The Burner Bag...Embellishment Finished

Sewing on this has been VERY STRANGE as it is so outside what I normally do. But then, graffiti is outsider art so it helped push me into a different zone entirely...
I also think of graffiti as folk art, so that was the look I ended up going for...

Design wise it was a challenge and that ended up being the fun part. How to make this work? I ended up using a lot of repetition to try and structure the chaos a little bit.

All my seams were graphic and used large stitches...and this pleated ribbon here, held down with a row of chain stitches, travels around the bag a bit.

I felt better about this guy once he was framed like this. His smile was starting to get to me!

This is how I hold the cording in place before I couch it down. I used a lot of this too.

I call her "Burner Girl. I think she is holding the business end of a spray nozzle from an air compressor that her cat is monitoring, spraying the wall in front of her. I had to paint around her in white acrylic so that she would show up better.

I am going to spend today finishing this into a totebag. It is so weird. I MUST hang some fringe around the opening....

When it is done I think I will mosey on back to my flowers....at a dead run!

The Burner Bag

From the Graffiti Glossary:

BURNER

Originally a well-done wildstyle window-down whole car, a burner is a very good piece. Obviously, the reference to a window-down car is not applicable for pieces that are not on trains. A burner is any piece that has good bright colors, good style (often in wildstyle) and seems to "burn" off of the wall.

Well, my brother Ben collects "Burner" imagery, and I've always thought it was so darn cool. And isn't any imagery fair game for a crazy quilt?

I love flowers, and I will be going back to the flowers. But for a change of pace I thought I would try something different....

I love the colors in these, not to mention the sheer brilliance of the artistry. I thought they would make a unique focus for a totebag. I mean, why not?

So I decided on a basic shape....

And started constructing my tote front. I combined both piecing and applique, using a machine zig zag with a clear thread, as above. This is some kind of manic jester with the spray can, isn't he?

The suggestion of a fan shape here is my wave to my great grandmother's generation of crazy quilters. They would think I am totally nuts. Maybe you do, too!

I love having the option of being able to piece or applique, depending on what situation I find myself in. If I had drawn out a pattern before hand, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting...

Really, the sewing was a piece of cake.

This will be such fun to embellish, juxtaposing this wacko imagery with the stitching parameters we all know and love. I just thought CQ could use a little urban aesthetic...

New Back for the H Quilt

Last night I dreamed that Barack Obama and John McCain were in my sewing room each clutching spatulas and trying to flip the motifs on one of my crazy quilts. They just couldn't figure out how to do it....

I think I have been watching too much political coverage.

But I've had two days of solid hand sewing "busy work", preparing my H quilt for its trip to Houston. You see, the old backing I had put on it just did not cut it. The silk had gone ripply due to my using the wrong kind of interfacing on it (or something). Plus, the label looked a little crooked. We just can't have that...not for Houston!

So I took off the old back, put on a new one of some VERY nice black wool (it was Donna Karan, many bucks per yard, purchased 6 years ago when I thought I was going to sew an overall jumper out of it. You know, to wear with a crisp white silk shirt? Summerset, if you are reading this, don't laugh. Me and clothes...it is a sad story.)
Anyway, the wool looks great, very classy and I love the feel and weight of it.

Then of course I sewed the sleeve on to the side instead of the top and had to take that off and redo it.

Then I cut out my label from the old back and sewed it on--straight this time--to my new back. I squared it off and dressed it up a little, too.

Here is the new label. I got those punched brass corners at Lacis last winter.
There were three reasons I used that red lace as a border:
--I wouldn't have to turn under the edges of that brown silk damask. That would have been bulky and very hard to get straight. The lace covered the raw edges nicely.
--the little holes in the edges of the lace gave me a good stitching guide so that my stitches would be even
--Uncle Hal would appreciate the somewhat bordello aspect of the lace. He LOVED women.

I think that wool makes this more formal, as it should be. It is a memorial quilt, after all.

But H himself wasn't formal. This picture of him, taken the last time I went to visit him in Tucson, gives you an idea of his personality. He came up with this pose for me.

There he is enjoying his morning cigar and cup of coffee. His T shirt says "Freedom Is Not Free".

I guess H had politics figured out!!!

Crazy Quilts Win Awards!

Two winners!
The American Quilters Society had their Nashville Expo show last week-end. I clicked on over to their website to view the winning quilts...and was so happy to see that a beautiful crazy quilt had taken Second Place in the new "Needlework" category--that's for anything involving the needle arts, as I understand it, that is not quilted, and is the only category in all three of AQS's shows that CQs qualify for. (My friends know this is a pet peeve of mine.)

Click on the winner's list link and scroll down to the Needlework category, second from the bottom. There you will see the link to "My Own Victorian Image" by Ellen Purdy of Purdys, New York. Click on it and enjoy...
Way to go, Ellen!

The second winner is Betty Pillsbury of Green Spiral Herbs. She has won Honorable Mention in the latest Hoffman Challenge for her quilt "Birds of A Feather". Click here and Betty's quilt will cycle through the Mixed Technique category.
A most deserving win, Betty..... ;-)

Pin Cushion Top

Working small is different for me and quite fun. And for some insane reason, occasionally I just want to work with those size 22 beads, which I call "bead dust". I have to wear magnifiers on top of my magnifiers to do this.

Those are teeny tiny beads.
But because my pin cushion top measures only 3 1/2 " in diameter, I needed teeny tiny.

My friend, Cindy Thury Smith, is writing an article about her radial pincushions for the upcoming issue of CQMagOnline, and some of us are making samples from her pattern for the article. So while I won't show the finished pin cushion, I can show the top I worked on yesterday.

I used scraps from my "Friends" piece. This time I wanted to use green with the blue, because I didn't get to last time. I love to experiment with very controlled palettes in CQ; I think they can give a lot of strength.
It sure is great to be doing shorter term projects again!

*Also!*
To see a fantastic series of small embellished crazy quilt circles, visit Marie Alton's "Porthole" series on her blog. They are truly fantastic.

"Friends"...Embellishment Finished

I made a bunch of these lettered sayings last year, thinking I would use them as bases for fresh floral photographs.
Like this....

And I did like how this came out.
But just like in the Spring CQ, all my fresh flower arranging is starting to translate into my crazy quilting, too.
Here is how "Friends: Opposites Attract" has finished up. (The "opposites attract" refers not just to wonderful friendships, but the fact that the dominant colors, orange and blue, are opposites on the color wheel.)

Getting this balanced compositionally without it being symmetrical was a fun challenge for me.

Detail shot here...I just love combining different elements like this.
I could do a ton of these...but there are other "fish to fry", as Susan Elliot wrote me this morning. Lots of fun projects in the works!

But first I have a garden to weed that's been neglected for two weeks now...
Not to mention the never ending supply of produce from Robert's garden to deal with!

We are eating well these days...........