More Cream Work

I forgot that I hadn't posted the recent work I did on my friend Gerry's round robin block. This is for our "Crazily Cream" round robin in Crazy Quilting International. As I was the last person in the rotation for Gerry's block, there was only a little area in the lower left corner for me. That's pretty typical when you get a lot of crazy stitchers working together, LOL!! So, I crocheted a basket of cotton crochet thread, then wove it with some brown fiber to give it a more, well, woven look and give it some visual weight to offset the other darker areas in the block. To that I added a bouquet of Fargo roses, gold vines, a couple rosette stitches, and some bugle and seed bead flowers.

The sequin/button motif I also added, plus the little lace flowers above it, the gold fly-stitch seam to the left, and some rachelette woven into the lace below. Wherever I could find a few centimeters, LOL!!
The lace butterfly in the upper right had some pale chain stitching on the wings already. I added more gold chain stitching, plus outlined the butterfly in a gold backstitch to emphasize it more without adding any visual weight. And some pearls for the antennae. That lovely bead ribbon above the butterfly was done by Cobi. The finished block is below.

Crazily Cream Block

Here are some pictures of work I did on a "Crazily Cream" block for Jo in NZ. Her beautiful cream block came with lots of lace already on, and she requested colors of cream through to light brown with gold accents and no white. Some incredible work had already been done by Rita and Cobi. My contributions were modest by comparison. It was hard to get in stitching mode again after the Holidays.

Originally I'd stitched a winged horse with Eterna silk thread where the ribbon flowers on the right are. But it was not satisfactory, so I frogged it (rip-it, rip-it). To cover the tiny holes in the silk left by my needle, I meandered a chain stitch all over the patch and then covered it with silk ribbon flowers and beads. I also added some gold trim and embellishment to the lace above it. And a button trail, which is also pictured below.

Many of the buttons in the button trail are vintage, but not all. My favorite part of working on this was bringing out the "butterflies" in the lace trim pictured above (with metallic threads and pearl sticks.

Here is the entire block, to date. Next it goes to Gerry, who is going to bead a calla lily motif. That should be spectacular!

Crazily Cream Block for Cobi

Today I completed my work on my friend Cobi's Crazily Cream block for our round robin in Crazy Quilting International. She requested an encrusted (very busy and full) style and lots of lace. Yum! I knew that was going to be fun, and I was right. It is so relaxing working in a neutral, tone-on-tone palette. Texture is the key! It was hard to stop after my allotted one-fourth of the block.

The "daisy" is made from shell beads in a leaf or marquis shape. The center is Kreinik gold cord french knots. I rouched some vintage rayon and tacked pearl sticks below it and seed pears on it in a random fashion. The lace along the left seam (with sequins) is a rick-rack lace. Allie, are you reading this? I know you love rick-rack lace! (Send me your addy, OK? I've had some sitting here for awhile for you!)

I think I may need to fix that yo-yo flower though. It looks wonky and the button is too big. Will fix it before I mail it off to the next person tomorrow. G'night!

Crazily Cream Round Robin

I've joined another round robin on Crazy Quilting International called Crazily Cream. The five participants have all created their blocks and will be mailing them around for others to work on them. All stitching and embellishments will also be in the cream colorway. When completed, this look is very elegant (and fits into just about any decor!). Here is my block, naked:

Also, I just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow we'll draw the winner's name on my Pay it Forward drawing. See the post from a couple days ago about the goodies sent to me by Lilla LeVine. If you leave a comment on that post, I'll enter your name into a drawing. Tomorrow (Sunday) around noon, I'll have DH draw a name from those who left comments. The winner will receive a small gifty from me (but whatever it is - and I reserve the right to tailor it to the recipient - I promise it'll be *nice*).