Victorian Crazy Quilt - Summer Afternoon Fishing

 

This was my first attempt at creating an image with embroidery. I did not want to draw a pattern onto the fabric and leave any pencil lines or markings on the block. The creating of such an image becomes quite a test of size perspective, and understanding in your mind what the finished image should be. Also this approach allows for no mistakes, you cannot start ripping out threads, as it may damage the fabric.

 

I like the way the embroidery thread sunk into the black velvet when I embroidered the fish. Velvet is so nice to work with, and so soft in your hands.

The flowers reminded me of wildflowers growing in a field. There is no rhyme or reason to where they are placed.

In this quilt block I wanted to try use a variety of embroidery stitches. I put down one stitch with one color of pearl cotton, and then kept adding layers with different colors of threads and pretty soon the row becomes very elegant.

Here you can see again the variety of stitches that were used in just a small area of this one block.

Victorian quilts were known for their gaudy appearance. More is better here. These fancy quilts were always displayed in a prominent place, like the parlor. This was a way for the woman of the house to show off her needle skills.

Victorian Crazy Quilt - Summers Jewels

When I started this project I had been using a book by Judith Baker Montano, Elegant Stitches, for a reference guide. She gives wonderful examples of step by step descriptions and the photography is beautiful. There are wonderful resource books on the market that you can look to for inspiration. Your local library can also be a great outlet, if you don’t want to invest the money into more books.

This was my first attempt at making grapes, on the green satin fabric.

I was very pleased with the trees I stitched on this block, and the use of beads on the tips of each branch.

As I was always trying to find as many different beads as I could for each individual block. Bugle beads were great, because they came in such a variety of colors and different lengths.

Here is a wonderful example of using the shorter bugle beads in the place of stitches on these little trees.

I am still amazed at how the photography turned out when I shot all these pictures with my small digital camera. Isn’t technology great!

Liz's Halloween Journal

I love to make journaling books. They remind me of being a little girl, when we had to write story books for school assignments. A couple of years ago I wanted to be a little creative, and made a special journal for my daughter, Liz. She is very artistic, so I thought I would make her a journal that she could use to add her own little drawings and sketches to.

As her most favorite time of the year is the Halloween season, I based the theme of this journal on that.  Since Elisabeth is also an artist, when I did this project I only used about ¼ of the pages of the book. The rest were to hers, add her own artistic creations to the book.

I drew several pictures throughout the book, to keep the theme going and to give her inspiration to add her own.

It always amazes me as to how personal and sentimental these projects become to me.

On some of the pages I just added some whimsy.

Around this time I had just received a laminating machine from my daughter, Barb. Here I made some bookmarkers that Liz could use in her little journal. I had some trick or treat paper bags that I bought on a clearance rack and added it as a pocket to hold the bookmarker.

Here I played with a little torn paper on this page.

To give this page a different look I glued down some orange tissue paper, and added a bit of torn core paper and some rubbings.

I think I love Halloween just as much as Liz does. I always drew for my children when they were small and wanted a picture to color. This book is a little treasure for Liz, and gives her many happy memories of childhood.   

Wool Art Quilt - Romantic Hearts

I wanted to create a wool art quilt that would have a very feminine look to it, so with that in mind a chose one of my art pieces that I had printed through Spoonflower.

I trimmed the piece of fabric art to use as the center of my quilt, and then started to arrange silk flowers that I had taken apart and placed them onto my piece of creamy wool that I am using as a base for the quilt. I lined the quilt with a piece of cotton batting. I used roving wool to create the shadowy hearts in the background.

This is really coming together, and it has a very soft look that I was trying to achieve. 

I gave the quilt a sprinkle of gold Angelina fibers, and then covered the top of it with white bridal tulle. This is done to hold all the loose flowers and leaves in place and to also keep in place the roving wool and Angelina fibers. It was time to take it to the machine and start some thread painting. I started to stitch some feathers to the border of the quilt and frame in my little center block.

I placed my fabric block the middle of the quilt, and pinned it in place.

To hide the edge of the fabric block, I used a pretty lace and stitched it to cover the edge of the fabric. It took a little time to get everything in place, but with a little perseverance and I was ready to continue.

It looked a little bare around the outside of the lace, so I added some hand embroidery with pearl cotton using the lazy daisy stitch in a sage green.

 

Now it was time to really give the quilt some rich detail and enhancement. I again went through my selection of pearl cotton threads by DMC and using needles by John James, I stitched the inside of the flower petals. I really enjoy sewing with the pearl cotton in a size 8. It has a nice twist and sheen to it. I stopped buying regular embroidery floss years ago.

This is a close up of the flower petals after they have been stitched with the pearl cotton.

With that complete I laid the quilt on my June Tailor cutting mat, and with the Omnigrid ruler and my Olfa rotary cutter I cut the batting from the outside of the quilt and trimmed it to the finished size I wanted.

I decided on a pink fabric to the backing and I basted all the layers into place. I then took it back to the machine and added more machine quilting.

To create the binding I cut the backing fabric to 1 inch from the outside edge of the quilt top and rolled the fabric twice over to the front of the quilt. I pinned it in place and hand stitched it in place with Coats and Clark hand quilting thread.

I decided to do some hand quilting over my printed fabric in a cross hatch pattern. To avoid using a pencil to mark the lines, I used masking tape. This is a nice way to get an even grid while hand quilting, and not having to worry about marking on the quilt.

 

Oh yes, this is taking shape nicely. But even with all that has been done, I felt it needed more.  

To give this quilt extra sparkle that will really be noticed, I hand stitched bugle beads inside the small flowers and added a round bead to the center.  

Here I placed little pink glass beads randomly around the border of the quilt. I think it is finished. I have included a few close ups of the completed quilt for you to enjoy as well.



Scrap Book Halloween Spider Web

I am working on a new project. I plan to use the original drawing in a photo collage, but also wanted to keep a scan of my original to use to make some scrapbooking paper. I drew my artwork onto a piece of matt board. 

I took a little bit different approach in this project and used a quilting template after I drew a grid.  

I covered the grid with what appears to be stitching lines and then added some shading with my Crayola Twister colored pencils. 

I like the way the spider web appears to be hanging from the upper corner of the page. I decided on a Halloween look and added a little red shading in the bottom points of my background grid and then used a red fine point Sharpie pen to draw in some flames.

I gave it a bit of a spooky look by dabbing some black ink around the edges. This changes the freshly drawn look to appear aged. I just love the Memories brand ink products to do this, along with a thick stencil brush.



To continue with the Halloween theme, I added some bat rub-ons.

There we go – my Halloween art that I can take to my printer to make cardstock paper to use in scrapbooking or journaling.  And then I can use my original drawing to make my photo collage. My daughter Ruth has some great pictures of herself that were taken while she was in costume for the Renaissance. I can’t wait to get started on this piece.