More RickRack

I just had to try holding up some of the embroidered rickrack around the inner frame that surrounds the H. Pin it in place, step back and look....Oh, yeah....sometimes you just know.....

I liked how the yellow stitching on the black rickrack mimicked the yellow beads around the outer edge, and also that nice scallop it gave to the inside of my frame. And it ties in with the rickrack around the little fans (which are all done now, completed as the Rockies took out the Diamondbacks 5 to 1.)
I am thinking I am going to have to do some weaving in and out of those blue chain stitches that create the outer most edge of the "H" frame....

Finishing up a long term crazy quilt project is really, really fun. All the tweaking just brings things more into focus..

First Little Corner Fan Finished....

I knew that embroidered rick rack would give me lots of bang for the buck!
These little corner fans are now all edged in the rick rack you see here. I like how the white stitching in it picks up the other white that is in the fans in this quilt...just another little unifying factor.
The blades are so small that to keep in scale with my seam treatments, and to avoid extra busyness, I am just outlining the seams with 2 ply silk floss...this is acting like quilting, getting the fan to flatten against the surface of the quilt and not be poofy.
One down, three to go, which I'll undertake during the first Rockies game tonight...

Fan Blades...RickRack Completed with Podcasts' Help!

Well that was a pretty boring 6 more hours of sewing down rick rack. Luckily, on her Mindtracks blog Sharon B posted a link to some very interesting podcasts put out there by MIT. Besides being an excellent stitcher and design teacher, Sharon is also interested in the outer reaches of what is happening in social software--that is, how people are using the internet for ever evolving ways of interacting with each other--alerting her art students at Australian National University in Canberra to what she discovers.
It's nice to have some academicians amongst us! The interesting podcasts made this job go faster.

Multiply this times three....

With some color adjustment here and there....

My pliers are always at hand...I needed them to yank on that needle to pull the rickrack through to the back.

Then I used a sewing thread to tack the rickrack down.

Then I sewed the rickrack down in the front using matching DMC thread.
Whew, I'm glad that's done!
Any more good podcast finds, Sharon? I still have those small fan blades to go.....

Fan Blades...Solved!

For over a year I've been stumped over the best way to treat the large fan blades in my "H" quilt, so I was happy to find the teeny rickrack last week-end, as I knew I had finally found my solution. I wanted the seams covered, but not made busy...and admittedly, I didn't want to have to take a huge amount of time to accomplish that goal. The first of the four fans took two hours this morning. That is definitely doable....

I pretty much matched the colors of the rickrack to the fabrics of the fan blades.

Here's a detail. I had to tweak the color on some of the rickrack...I just used fabric markers which took about two seconds.

The red and gold fan of a few days just hadn't seemed complete to me...these plated copper leaves finished the job.
Originally I had thought this quilt would stay more traditional: I would not use much 3D embellishment, just relying on stitching work, as in the olden days of Victorian crazy quilting.
Guess again!

Green and Gold Fan

I have a small collection of stamped brass filigree shapes, so after touching up a wedged shaped piece with some gold acrylic paint, I used it as the base of the next fan.

Oops, must tuck that edge in under the yellow rickrack.
Don't ask me what's going on above it with that blanket stitched chenille. Sometimes I kinda lose it.

I did go to the Art and Soul Retreat Vendor's night last night, but flew out the door without my camera, so I have no pictures of the event.
But you can imagine tables set up in a big hotel banquet room piled with heaps of supplies. May the Gods forgive me, but all of that mixed media stuff starts looking the same to me after awhile. Of course, all our crazy quilts probably look the same to those folks too.
Certainly they were a well-dressed, arty-looking crowd of middle-aged women having a very
good time, crowding the tables and filling their shopping bags. And that is to the good, for sure.

And I did score! Here is my haul...what could be cooler than embroidered rick rack? Also that batch of narrow rickrack was a good deal and a timely find--I am thinking about those fan blades looming in my future.
That vile little vial of beads contains a mix of colors and sizes from 15 to 20. Bead dust. It sits next to some 2mm black sequins. I am asking for trouble here but these could be great within some of my patches on the "H" quilt.
That big bag of mixed brown beads was also an excellent deal.
Stash Refreshment is awfully fun...

On a completely separate note, my sister-in-law sent me a link to this UTube performance. For all you moms out there, you will definitely relate....it's called The Mom Song.

Red and Gold Fan

Here we have the card table set up for the Post Season in the TV room. Poor Mike Scioscia, the California Angel's manager, is getting a bad feeling here about what is going to happen in the bottom of the 11th inning....

Meanwhile, another fan has appeared, and I don't mean a baseball one, either!

I should have known this was going to happen to this quilt...beads and sparkles are not to be denied.

Here is that red and gold fan "in context". See those seed beads scattered across the velvet patch? I am getting the sinking feeling that all the patches in the center section--except the large pieced fans and the H block--will be getting that treatment before this is all over.