April Take It Further.....Finished

What I enjoyed most about this project, to be honest, was getting back to crazy quilting. I thought I had burned out on it a little bit, but this piecing and stitching and beading felt really good.

Here is the fan on the left side. Those cute little brass leaves were a gift from Pat Winter last summer. She gets them from Artful Market on Etsy.

And here is the fan on the right. I had to keep the embellishments pretty simple to reflect that this is about boys. No waste canvas this time around, but I did use one of Carole Samples' templates for the wavy lines. (Read about them here.)

My Lovely, Lovely Boys
15" X 15"

The title is a line from my favorite made-for-TV movie, Smiley's People. The character Connie Sacks is sadly referring to the young men she used to work with in British Intelligence, in her role as chief Russian analyst, before she got literally sacked (by the mole who was making her look bad, of course).
But with all the guys in my family--my two boys, my sister's three, and my brother's one, all born within 5 years of each other--"my lovely, lovely boys" as been in the family lexicon for years. And yes, I have lost them...at least a little bit, so I share some of Connie's regret.

Anyway, I am fairly happy with this piece though the technical glitches are what I learned the most from. I really should have been much more careful lining up the photos...I should have pieced the whole block and then appliqued the felted linens, and then appliqued the photos. I would have had better control that way. That they are crooked truly bugs me.
I would have been able to achieve a flatter surface with the photos if I had done that, too. It is o.k. that they puff out, but I would have preferred them flat in this case. Chad wouldn't look quite as weird as a one year old if I had done that.
I loved all your comments on this piece...thanks!!!

Anyway, it is done, it was fun....and the sun is out. We need to be out there digging and making ready for these:

My husband is taking the tomatoes quite seriously this year......

Take It Further, April...Day 2

Adding the embellishments to a naked block is always so much fun.

Above is a detail shot of the center of the block...

...and an overall view. (Please pardon the pins.)
When it goes over foam core I should be able to get everything square and aligned right. It looks a bit crooked at the moment.
More stitching today...but tomorrow when the sun is supposed to finally show up, all bets are off!

Take It Further, April...Day 1

The Take it Further challenge for April, as described by Sharon Boggon here, asks us how we view change...Sharon also gave us a color palette to work that, like last month's, reflects the coming of autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. (Hey Sharon, it is spring up here, you know!...)

I decided to address the change that is most important in my life these days....that of the attaining of adulthood in my children. This year Max is 21 and Chad is 18, two landmark ages in becoming adult.

No one tells us at the beginning of the experience of motherhood that we will have to stay very light on our feet during the transition period of "letting go". While we will always be moms and always give unconditional love to our children, we sure have to change the way we behave towards them, and what we expect from them too, as they become independent. We have to relearn some of our own independence as well...I am no longer tied to my kids in the same way anymore. This was hard for me to understand at first, but I am making great progress, especially because my guys are doing so well in their lives and are both genuinely happy. ( A special thank you to Esther on that score!)

So, my little piece reflects all this musing....

I started by felting some hand-dyed soy silk onto a couple of vintage linen napkins that Pam Kellogg so generously shared with me.

The boys at ages 4 and 1.....

...and today.
It is an extremely sentimental setting for them, but this is as much about me as about them....call it their feminine mom showcasing them in her love!

I kept to the palette pretty well except for using blue instead of green. It reflects their masculinity well.
I will square this all up when the stitching is done... for today, I will address those fan blades with some blue embroidery!
The square is 12" X 12"...on point it is 17" X 17".
*************

A few notes to commenters....Cherry asked for more info about finishing a piece with foam core. The next issue of CQMagOnline will have a how-to article by me on that subject, so please look for it online at the end of this month.

Kim asked what I do with all the things I make....I am thinking about setting up an Etsy shop to give some of them new homes. Stay tuned.....

Take It Further, March...Finished

Finishing is not my favorite part....but everything is done, down to the binding.

The lettering took about a day...the space in the center of my felted background was always intended for a greeting, or message...and at this beautiful season of Easter, and soon, Passover, this is the phrase that came to mind...

The little things in nature that we notice are indeed blessings as well!

"Blessings to You"

16 1/2" X 20 1/2"

Thank you all for your very kind comments about this piece as it went along. It was really a joy to make!

Take It Further, March...Critters

The little guys we notice in nature...some of my favorites are now represented on my Take It Further challenge piece for March, which most readers know is being hosted by our most gracious leader, Sharon Boggon.

Is that froggies bead the cutest thing EVER? My friend Kate Richbourg, owner of the wonderful store Beadissimo in the Mission District of San Francisco, sent it to me over a year ago and I have been waiting for the perfect place to use it. This is it! They remind me of the Pacific Chorus Frogs that live in the pond below us and are currently providing beautiful music in the middle of the night. They are loud!
Also there are some ants (dressed in white for this piece), representing the anthill in my perennial garden whose members have been keeping me company for 15 years now....and there is a snail too.

More ants and a bee....we love the bees, get scads of bumblebees in the lavender every year.

Here is an overall view. I did add a couple more lace and button flowers...and thanks to Pam Kellogg for those little doilies, too!
All that is left to be done is the "saying", or message, that will go in the center...like the old-fashioned greeting postcards of old.
I could do a whole series based on those lovely postcards....
Anyway, this piece requires a binding to frame it all in, so that will be last. Should be done in a couple days....

Take It Further, March...Embellishing

The main challenge in this piece is how to integrate all the different elements in it.
The collaged and buttonholed leaves did help...and I decided to keep most of the embellishment along the seams simple and consistent throughout the piece to mimic the "all-overness' of the buttonhole stitch. (The thread I used for the buttonholing is called "Isis" by Wonderfil).

I added a few other goodies in there, though!

Here is my progress as of this morning...

Blogger is being MOST recalcitrant about loading pictures (and has been for a couple of weeks) so this detail is all I can post for now.
Next I will have a go at developing the laces and also adding my little bugs and critters here and there...

March TIF..Machine Buttonhole Applique Completed

My, that was tedious!

Buttonholing along the curves was not a problem...but negotiating all those pointy edges in the leaves took awhile!

I used some of the same lace in the frame as I had used in the photograph, and remembered to put it in place right before I started sewing down the leaves in my buttonholing marathon..

Now for "desert"...adding all my little embellishments...

Take It Further, March...Piecing and Collage

Kathy over at Out of the Basement commented that she thought the little ants that you see on the title bar of my blog would be good on this quilt. How right she was...as the subject of this piece is the little things in nature that delight us so when we take the time to look for them. So there will be ants!

I had a great time piecing the frame that surrounds my flower picture. I seem to be working in this format a lot with my inkjet printed imagery (the "N is for Nora" and the "K is for Kreinik" pieces come to mind).

May and I had a very pleasant morning getting the piecing underway.

This measures 16 1/2 " X 22".
I realized quickly that I wanted to keep the values in the frame lighter than the colors in the photo image. I just like the contrast this sets up,and the way it keeps the attention on the flowers.
Also I cut up and used a little of the felted background fabric from the photo in the piecing, which was something I had wanted to try.
But the frame itself is intended to serve as a background of sorts...

I wanted to add some collaged elements on top of the crazy piecing...I haven't tried that before, either.
This 505 Spray and Fix is just great stuff for collaging fabric. I spray the back of my cut out leaves (on newspaper to protect my table) and then am able to smooth them into place on my crazy quilt, moving and rearranging them as I need to.

Which brings me to here.
I toyed with the idea of felt-appliqueing these on with the embellisher...but decided I didn't want that frayed edge look here. I don't want to use my usual clear thread in a free-motion zigzag either. So I am going to try machine buttonhole stitching these leaves into place. I want to see how well that will work with the hand-done seam treatments that will go between the patches.
So tomorrow is for machine applique....

Embellisher Experiment #7, Felted Background...and Take it Further, March

This is also going to count as my Take it Further challenge for March. Noticing the little things...

I love to make fresh flower collages and then photograph them...old time blog readers remember this from last year I am sure. Well, yesterday marked the beginning of the flower season for 2008!
I thought it would be fun to use the Embellisher to help create the background fabric that I would lay my flowers out on. The printed fabric image from the resultant photograph will in turn become the center of a small crazy quilt. (I can't stay away from CQing for very long.)

The TIF concept came into play yesterday as I hunted the yard for blooms, and noticed the tiniest signs of growth everywhere. From the delicate fronding on the moss to some wee spider egg cocoons at the base of a forsythia flower...there were tiny miracles everywhere that gave me big thrills!

I started with some plain muslin, painting it with Tsukineko inks.

Then I started laying down some silk and merino fibers with the embellisher.

After all the fibers were swirled on there (also a few shreds of sheer silk), I laid out the lace I wanted to include. I just pinned that in place, though, as I will want to reuse it elsewhere.

Then I went out into the cool gray morning and found riches in the tiniest details!

So here we have hellebore, primula, forsythia, miniature and large sized daffodils, violets, grape hyacinth, some tiny pink flowers I don't know the name of, and the humble vinca...with two kinds of moss tucked in the corners. The spider egg cocoons are the three little white dots you see along the left edge, right in the center.
There is going to be lettering applied in the central blue space...

This was printed on cotton sateen from Dharma....and is for Easter, of course.... ;-)

Now to get piecing!

Take It Further, February...Finished

I think I will call this, "I Remember 17". (When the bloom was on the rose.)

I appliqued some vintage millinary leaves onto the upper right corner....

...and used another of Pam Kellogg's charted leaf designs. The rest of the seams came together easily and then I was done.

"I Remember 17"
9" X 9"

Was I ever her, really?

Take It Further, February...Rolled Ribbon Roses

I took this picture at Freda Butler's house last week-end. It is a detail of a lovely vintage embroidered bag she had up on her wall. I thought those roses might look good on my Take It Further block for February, if I could figure out how to make them.

Well, I did NOT figure out how they were done and came up with these instead. I won't give a tutorial because I was literally all thumbs making these! But I do like how they came out.

For this month's challenge I also decided to try out some of Pam Kellogg's waste canvas seam treatments from her new book. Here are some leaves in progress. I like doing this kind of work so much....the counting and grid give a solid structure to work within. Sometimes that is just very satisfying.

Here they are in progress, on 10 count canvas....That is yummy Sasse Lynn thread sent to me from Susan Nixon.

And here they are completed. You might notice they look a little darker in this picture. That is because once they were done and the canvas was pulled off, I thought the leaves were just too light. So I very carefully painted the threads with some Tsukineko ink, which worked great.

Here is another of Pam's designs. This one took awhile, but it was worth it.

This was done on 14 count canvas.

And here is the block as a whole thus far.
As I've been stitching on it, I have been musing that it is not about innocence lost so much...but more about just being young, being 17...remembering that special time in my life before the buds had quite opened.....

Take It Futher, February....Block Pieced

Our Take it Further Challenge for February, as set up and posed to us by Sharon Boggin, is about memory...what are we old enough to remember?
Lots of stitchers have weighed in with lovely nostalgic reminiscences...mostly in a cultural and historical vein. Old favorite TV shows, world changing public events, and early impressions of nature, too...
But I got to thinking more of interior states that I remember, of who I used to be....

My piece this month is kind of sad, in a way. And no, it is not a reaction to that hussy the Reform School Girl! ;-) It is about remembering when I was innocent, and when that state was lost to me. Every so often old issues circle around for me to take another look at, and the gray days of February are a perfect time for that...
And just perhaps, innocence can be regained.....

"Innocence Remembered"...that is the emotion I am exploring this month....
Sharon's color palette left me blank, so I am forgoing it this time.

I plan on using Pamela Kellogg's brilliant new EBook, "Elegant Crazyquilt Seam Treatments" to guide my stitching on this block, as a way to get to know some of her patterns and her waste canvas embroidery technique.

But first I am going on a quick trip to Florida on the redeye...tonight! My DH and I celebrate anniversary #27 this week-end, plus I get to meet up with two dear crazy quilting friends in Orlando while he attends some seminars. But I'm bringing my laptop this time...9 days was too long without it last time....

TIF January, Finished!

This month's challenge took half the month!

But I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. Here is what I accomplished:

--My first time using one of my own printed floral letters as the centerpiece to a small quilt was encouraging.
--I wanted to "tune up" my traditional stitching, while trying out Joan Waldman's book.
--I experimented with different ways to "mark" my fabrics to get better looking stitching.
--I wanted to try out the Kreinik threads, which I found delightful to work with. The metallics obviated the need for beads in many ways, too...a pleasant discovery.
--My interest in using waste canvas for lettering has only grown. I still need a lot more experience matching the proper threads to the size of canvas used, however.

Here is my completed project, measuring 16" X 16". I will stretch it over foam core after I take it down to my annual quilt retreat for show and tell at the end of this month.

The texture of the lace, braided cord, and rick rack is better suited to this piece than that plain old white inner border, don't you think?

Now that I am in between projects I HAVE to clean up this sewing room!

One other note....the $100,000 Quilting Challenge for 2007 was won by Sharon Schamber, whose same quilt "Scarlett Serenade", was also a Best of Show winner in Houston a few years back.
That's two years in a row this contest has been won by the machine quilting category. So come on all you crazy quilters...this is the year to step up to the plate!
And thanks to all of you who voted for "Crazy for Flowers". I truly appreciate it!

Different "Marking Methods": TIF, Day 6

If I can find a fast and efficient way to "mark" my seams before I embellish them, in order to create slightly more even stitches, I will use it. Why not? (I use quotation marks because I do not like using actual pencil or pen marks on my fabrics if I can avoid it.)

So I've been experimenting with a few different methods...and they have potential to be quite useful in the future!

Do note how carefully that drawing was done! ;-) This motif is from Joan Waldman's book, Quilt Savvy: Embroidery Stitches.
This is Golden Threads tracing paper that is used by sane quilters for drawing out machine quilting designs, then basting it over their quilts, and machine quilting right through it. (I went to the manufacturer's booth while at the Houston Quilt Market, and they are incredibly lovely people.)
This paper was designed to tear out easily after the stitching is done.

And indeed it did. I had just done the chain stitch through the paper, and added the other elements free-hand after removing it. I don't think I would have gotten the spacing of the fan "blades" or the curve along the top as nice without the paper. Thumbs up on that.

Next I tried the graph paper method that Joan presents in her book.

A narrow strip of graph paper is basted into place, and the stitching goes over it. I thought this would be helpful for accurately spacing the base element of a seam quickly.

And indeed it was. Another thumbs up.
All this must be obvious to so many of you stitchers out there, but I am slow on the uptake in some matters! How to obtain accuracy, for example....I do like the imperfect look of hand stitching, as with my fly stitching here, but it is still good to have spacing right, otherwise the effect of the seam treatment can be compromised by sloppiness.

Finally, I tried good old Tiger Tape. This product was also developed for the sane quilting world, to help get those hand quilting stitches even and perfect!

I planned a simple cross stitch seam here, because.....
.....a continuous line of cross stitch will unify this curve, and after it is on you won't notice that the piecing seams don't line up nicely in that corner of the white border. I use this gambit all the time.
The only problem with the Tiger Tape is that it was rough on that smooth satin when I gently pulled it off, causing some fibers to pull out. One needs to be aware of that, and not press the adhesive tape in place with to0 much pressure.

Here is the third side of the border complete. You can see the cross stitching came out nicely on the left there, and that it reads as one smooth curve.
One side to go! This one is going to have some waste canvas lettering on it.

JoWynn mentioned this book in one of her posts. It sent me scooting off to AbeBooks, my preferred online purveyor of hard-to-find used books. My copy arrived in the mail from London last week, and I am thrilled! There are dozens of alphabets charted out for cross stitchers. I am going to pick one out and work on it this week-end, while my DH and I fly to Los Angeles to help his father celebrate birthday #85.
Back at you Monday!