Go Crazy....Finished!

Thanks, everyone, for all your sweet comments on my last post!

I have loved making this quilt and am sad to see it end.  All that blue herringbone stitching on the blocks accompanied me through the entire year of 2011--on airplanes, while Skypeing, when visiting family--this was the perfect work for those snipets of time when I wanted to be stitching but couldn't think too much about it or bring a whole bunch of stash and tools along.

And the way it all finally came together was really fun, too.

I decided to use the same orange melton wool for the binding as is on the back of the quilt, but wanted to "frame" the outer edge in black as well.  The wide black rick rack was my solution.  It's zig zag shape mimics the herringbone, too.

It was yummy stitching through the wool binding, getting the rick rack on.

I'm going to have to find another one-block quilt, so I can do this again!

530 Buttons Later....

This step in finishing my "Go Crazy" quilt took a wee bit longer than I thought it would!

First I had to source the backing fabric, which I found at the Pendelton outlet store in my home town of Washougal, WA., a beautiful orangey-red melton wool for $5.95/yard.

Then I had to find some buttons for the back. I planned on sewing my yellow pearl buttons on the front, while securing them to the back of the quilt with a mix of multi-colored 2 hole buttons.  I found those in an antique store in my nearby town of Camas, WA called A Twist on Time.

I love my Pendleton store.

They have beautiful clothes at a serious discount, 2 miles from my house.  I rarely shop anywhere else.  They also have a nifty selection of woolen fabrics, woven on site there at the mill, that for some indiscernible reason are deemed "seconds" so are very cheap.

Beautiful woolens, the selection always changing at the Pendleton store. 

And great buttons at A Twist on Time in Camas.  The owner, Belle, let me dig through the bin and pick out just the 2 hole buttons I wanted, which was very gracious and helpful of her!  A baggie of all I needed cost me $4.00.

So then I got to work....

I used the intersections of the blocks to space the larger buttons, and a ruler to find the center of the black diagonal shapes for the smaller buttons.  I sewed the yellow ones to the colored ones, front to back, and then hid the knots.  I did this 265 times...   ;-)

These buttons' function is not only decorative, but also to hold the quilt together quite securely, so no quilting is needed.

Here is the quilt pinned up on my design wall.  It measures about 62" X 62".

I am very tickled by how the back turned out, I must admit.

I have fantasies of some future grandchild toddler sitting on this quilt and carefully exploring all the different colored buttons on the back...

The final question of course is how to handle the binding.  I've thought of lots of ideas, and will settle on one so that I can have this finished by New Year's...I hope!

"Go Crazy"....Top Complete!

Busy, busy, busy!  I had this done by 4 p.m. Sunday, well ahead of my goal.  I would have kept on working at assembling the quilt, but I need to buy some backing fabric and did not have a car today....alas, RIP my '99 green Subaru Outback wagon, which bit the dust Friday...costs more to fix than it is worth....I loved that car... and #2 son needed his parents' other Subaru to get to work today.  So no backing fabric!

Anyways, getting the top done was a major push...

This detail shot shows the new look of the quilt, now that the blocks are joined and feather stitched.

Each one of those seams had to be tied off, beginning and end.

Sometimes I'd add an extra stitch or two using the tail of the thread.

Then I'd bring it to the back and knot it with the bobbin thread.  I used #12 thread in the top, #30 in the bottom, with a #90 topstitch needle.  Because all the seams had been pressed open, I had double fabric thickness for the embroidery, which worked out nicely.

Now the quilt looks like this:

The top measures 65" X 65".

It is about to be transformed again when I add the buttons, which are going to be not only decorative but functional:  they will hold the quilt together, serving the same purpose as tying it would.
I'm thinking about backing this with wool, maybe because it is so cold out right now.  But I do want to use this quilt for getting cozy on the couch.  Wool would be nice for that...and I think it fits the rather rustic theme as well. 

I want this bound and finished by Wednesday night!

"Go Crazy"....progress

It's been a year since I started this quilt, engulfed in a fabulous frenzy making the blocks using my Go! AccuQuilt cutter.

Since then I've embroidered all 144 blocks with the herringbone stitch in different threads/ribbons and shades of blue.  On airplanes, while on the phone, in the car....because the stitching was easy, I could do  it anywhere.  But there sure were a lot of them!

Now I've got the blocks assembled into groups of four...

What is it about plaid that is just so delicious?  Wool, silk, cotton flannel, it is all so yummy...even more so when they are all together.

Here is an overall shot...

I love the sane quilting aspect of this work, trimming the blocks, getting their corners to meet exactly.  It is like focusing an image with a camera, tightening things up.

Now look in the lower left corner...

That's #12 Aurofil thread in a feather stitch over the center seams...I have one block down, 35 to go....then I'll assemble them and cover the seams between the four block sections with more of the feather stitching.  My goal is to have it done by Monday.  Wish me luck!!!

Go Crazy...Blue Stitching Progress

Besides working on Barbara's Door down in Mexico, I also got some stitching in on the Go Crazy blocks.
I pinned them up on the design wall after we got home to see how things were looking.

So far so good! I have an awful lot of blocks to go though....

I'll work on them at Point Bonita this week.... ;-)

Down in Mexico....

We went from this...

to this.....

...in the blink of an eye.
Air travel is a beautiful thing.
We are down in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico. We love this country very much.

We needed to get provisioned so our friend Leigh took us to the open air market in nearby Guaymas.

Leigh Hay-Martin is one of my Point Bonita sisters who also owns a condo in the same place and at the same time that we do! So we get to see each other here too...


Everything at the market is so fresh and enticing.

There are lots of things for sale besides food, too. It's kind of a flea market as well.
I am always on the look-out for bits to add to my crazy quilts and I found a few good ones.

Some special hand-knotted bracelets...one of which will go onto a new house portrait I am making for my friend Barbara (which I'll show in my next post).

My husband and Leigh checked out the table where I had just bought some little heart lockets. Robert speaks Spanish and he made lots of jokes with the vendors about me.

Everything is so colorful here. This was my favorite table of all of them....

Just so great. We loved the market.
Then Leigh took us to a little fish place off the beaten path for our lunch.

The ceviche was amazing.

When we got home, Robert modeled the new shades he bought at the market.

Fetching, absolutely.

And now it is time to get back to "work"....

The easy stitching in the afternoon is on the Go Crazy blocks...the more complicated design work is in the mornings....yes, I can make this work down here!
Adios for now.... ;-)

...and p.s. to all you crazy quilters...
CQMagOnline needs you to send in your photos for the Readers' Showcase a.s.a.p. Please do!!!
Send them to rissapeace@yahoo.com Thank you!

Go Crazy...Blocks Sewn

All 168 of them!
It's been a bit of a marathon around here. What bliss to just submerge myself in this process all day for three days in a row to get this phase done.

This was two days ago...I was going full tilt.
After finishing up last night I squared things away in the sewing room a bit.

There are 14 rows of 12 blocks each. I'm sure I will fiddle with the block placement some, but that will come later.
First these blocks all need to have the blue embroidery go around the black grid shapes and that will take some time. This kind of work is great for traveling, which I have a bunch of ahead of me...this was actually part of the motivation for embarking on a project like this. Portable stitching with a small bag of supplies and not much designing required...perfect for the beach!

Those flowers you see on the table were sent by C & T, my publisher, the day the advance copy of my book arrived. I was so touched!
And the book.....what an amazing job they did with it! I am very, very grateful and pleased. Can't wait for you to see it... ;-)

Go Crazy...The Buttons

Bobbi, Freda, and Esther all gave thoughtful comments on my last post about the buttons and whether they were going to work well with this quilt.
They got me thinking...as did my sister on the phone yesterday who said, "Hey, I like that new quilt on your blog that looks like a chain link fence!"

Isn't it funny how two hours lying awake in the earliest morning can go by so fast, thinking about design?

So I came into my sewing room this a.m. to take stock of things.
Here is how far I had come...

All I could see was the dang "fence"!
So I just had to try something else for the heck of it...

I used the blocks I've made as a border and I could have a crazy pieced center.
But no...didn't like that...
I had had a vision for this quilt, so maybe it would be good to see how it would actually look...so I laid out some blocks on the floor with some buttons.

Hmmm...yes, this was not at all bad. But it was missing something.
I got out my Go! cutter and made some circles.

These are insanely easy to make.

One flick of my wrist on the crank and here are two perfect velveteen circles. On my next try I cut three at once.
Some enterprising art quilter or stitcher could make great use of the "circle waste" too, like some people use sequin waste.
Anyway, I placed the circles into position and got this:

This I like.

I have said that I'm interested in that borderline between sane and crazy quilting, and working on this has given me a glimpse into this new territory.
I find that there is not the ongoing decision making as in crazy quilting, which all of us CQers love....once the decisions are made here, there is much repetition in the work ahead.
Plus, this will be an overall geometric (or abstract) pattern...there is no narrative content to this quilt at all, and I kind of miss that.

But this work is very calming and it will be gratifying to see the vision unfold, albeit VERY slowly. And this will be a very nice quilt to use when it is done.
But I think I am going to have to get another little project going on the side that is more freewheeling!

Go Crazy: A New Quilt for a New Year

Happy 2011!!!

I love making crazy quilts as you all know...but right now I am pretty intrigued by combining crazy quilting and "sane" quilting to make functional bed quilts. I am wanting to revisit my quilting roots...but a decade plus of CQ means I'll never be totally without embellishment and a wide array of fabric types.

This is a detail of a vintage quilt I saw in Houston that is fanning my current flame and has inspired my new project.

It just did me in. I had to make it. (I think it appealed to me for the same reason that the Vintage CQ did...)
So I went fabric shopping....

I had plaids on the brain.
All the blue thread and ribbon in the foreground will set off those warm colors nicely, is the hope.

I also knew this would be a great way to use my new Go! cutter from AccuQuilt.
I am loving this new tool!!! Have a look at the Go! in action....

The die is on the bottom, fabric to be cut in the middle, and the cutting mat is on the top. To operate you just crank the die through the rollers, it compresses the foam so that the die that is within the foam presses the fabric against the mat, and voila...

A perfect 6 1/2" square.
This pic was just for demo purposes. I've cut up to 6 layers at once.

Like this.
I have a die that cuts 3" strips that was perfect for the black diagonal shape on the block.

I cut a bunch of these out of different "black" fabrics.
Then I use a template to cut out the shapes from the strips.
Here is how that goes....

I made this template out of freezer paper ironed to cardboard stock. I draw around it with a white chalk pencil and then cut the shape out. I have to do them one at a time for accuracy, but I find I actually enjoy the work.

Then I use a second template, the actual size of the finished shape, this time out of just freezer paper. I use it as a guide for ironing under my edges. In this picture I am clipping those curves before ironing.

Ironing in progress...

Ironing complete and the freezer paper being pulled off...

And here is how it looks from the back.

When my freezer paper template gets too fuzzy to stick anymore, I just make a new one.

The black shape gets pinned onto the background square....

...and sewn on with a narrow zig zag in a clear monofilament thread.

In keeping with the original quilt, I am just using the herringbone stitch...
and instead of those fluffy white ties (which form a very important part of the design, I think), I'll be using buttons like this...

But this will be the very last step. I have a long way to go before then!

But it will be fun....
What a great way to start the new year. Hope yours is off to a happy beginning too! ;-)