to put the music notes floating across the sky which created the flow that I had been missing, I also like the way his friend lay the shoe down with one on the side, it not only looks good, it stitche on well and disguised the fact that it is 2 right shoes…in the bead trail I incorperated hammer and nails, scissors and thread as symbles of the rebuilding that will be needed and a clock for the passing of time as our lives go on through the seasons, the highs and lows, the disasters and the triumphs as life goes on…when we had been playing around auditioning the charms I had jokeingly placed the computer charm in the sky saying that it could go up there in cyber space, I then seriously stitched it on there because it didn’t fit any where else and I did really want to put it on because without our computers and the internet this wonderful crazy quilt would not have been created…
…and I am here to tell you that it is a truely wonderful quilt….I collected the blocks from Sharon last week and my Congratulations and thanks to all who made blocks…It is an honour to be entrusted with assembling your blocks into this exquisit and I believe historic Crazy Quilt…
…How I layed the blocks out and prepared them to be joined will have t wait because it is now very late here and I have got to go to bed so I will leave you with my finished block and say goodnight.
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February 4th, 2006 at 8:49 am
What a treat to see your finished block, it is really lovely 🙂 I am so pleased that you are blogging the quilt assembly and it is really interesting. Thank you, firstly for taking on the project, and secondly for sharing your thoughts as you undertake it. I will be checking in with fascination as you put all these wonderful blocks together.