Victorian Crazy Quilt – Springtime Garden

 

Looking at this quilt I was reminded of a garden where you would find butterflies fluttering between all the flowers on a warm spring day.

 

 

It started with a small cluster of beads including a frosted glass heart in the center of the block.

 

 

I wanted lots of flowers, so I embroidered flowers with a straight stitch and petal stitch, and accented them with metallic bugle beads.

 

I tried these little trees in this little corner shape cut from a dusty rose cotton fabric. I used pastel threads and tiny glass beads on the tips of the branches.

 

I had a very large area of lavender satin to fill, so I just did a straight stitch in clusters of four. I reminds me of bird tracks.

 

The concept of crazy quilting is all about filling in areas with stitch and beads. These flowers were a nice addition.

 

I love the way the green bugle beads show up on the purple fabric. The nice part of a project like this is that you get to play with all sorts of color combinations.

Crazy For Victorian

 

I call this block "Crazy For Victorian". I think those that find a love for Victorian Quilts have a very great appreciation for that time of history as well, “The Victorian Era”. It was a time when a woman might have reached her epitome in feminism.

 

 

When crazy quilting began, it was the wealthy women who had time on their hands, and money for expensive fabrics that really got involved in this fad.  As it became more popular, fabric mills began to offer mail order packets of fabric scraps making it affordable for any woman to make these quilts. I made my quilt, using a lot of bridal fabrics and pretty satins, but I also used cotton fabrics as well.

 

 

When I first began to embellish my blocks I just started simple with rows of stitches and beading. Then I was comfortable adding flowers that seemed to float within the blocks.

 

 

Sometimes the flowers really looked like flowers…

 

 

Sometimes they looked like stars.

 

 

As I continue to post all of the blocks in my quilt you will see that my embroidery skills were getting better and I was getting more creative.

The Little Coat

 

 

Well, I finally have some time to share the process of making this collage for my husband, Joe. When he was very small his mom dressed him in this little coat, and took a picture. He received the coat from his mom, and when we had our son Joseph, we too dressed him in the coat and took a picture. The little coat was then given to our son, and when he had his little guy, Tommy, he also wore the coat. This small coat has been around for fifty years now. We all refer to it as the “oatmeal coat” because the fabric looks like oatmeal or malt-o-meal hot cereal.

 

 

I wanted this project to be special for Joe, so a lot of thought went into the planning. I started by drawing an image of the coat on mat board. I was amazed at how easy it came together.

 

 

After the coat was drawn in pencil I decided to draw a grid to fill in the background.

 

 

I added color to the coat by using colored pencils and fine point markers.

 

 

Once the coat was colored in, I then added lines with a marker over the grid lines I had penciled in. It needed more color, so I shaded over the lines with colored pencil.

 

 

The green shading I had done on the background looked too green, so I then went over it with brown ink. This seemed to give it the added depth I wanted. When doing collage work it is all about a layering process.

 

 

I had my photos that I copied onto matt photo paper and printed them out. I cut the images out of the photographs, and placed them where I thought they would look nice over the background.

 

 

The photos appeared very plain, so I cut an outline a little larger than each photo out of cardstock, and once again inked the edges first with green and then brown ink.

 

 

I like to work with chipboard letters and I chose to use two different styles for this project. They came in off-white, but I wanted them to stand out, so I added color to them. Since the story behind this artwork is all about the coat, I decided to make those letters red.

 

 

Stamping always adds so much to a background. I had these wonderful snowflakes and placed them at random throughout the piece. I then sprayed the entire piece with acrylic spray to coat the inks.

 

 

Once everything was glued in place, I stamped in the words: Grandpa, Son, and Grandson and some pretty swirls with some stamps I had on hand. I then coated the entire surface with paper glaze. While it was still wet, I sprinkled some very fine sugar glitter over the glaze.

 

 

When the paper glaze was totally dried I added rhinestones to add a little sparkle.

 

 

I sprayed the entire surface many, many times with acrylic sprays throughout the making of this piece. This gave it more depth, and coated it very well, since I knew when it was placed in a frame I would not be putting it behind glass.

 

 

Here is a close up of all three boys wearing the coat. You can tell by the photos that different cameras were used, and the quality of the photos changes at the years go by.

 

The rhinestones I used were gold in color, and were a good accent with all the brown inking and stamping I had done.

 

 

I stamped the work “Family” in black ink. I thought that word was very fitting with the theme of this piece.

 

 

I also stamped these lovely swirls in black over all the layering of paper glaze and acrylic spraying that I had done. They appear to be right on the surface where I wanted them.

 

 

This “Memories” text was also added to go with the theme. I wonder what Joe’s mom would think of the little coat project if she were here to see it.

 

 

I just got it back finished from the framing store, and I am very happy with how it turned out. I chose a hunter green wooden frame with a little brown border around the outside to blend with the brown tones I used throughout this artwork. It looks lovely hanging in Joe’s office over his desk.

 

Wednesday’s Letters

 

Mom can you help me this project? Ah yes, I have heard those words before. All my kids are so artistic, but at times they ask for my help.

 

 

Liz wanted to make something special for Wednesday’s room, so she bought some wooden letters in a really pretty font. She was undecided as to what to do with them, and so I suggested we do a little mixed media artwork. I had just purchased a beautiful tablet of papers by “Mariposa.”

 

 

When I carried in my light box from the garage and plugged it in, Liz was really wondering what this new contraption of mine was.

 

 

Here you can see what a great crafting tool a light box can be. It has a glass top with a bright light bulb underneath. This is great for tracing patterns, but in this case we were able to position the papers over each letter to maximize the beautiful details on the papers we were working with.

 

 

After the letters were traced on from the backside of the paper, each one was hand cut.

 

 

For the inside cuts on the letters I used my Fiskars utility blade, and my little cutting mat by Creative Memories.  

 

 

I then glued the papers to the wooden letters with Mod Podge and pressed them between layers of wax paper and heavy books.

 

 

With all the papers glued and dried it is time to really start to have fun. The studio is starting to look like a big mess, but that’s a good feeling. I pulled out all my bins of stamps, ink pads, glitter, glitter glue, stickers and let’s not forget the rhinestones.

 

 

I have some lovely clear stamps by INKADINKADO. They have nice swirly patterns in a variety of sizes. These will work nicely for the layering process.

 

 

I love to give some of my paper art an aged appearance, so I inked the edges of each letter with brown ink by Memories. I just love this ink, as it is permanent and will not run with all the gluing I will put on.

 

 

After stamping this letter it looked a little plain, so I used a metallic butterfly sticker on the upper right side.

 

 

Here I hand cut this butterfly out of a piece of coordinating paper from the tablet. I liked the way it had a raised effect and added more sparkle to this letter.

 

 

I did the same process with this bird.

 

 

To add additional texture I decided to use some flat back Rhinestones by Darice. These were glued in place with Gem-Tack adhesive.

 

 

You know, all I could think of as I did this project was that this is one very long name for such a sweet little girl. But here they are in all their glory. When I was finished with all the inking, stamping, glittering and embellishing, Each letter was coated with Mod Podge creating swirls with a sponge brush to prevent having brush strokes. They were then sprayed with many coats of clear acrylic spray. I took some very good close up photos, and have posted them on my Craftsy site. When in Craftsy, just click on the icon to the left, and try the hover option. You can really get in close and see all the detail.