Skulls Abound

The second of the four Dia De Los Muertos blocks that I am assembling:

I must admit, these have proved to be very difficult for me.  I really don't know much about the holiday, and I do not celebrate it, so I don't have the right mind set to be creative.  I am sure these blocks will need more stuff, but I am waiting until they are put together.  That's my excuse, anyway.  The fabrics are too busy for much embellishment.
This is my pinata.  It may still need a stick for hitting.  The silk ribbons at the top are supposed to look like streamers.

The tatted cross is the same one, in a different thread, that I made for my last CQJP block.  It goes together pretty quickly and is a nice little cross. 

This skull is made from an Embroidery Library download.  The velvet ribbon is hand dyed and the flowers are from Offray. 

I am very open to suggestions on these blocks.  Ideas? 

Bad Blogger!

I know, I haven't posted in two weeks.  It's not that I haven't been busy, just that I've been too busy to take pictures!  And at that, the ones I am posting today do not do justice to my hard work. 
My good friend Lisa regularly participates in a local annual show/fundraiser on Fat Tuesday.  This year she invited me to share her booth space, so I am rushing to get some simple projects finished.  I am planning on selling fat quarters, embellished throw pillows, and lace motifs made with my embroidery machine.  Not sure about anything else.  It's hard to squeeze a lot in with work and all of the activities my children are in. 

I bought these cute crocheted hearts at an estate sale.  I dyed two to go with some fabric that was handed down from my aunt and cousin.  These will be the two bright pillows that I'm making.  The other stuff is more muted.  I come from a long line of pack rats (hoarders sounds so ugly!) and am blessed that at least two of them occasionally decide they have too much stuff and pass it on to me.  The last several months have seen lots of of fabric, notions, and embellishments come my way.  Case in point, these fabrics and the awesome green flower pin on the blue pillow.  I actually got two of the pins.  One is staying with me.  I love the color.

Just a few of the embroidered pieces.  There are also locks and keys, birds, rabbits, hearts, etc. 

I will try to be more diligent in posting.  I know that I hate checking on a blog that hasn't been written on in forever.

Bits and Pieces

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  And if you do not celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a blessed whatever-you-believe-in. 

I would love to say that I spent the last two weeks completing all sorts of beautiful projects, but for the most part I just stressed and vegetated.  Oh, well.  I did clean my studio (a little-I can at least walk in the door again) and I cleaned my "nest" in the bedroom.  That's the area between my side of the bed and the wall where all of the bits and pieces of my latest project(s) land.  Books, scraps, heaps of thread snippets, needles in the carpet, etc. 

I also made these beauties with the embroidery machine:
 

Some designs were from Secrets of Embroidery and some from Urban Threads.  They were all gifts. 

I also made a nifty little needlebook for Kay, my office mate, who is now into hand embroidery. 

It includes 100% wool felt for the needles and 4 pockets for stashing stuff. 
The idea was from Marsha Michler's The Magic of Crazy Quilting, but the execution, size, etc, was my own. 


End of the Journey?

I am calling it done.  Except I forgot to put on the label I made.  Please leave a comment!  Positive, negative, suggestions, observations, anything.  I love feedback, it's how I learn and grow. 

This was definitely a learning experience.  And I must say, the finishing (border, backing) was the most difficult part.  Much more so than making and embellishing the blocks.  Before you read further, I do not receive anything for linking to store sites.  I simply do it because I like to know what people use and where they get their supplies, so I assume others do, too. 

I tied the quilt with Petunia 2mm silk ribbon, hiding the the knots.  I went through the backing and the foundation fabric because I did not want the ribbon to show on the front.  I buy most of my silk ribbon from silkribbon.com.  Their ribbon takes dye very nicely.  They are reasonably priced and ship very, very quickly. 

This is the "soaring bird" from Urban Threads.  I also have the "floral fascinator" on another block, but the picture came out way too fuzzy.  You can see it in the top right corner in the picture of the whole quilt.  This was my first foray into Urban Threads freestanding lace designs and I am very happy with the results.  I bought a few other downloads that I am looking forward to making up.

I also purchased several pieces of lace from Sew-Biz Fabrics to dye. They are very reasonable and also ship very quickly. For someone who lives in the middle of no where, that is super important. These I finished with buttons from my small stash (hand me downs from grandmothers and other places), from Roxann, and from my aunt. Check out the cameo button from Aunt Tricia. It is my hands-down favorite.

The Last Two Blocks

The last two blocks are finished!  Go, me!!!
Emily's:

The colors wouldn't come out right when I uploaded the picture.  The pink is actually a very pretty rosy pink, the check on the left is a light lilac, and the green at the top should be a nice sage.  Oh, well.  I'm a quilter, not a photographer.  I made the little lace lamb on my embroidery machine using this design from Embroidery Library.  I needle tatted the green and pink lace pieces and also made my own cording that I couched for the staff.  The '97' is made with French knots.

John Ross':

Ignore the basting stitches on the right corner, please.  Those will come out soon.
The crown of thorns was done by couching another cording that I made.  The couching stitches are meant to look like red thorns.  I also dyed the lace yellow. 

I have been working on adding the borders.  More on that later.  I am trying to come up with a name for the quilt so I can enter it in a show.  I was thinking 'Inspirations' and then Roxann threw in 'Desperation.'  So...Inspiration and Desperation?  Inspired Desperation?  Desperately Inspired?  Blood, Sweat, and Tears?  I Can't Believe You Wasted 14 Months of Your Life?  Suggestions?

Dia de los Muertos...in my style

Dia de los Muertos is literally "the Day of the Dead."  It is a Mexican holiday that ties into the Catholic All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  People celebrate their dearly departed loved ones by having parties, cleaning graves, and making altars for the deceased.  It is also a big business for those selling sugar skulls and dressed skeletons. 


Lisa's Bride:  A new addition to this year's Halloween yard display

While I do not celebrate this day, three of my bests (two friends, one cousin) collect and display all sorts of paraphernalia dedicated to the phenomenon.  So, in honor of my buds, I dusted off the embroidery machine and made lace skulls (the lace is where the 'my style' comes to play).  The design I used is from Embroidery Library. 

I was having the worst time with snarls and machine repairs and wasting thread, time, energy, and water soluble stabilizer until I finally tried changing the needle for a smaller one.  Problem solved.  I feel like an idiot because I wasted a lot of stabilizer and thread, and that stuff is not cheap.  Lesson learned, though. 

So, in honor of the special strange people in my life, I added the olive and pink skull to the crazy quilt.  I also finished the last of the corner blocks this weekend, but that is for a different post.  Last night I tried adding borders but realized that this thing is way too skewed and had to remove them.  I will need to do more squaring before I get to that point. 

Almost There!

I finally decided on the design for the corner blocks on the crazy quilt, and have even finished two of them!  All four will be 6" finished fan blocks.  Each will have a name of one of my children and their birth year, and the 4th has my husband and my name and the year we were married.  Each of these blocks will also have a religious symbol and none of the blocks will have a fabric that is on one of the others.  Enough rules?  Oh, there also has to be some chartreuse to match the other blocks. 
Here are the first two:

I really didn't mean for this block to seem quite so pink, even though green and pink are my favorite colors, but it sure came out that way.  The 90 and heart are done with a chain stitch.  I made the doves with my embroidery machine and appliqued them on. 

Each wedding ring is stem stitched with three rows.  Then I wrapped each with 18K gold thread.  It has a pretty sheen in person that I just couldn't capture in a photograph. 

 

Our oldest daughter loves purple and turquoise, so the background is turquoise and the 91 is purple.  To keep some of the quilt's signature green in it, I dyed the lace and also used a green velvet for the fan handle. 

 

She chose the "Jesus star" for her motif.  I finished it with needle punch and really like how it turned out. 

Block #3 is together, but I haven't started embroidering yet.  So much to do, so little time!  I really am determined to have the whole thing finished by Christmas at the latest.



Please comment!!  I love comments!!



The Best Laid Plans...

Sigh.  Yesterday morning (a Monday, no less!) I got ready earlier than usual and went outside at the first light to take pictures of some additions to The Quilt and a few of all the blocks together.  Then I downloaded them onto my flash drive along with some other stuff from the weekend.  At some point I deleted them.  All of them.  The entire folder labeled "crazy quilt."  Every single blessed picture from the beginning is lost.  It makes me sick.  Of course, it's not as bad as losing the actual quilt!!!!  But still, it is maddening. So here we are on Tuesday, trying again. This time I at least got them on the blog! Cross your fingers that nothing else happens.  This time I took the pictures in the evening, but it was so windy most of them came out very blurry.  These are the best:

Mind boggling, isn't it?  There are twenty total blocks, ten of which have pictures.  They arranged so that the picture blocks do not touch.  In some cases I moved around items that had been appliqued, like two of the saints and their frames, and some of the small lace pieces.  I added the rooster and frog lace and still need to find places for a few of the other lace pieces. 

This is my shell and holy water to represent baptism.  The shell is appliqued from white velvet and the water is made of french knots from variegated thread. 

The satin stitched crown is in honor of my friend, Lanita.  Lanita passed away in April of 2011 from breast cancer and continues to inspire me today.  She was always smiling and serene even when she was in the worst pain.  Lanita was creative, down to earth, and an awesome mother.  When she decided to shave her hair instead of watching it all fall out, she had a shaving party.  All of her friends were instructed to bring "something to wear on her head."  She meant a hat or scarf, of course, but I took a tiara.  My favorite picture is of Lanita with a wig and the tiara. I thought of adding a breast cancer ribbon in her honor on my quilt, but the tiara means more to me.

I got my punch needle last week!  It was confusing at first and I am still not comfortable with it, but I managed to decorate my son's picture and make a peacock feather.  I will need more practice.  The feather is my own design.  Actually, I still have a real feather in my purse that I was looking at for inspiration.  I love peacocks. 

Speaking of my adorable son (and this picture was when he was almost two and he is now thirteen), I added a bit more to him.  The spokes of the wheel have been picked out in brown stem stitch and the red stripe with the same stitch.  Then I added a brown silk ribbon belt, tiny blue belt loop, and buckle using real gold thread in a satin stitch.

I am now working on four corner blocks and then will put on the 6" border.  Maybe it will be finished by Christmas.     

 

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

This block really has been all about blood, sweat, and tears.  The blood starts with my poor sore fingers.  For some reason, it has been a particularly rough week with the needle and I've never been comfortable with a thimble.  I have an aversion to things that confine, like shoes, gloves, and thimbles.  Chalk it up to claustrophobia, but this week I kind of wish I had learned to use the thimble years ago.  To top it off, I burned two fingers and a thumb (different hands) at lunch time. 

Remember what the block looked like last week without the embroidery?  It's quite a change, eh?  First up is the lace purse.  The lace was from a vintage lace sleeve from Roxann.  I hated cutting into it, but this way I can see the beauty instead of being stuck in a box. 
To the right is my take on a hibiscus, embroidered on top of a sliver of tropical barkcloth.  I used to wear a lot of Hawaiian shirts. 

Here is my pocket watch appliqued from a piece of very pretty silk.  Ignore the purple marks, please.  That's just from the disappearing ink that hasn't disappeared.  I am planning to extend the chain into the next block when they are sewn together.  And yes, there is significance in the 3:00 time stamp.  The very pretty olive, beige, and rose fabric (which is also the softest thing on this quilt) is picked out with plain brown backstitching on the brown lines in the fabric.  It's subtle in the photograph, but very nice on the real thing.



This is where the tears come in.  Every time I located the peacock, it would disappear again.  Really.  I lost this thing at least 6 times.  I was so relieved to finally get it sewn on.  See the blue velvet it is mounted on?  I embossed that with a peacock feather rubber stamp, but you can really only see one of the feathers now. 



My corset mannequin took some doing.  I bought a stamp when out of town this weekend along with a set of dye markers.  Then, after coming home, realized that I didn't have the right stamp ink to apply it to my fabric.  Did I mention I live int he middle of nowhere?  I finally traced the design, embroidered it to the block, then filled it in with dye markers.  The flowers are those chiffon and tulle things I made before with the candle.  I like the outcome, but I still wish I had the right stamp pad.

One more block to go.  I don't think I will have it done for a couple of weeks due to time constraints, but next week I will post what the blocks are looking like sewn together.  I have ten together so far, but I am going to give my fingers a chance to heal before finishing the joining embroidery on them.

Little Bits of Randomness

Last week I had fun making lace with the embroidery machine.  All of my lace patterns are from Embroidery Library or Secrets of Embroidery.  Just search for "freestanding lace." 

These are some of my results:

green owl



brown rooster with lime bobbin-should be an "oops," but turned out very pretty

green frog with white bobbin

My favorite is the peacock (of course).  Like the others, it was designed to be sewn out in one color.  By watching very carefully I was able to switch out threads and come up with my masterpiece.  The dark color that may look brown is actually a deep plum.  The whole thing needs to have some more of the bobbin clipped, but that isn't nearly as much fun as the sewing.

I also assembled 3 sets of four crazy quilt blocks and have done the embroidery on the seams of two of the sets.  I've been worrying that they wouldn't fit together well and decided that the only way to stop worrying was to try it.  They work!  I haven't taken pictures of that yet.  Don't want to spoil the surprise.

This is what block 19 looks like without the embroidery.  I was going to take before pictures of all the blocks, but I was too anxious to get started that I only have pictures of one or two. 

Of course, crazy quilting is what I do in my free time.  I am currently working on a quilt using a young lady's baby and little girl clothes and dresses.  Hopefully I will have that top finished by next week and I will post a picture.  It's really cute so far.  The biggest challenge is the fabric availability.  I'm not sure if there will be enough for the twenty blocks I'm trying to squeeze out of it.  Otherwise I will have to add a border.  Not a problem, but not what I envisioned.