Annies Crazy World

This Up and Down Buttonhole Stitch is the last seam on this block…now for the embellishments.

I have added a buttoncluster on the left hand side…and don’t know where to go from there, I have auditioned a few charms but most of them make the areas look crowded or just look out of place, I am going to sleep on it before doing any more.

The Ribbon for the bow was easy to find today…

click here for instructions for making the bow…normally I would do the knots with a different coloured thread but this block already has enough colour and I chose the cream ribbon to bring more cream into the block so I kept with that and did cream knots.

Admin note: I have made a good start on my new years resolution of blogging frequently thoughout the year and this post is my 103 consecutive post which is a new personel record for consecutive daily posts.

Or maybe that should be ‘On Track’ because organizing my stash is one of my goals for this year…I was side tracked from stitching today when I went to get a piece of satan ribbon to put a bow on the birthday block…confronted with this tangled mess I started sorting them, I started by dividing them into rough colour groups which I held together with a pin stuck through close to the end of each ribbon…I then took the colours one at a time, I put pieces shorter than 6″ into a small box and rolled the longer lengths around a piece of styrene foam, the remaining pieces I further sorted into wide and thin ribbons and held each group together with safty pins, so that I don’t have to open the pins everytime I want a piece of ribbon the pin is very close to the end of each ribbon so that I lose less than 1/4″ of ribbon when I cut pieces from the pin.

I threaded the pins onto a length of coat hanger wire which I attached to the lid of the basket so that when I open the basket the lid pulls up the end of every piece of ribbon so that I can see what is there.

This seam has a piece of pink satin bias binding (to bring pink down into this corner of the block) overlaid with lace held in place wit herringbone stitch and trimmed with beads.

I like Oyster Stitch but when I sat down with my visual journal I found that my mind was playing with ‘Oysters’ instead of the stitch, did you know that Australia has a BIG Oyster, not one of the better big things lol, I will have to get another block for mum’s quilt pieced so that I can combine the stitch with the memories, the Big Prawn referred to in the link to the big oyster is in my home town where mum still lives.

Back to Oyster stitch, I did use it one one seam today, a simple zig zag variation which I have left unbeaded because it will probably end up as the background to a button cluster.

The other seam is buttonhole stitch done over herringbone stitch trimmed on one side with straight stitches and lace flowers.

I am glad that I decided to paint Humpty’s coat onto the shell, his legs provide just enough balance to let him sit upright and I love how he turned out…His arms, legs and hat are are made from cardboard and his bowtie is ribbon with thread wrapped around the centre.

I made the wall from the end of an egg carton lid, the side of the wall in the photo was supposed to be the back because I thought that the moulding of the egg carton would look out of place and the other side is nicely square but as it happens the back turned out better than the front.

When I first thought of doing a humpty egg I was going to paint him and then let him have a little fall and put him back together but once I started making him I realizes that I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to deliberatly crack him, just knowing that I could put him back together is enough.

I wanted something special for this seam that is in the middle of the Birthday Block and when I did the Climbing Rose the other night I decided that it would be perfect for the central location of this block.

Patricia commented that my repaired eggs would be even more special now and she is so right. You may not have noticed but one of the repaired eggs hadn’t been finished and I didn’t expect that it would be but the nephew was so impressed that I had repaired it that he finished it and to me that makes it even more special.

These are our 2007 eggs

Mine is the candy egg (top right corner) like the ones we had when I was a kid…when every one is here I can only do a simple one because I am on call to find cardboard etc and help when required.

For my second egg I thought that having repaired the eggs, humpty dumpty would be the appropriate egg for me to paint this year and I remembered that I had made one before for the top of a cake I made for a nieces 2nd birthday in 1983 (Cake design frim The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book), I found the Photo and started making one the same but have decided that the cardboard coat makes him far to stable to be humpty so I am now going to Paint the coat onto the egg shape.

So that we would have plenty of room to work at painting our Easter Eggs, I cleaned off the table and all the benches in my study, I occasionally see the top of my table but clear benches are a rare sight

My neice shows off one of the baskets of equipment that she helped me put together…each basket held a pencil, 2 paint brushes, a piece of styrene foam, water bottle, a paper towel, skewers, 2 blown eggs and a chocolate egg…These are the paints we use.

Today we had 9 Painters, painted some delightful eggs and had a lovely time…I will take the detail photos tomorrow in the daylight in the meantime here they are on the table after everyone had gone home.

In my neices words Painting Eggs has become a family tradition, Easter 2005 I blogged how the tradition got started and 4 years of painted eggs.

I didn’t get Our 2006 eggs blogged…initially because I wasn’t very organized to get them dated, lacquered, photographed and put away…subsequently because while they were waiting for me to finish them I knocked them on the floor….Oooooooops

I was upset with myself but not devasted because from the beginning I had let them be touched because really they have to be held and turned around to appreciate their full beauty, they are a living collection which means they are at risk of being broken…still I didn’t know what I would do if one did get broken…

I picked up the pieces, put them in a box and put the box on a shelf in a dark corner. I just couldn’t bring myself to throw the pieces out.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled the box out and wondered if it was possible to repair them, what if I glued strips of paper under one side of the join with half the paper sticking out so that I could glue the matching bit of shell to the paper as well…nothing ventured nothing gained…I seperated the pieces for each egg, 2 of them broken into largeish pieces, 2 of them with shattered ends, each egg with about 15 pieces to be joined…it took time because I had to let the glue dry before joining the next piece…

…the joins are far from perfect but the eggs are in one piece and the cracks give them character.

I am well aware that this is a crazy thing to have done and you are allowed to laugh, Everyone else has…what I find more amazing than the fact that I was able to do it is that when I picked the pieces up off the floor 11 months ago I actually found every last chip of all the shells.

Below are all the 2006 eggs

Some of you may recognize the wall on my egg, as the one on my Bags of fun, ‘A Charming Garden’ bag.

I am organized this year…I have all the eggs blown and undercoated, have purchased new fine brushes and have the paints all ready….Wishing you all a happy, safe Easter.