Final Autumn Round Robin Block

Today I finished the Autumn block for Colleen - the final one in our Autumn DYB round robin at Crazy Quilting International.

The cute autumn print that Colleen had in the middle lends a whimsical air to the block.  And I loved the indian corn print on the left.  I added some dyed lace, and a couple trims that I had bought in New York earlier this spring. On top, the sunflower is a very vintage trim, and the velvet leaves are vintage millinery as well. There is a little yo-yo and some silk ribbon “wheat” tucked into the top arrangement, and some seamwork here and there.  A pretty straight forward block, but enjoyable for me as I love these rich colors.  

Next up, I will be working on my block for Hearts and Hands for Sendai. Bruce goes in for his second arm operation on Wednesday, and I will take it along then to help pass the time. Tomorrow, DGD London comes for her day with us.  We are planning a little trip to the Farm.  Perhaps I will take the camera and share the pictures of baby animals (that I promised to Gina; I haven’t forgotten!)

In other “news”, LOL:  There is a huge textile liquidation sale beginning tomorrow  (and running for a week) in Draper (about 20 minutes south of us).  I will probably go on Thursday. Utah Correctional Industries is the host, and listed items include “textiles, canvas, nylon mesh, thermo batting, linings, fleece, cordura (???), fake fur, rivets, elastic, zippers, velcro, buckles, thread, piping, blankets, tool bags, camo clothing, and “lots of odds and ends and sewing hardware used in manufacturing clothing”.  A few of the items listed raised an eyebrow:  polyester double knits,  hydration packs (sewing that much dehydrates you, LOL), and orange safety mesh. THAT should be an interesting visit!  I will take my camera!!

Autumn RR, Another Block Done

Amidst getting ready for the CQ Adventure in Connecticut in two weeks, I still have round robin commitments.  So I am trying to knock those out in the next few days.  And since I love the autumn theme so much, the Autumn RR block was more a matter of limiting ideas rather than trying to come up with some.

This is my work on Dee’s block.  I LOVED her colors and fabrics.  Leaves are one of my favorite, if not my very favorite fall motifs, so I tried to include a lot of them...

These are all four of the completed blocks so far.  The stitchers are:
Top:  L - Helina (Finland)  R - Cathy (Utah, US)
Bottom:  :  L -  Rita (Kansas, US)  R -  Lorrie (Canada)

I love the angular elements of the blocks in the total composition, and yet each block has swirls or curved leaves or spider webs to offset the straight lines.  Maybe I should “forget” to mail these?  LOL - just kidding!

This Squirrel Wears Mink

I just finished my round robin block for Helina in Finland.  I love trees and leaves and most autumn motifs and colors, so this was a really fun block. Rita had gone before me on another block and done a tree, so I thought it would be nice to add another tree and leaves on my block as well.

After stitching the tree and adding the silkie of little kids burning leaves (AS IF!), I just kept thinking about doing a squirrel.  I’ve done that motif before, only with a silkie and a mink tail added.  See this post.  So, here is how my block for Helina finished up.

Yes, that is real mink.  I’ve had a few scraps laying around for awhile, and by golly, I am going to use them.  Sure as h*** am not going to wear them.   There are some vintage leaves tucked into the tree here and there, as well as some lovely metal leaves that Allie Aller gave me a couple years ago.  

So, the stitching on the squirrel is not my best; I ended up doing this over three days in hour-long blocks of time.  My eyes just go wonky on me when I do a lot of close work. I have had several eye surgeries, but that’s a story for another time. I did, however, make an appointment to see the eye doctor and get new glasses before the CQ Adventure next month.

Also, I just reserved my classes for Val Bothell’s Victorian Stitchery Retreat in Wichita in November.  You have know idea how thrilled I am to be able to take a 2-day class from Carole Samples!!  It has been one of my goals to learn from this great lady and amazing stitcher.  I will also (finally!) get to take a Candace Kling course on fabric flowers and Allie Aller’s Curved Piecing Class.  My dear friend Gerry is teaching a button-painting workshop there one evening as well.  My only regret is that I can`t be in two places at once because I really want to take JBM’s Fabric Painting class (manipulation to make land- or seascapes). But she lives in Colorado, and that is close, so I hope to someday attend a retreat at her studio.    

Finally, if you haven’t yet bought Allie Aller’s book, “Allie Aller’s Crazy Quilting”, what are you waiting for??  My copy arrived while I was at Gerry’s last week, but I got to read Gerry’s copy.  When I talked to my husband on the phone that evening (he had met Allie in 2006 when we were all at the John Campbell School), he said, “Your book from Allie arrived today.  I went ahead and opened it. I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to see it.  It is a really professional, well-done book and looks like it has a lot of good information.”   Of course, I didn’t expect him to be gushing about how LOVELY it was, but in his manly way, he said just about the same thing!  :-)

Hugs,

Autumn Jungle Finished

OK, so I guess you all are not so fond of bold, bright colors and a little craziness?  Or did I say something to offend you?   The response to my last post was totally underwhelming, LOL!  C’mon my friends, if you don`t care for it, that’s understandable - you can say that!  Just say SOMETHING!  I like to know I am not talking to myself.  At least, not online.   Around the house in the middle of the day doesn’t count...   :-)


Seriously, everyone has different tastes.  And in round robins, we take the challenges that come our way and s-t-r-e-t-c-h.    Sometimes a block is very traditional, and basic embroidery and the usual treatments just roll off the needle.  Other times, you (or at least I) have to dig down deep in your bag o’ tricks.   I happened to love the colors of this block.  The busy-ness was a challenge.  Hopefully I created a more sedate background on which to tell a little story of a sun shining on all sorts of silly fantasy flowers in the Autumn Jungle.  It is, at least, cohesive and color balanced.  It’s also bold and likely to bring on a migraine wacky.  For better or worse, here’s the finished block.  

I had originally planned more stuff along the vine, but just decided to cool it and leave the center a bit open.  BTW, don’t you love those curly red beads (there are three on the block)?  I can’t remember where I got them, but they have such potential!  

It’s a Jungle In Here!

A jungle in where?  My head?  Well, yes, but that’s not what I was referring to.

My current stitching project is actually a 6” block belonging to Lorrie R in our CQI Autumn Round Robin.  This is the naked block.  I love, love, love the colors in this block.  It is an incredibly busy block to start with, which is going to be a major challenge.  CQ by itself, even on plain fabrics, can tend to be busy, so I will actually need to tame this a bit before I start.

Therefore, I thought this might be a good piece to use to show you some of my thought processes as I work on a block.  This piece says “jungle” to me.  I know it’s supposed to be an autumn piece, but we’ll just have to compromise and call it Autumn in the Jungle, OK??

One of the color principals I learned in interior design was that you don’t want to have two (or three or more) colors fighting each other in equal measures.  One color must be dominant, and the other 2-3 colors should take lesser roles in the show.  We are not going into color theory or percentages here.  I’m not an art teacher or student, even.  Just suffice it to say that for my purposes, I selected green to be the dominant color. Red and yellow will be the supporting cast.  How, then, to “tweak” the colors?

Well, I first decided to take this block as a whole, instead of treating every patch as a single item to be stitched or “CQ’ed on”.  And since this will be my jungle, and we usually want to work from background to foreground, I knew I needed to lay a bit more of the green jungle down.  The first step for me was that the lower left two patches with the plaid and the orange leaf had to, um, be tamed!

To do that, I added some green lace along the seam, effectively covering some of the riot of color there.  And then, after auditioning lots of things, I decided that a loud foreground “flower” was going to cover most of the plaid.   In the meantime, I added green silk ribbon leaves to the lower left and right areas, and did some stitching in the upper right to cover some of that yellow with greenery.

That red flower is just pinned on for placement purposes for now.  Don’t you think those paisleys were just screaming to be beaded???  At this point, I have also added a trailing green vine, made from ribbon floss.  Are you familiar with ribbon floss?  Well, rather than me explain it to you, check out Sharon Boggon’s post on it here.  

So now, we have a jungle-y background that “reads" mostly green.  The red flower will be the natural focal point, so it will get some sort of special treatment, as yet undecided.  The yellow sun (and the button with “rays” in its center) is the where the eyes stop next, then on to the beaded paisleys near the bottom.  The vine helps your eye move around the block, although there are all sorts of button, bead and other flowers planned to cover it up.  But it’s a connector.  

Instead of fighting with the fabric by adding more CQ busy-ness right from the start and “making do” with the disparate elements, we have worked WITH the fabric and colors.  We used green to restore some visual harmony and give the eye more resting places.  The best available motifs and parts are still there for us to take advantage of.  We have a green base, with several repeating and relatively balanced spots of red and yellow.  Oh, one more thing.  The stitcher who worked on another one of these blocks before me included purple in her colors.  Purple.  I love it!  I will add bits of purple here and there to repeat those elements, as eventually all six blocks in the round robin have to play together nicely in a wall hanging!

So tomorrow, for better or for worse, I will show you the finished block! Remember your sunglasses!

Autumn Block Finished for Rita

Last week I was away on vacation in Arizona (more on that in a future post) and missed posting my Happy Thanksgiving message and the vintage graphics I had prepared for you.   So, to all my readers, I hope you had a wonderful day (regardless of whether you observe the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday or not) and made good memories with family and friends.

While on vacation, I did get some stitching time in, although not nearly as much as I had hoped.  It was one of the fastest weeks I’ve ever spent, and it seemed that there was always something happening.   Anyway ... this is the Autumn Round Robin block that I did for Rita.  I loved her colors!

Starting in the upper left, the vintage embroidery came from a large floral piece given to me by a friend at Wheeler Farm.  It was originally on black tulle that shredded whenever it was touched.  So I removed it from the netting and have begun using pieces here and there by simply tacking them on as I did here.  

The wreath is made of tiny scraps of leftover silk ribbon bits (some as little as a half inch).  I tacked them on with thread over a circular wreath base stitched with gold Kreinik braid in a feather stitch.

A funky owl on a branch and floral arrangement in the center.

Another vintage snippet; this time it’s a crocheted daisy.  The center is a pre-made sequin and bead flower.   Some basic seam stitching (which was actually done first) completes the block.

We are taking a round robin break at CQI for the month of December.   Over the past years, we’ve learned that it’s not wise to tempt fate with our blocks when the world is in a Christmas mailing frenzy!  These blocks did get mailed off today (it’s still November, after all!) to the next stitcher, but I will probably be without round robin blocks to stitch on for December.  But that works out great; I plan to finish up the Tea Time wall hanging and do some CQ Christmas ornaments.

I’ve got lots to post over the next several days, so take care and check back soon!

Hugs,

Autumn Blocks and Other Project Progress

Just a quick post to show you the blocks I posted for the Autumn II Round Robin (it’s a DYB or “Do Your Own Block” where each participant completes a 6” block for the others).  These are my six naked blocks:

The Tea Time wall hanging is on hold until later in the week.  But here are a couple details that I finished over the weekend.   Below is some ribbon embroidery around the teapot image.  I  still need to do some sort of stitching along the basted edge.

This is a vintage crocheted piece, probably meant to be an insert on to a pillowcase.  I laced it with edge-dyed silk ribbon, and used it to cover an awkward area with too much busy-ness in the way of bright images and strange seamlines.

Finally, below are Gerry K’s blocks for the Art Nouveau RR, which is about finished.  In fact, I’ll be the last one to stitch, and the block I’ve chosen (one of only two left unstitched) is in the upper left.

Gerry loves Art Nouveau and requested that we do some sort of representation of the old vintage Art Nouveau tiles (if you Google “Art Nouveau Tiles”, you’ll see a plethora of beautiful images).  Since I know that Gerry loves daffodils, and there are lots of good daffodil tile images to adapt, AND the colorations would look good with her block colors, that is what I have set out to do.  Stay tuned to see how that works out.  The good news is that if I flub it up, I’ve got most of her fabrics in my stash! (we share alot!!).

Hugs,