Vintage CQ...Flower #26

California poppies are a favorite around here, the way they reseed themselves everywhere and are one of the earliest sources of bright color in the spring.
I've been making this flower for a few years, too....but never tried it on this small a scale. It was fun!

I started by creating the leaves on water soluble stabilizer, just using embroidery thread in a straight stitch on my Juki sewing machine with the feed dogs down.

For the petals I fused two pieces of silk together with some heavy weight Steam A Seam fusible web. Fusing the fabrics does tend to reduce fraying along the edge when you cut it.
See how nice the leaf came out, after I washed the stabilzer away?

And here they are blooming.
I added a little shading to the leaf with some gel pens.

Four more flowers to go! Then I get to sew them all together....

Crazy Quilt Class With Me

I wanted to let you know....
If you live near Battleground, WA this message is for you. And by "living near" I use that term loosely... A very kind reader of my blog has organized a private crazy quilt class with me and a few of her friends and there's one space left. (There will be 7 students in all.) She lives near Salem, OR... and that's quite a ways from Battleground! The class will be held in a newly built private home with lots of light and space.

It will be a three part class, each day running from 9 a.m. til 4:30 p.m. on three Saturdays, each a month apart, beginning in February. Class 1 will cover different ways to construct blocks; Class 2 concerns crazy quilt embroidery; Class 3 will explore 3 dimensional embellishment, especially flowers. Each student will be creating her own project with my guidance.

If you are interested, email LISA ENCABO at cutienbo@hotmail.com and she'll send you all the details. Please put "crazy quilter" or something like that in the subject line, so your email doesn't get deleted. Thanks!

Battle Ground is in the upper right of the map.

Vintage CQ...Flower #25

A quick post before getting to cooking in the kitchen. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I've been making this flower for a few years now, and wanted to include it in the quilt as a memento.

A cornflower for my Mom, who loved them so....

This little block has hand dyed silk, hand painted silk, antique obi cloth, rayon jacquard, quilters' cotton polka dots...it's good to remember that crazy quilting is just as much about the juxtaposition of fabrics as it is about the stitching...at least, to this fabric lover it is!

Hope you all have a loving and safe holiday...

Splurge!

I had to do it.
I've lusted after these little beauties ever since Maureen Greeson put them up on her website.
And now they are mine all mine....

They are Kensitas Vintage Flower Silks and you can find them here at Maureen's Vintage Acquisitions.

Here is a close-up....

I left this picture pretty big, so if you click on it you'll be able to see the detail...it's all in the weave. Astounding! The lupine is 2" X 2 1/2".

I've been under the weather and under the gun both this week, so I don't have a Flower #24 finished...next week, hopefully!

Vintage CQ...Flower #24

We're back in the rainy and cold Northwest, so making some cheery yellow flowers seemed just the thing to do.

I broke my own rule of ''no flower beads'' for this quilt--I do want to emphasis stitching--but I love these vintage yellow Lucite beads so much that I had to include them. Rules need to be broken once in awhile...
The stems are simply twisted 4mm silk ribbon; the fly stitch is Krienik Soie Gobelins (which I love), and the little clumps of flowers and leaves at the base are from some trim I cut up. The calyxes behind the flowers are little silver beads, and the center beads are pressed glass.

So then I had to see how the blocks all look together.....

...so I laid them out on the kitchen table, sharing the space with some of Robert's innumerable squash. You can see it is pretty dark and rainy out there....

How about a better look?

In classic blogger fashion, I stood up on a kitchen chair to take this...so it's not the best photo...but it gives an idea of how things are shaping up.
Only six more blocks to go!

Vintage CQ...Flower # 23

"Oh, Mexico,
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low...."
Remember that great song?

Indeed it is sweet here, watching the sunset in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico.....
It's been beautiful.

Still managing to get a little stitching done, though. Here is flower #23.

These are little angelina flowers made into a lilac spray. The leaves are of wool and silk felted onto cotton, with the beads added to the outlining buttonhole stitch.

On another note, we are midway through the second week of the crazy quilt auction on Ebay benefiting the Alliance for American Quilts. Head over, have a look, and bid!