A Crazy Start

With some trepidation I started cutting into some of my selected fabrics to piece my first ever crazy quilt block. I used the "antique method" described by J Marsha Michler in her book Crazy Quilting The Complete Guide. This basically involves cutting patches and placing them randomly, then turning under seam allowances, pressing them and basting (as you can see from this detail):



I liked the painterly/collage type of feel to this method, but did find it rather time consuming and laborious. I may try machine piecing my next block.

The idea of the Crazy Quilt Journal Project is to extend your own skills in crazy quilting, and already I am learning a lot! Next time I need to make sure that I cut the patches big enough for the seam allowances to extend beyond the marked foundation, as I think I may end up having to trim this block to half an inch smaller than I had originally intended. Also, my curved piece at top right may have been a little too steeply curved as I found it very difficult to turn under the seam allowance.

On a positive note - I am pleased with the overall composition and the colours.

And now I have to decide how to embellish the block. Where on earth to start??!?

Open in 2012

Well, the Christmas holiday is over and 2011 has drawn to a close...it must be time to look forward to 2012! Happy New Year folks.

So, what's planned for 2012? I think my main two projects this year are surely going to be the Crazy Quilt Journal Project and Take a Stitch Tuesday. But a Christmas gift of this book from my mum may well inspire a new craze:



I do love a nice apron! Or, as I prefer to call it, a "pinny"! I think I will probably start off with the basic waist apron:



And then progress to a basic smock apron:



2012- The Year of the Apron. Watch this space.

When I was having a bit of a clear out over the holidays, I came across a stack of HST units leftover from my scrappy Jacob's Ladder quilt, and having promised a quilt to a friend of mine, I think I will make this the start of a scrappy triangles quilt:



Waif helped with the layout for the photo, and was quite insistent that all the red triangles needed to go in the middle. I wasn't sure, but I think he's quite right! So perhaps scrappy but with red diamonds at the centre of all the blocks. I certainly have plenty of scraps of red after making Gman's quilt.

On a more general level, my aims for 2012 can be summed up in one word: OPEN. I am going to aim to be more OPEN to trying new challenges, OPEN to new ideas, OPEN to accepting change. This will be the year of no-holds barred.


What are your plans for 2012?

Fickle, me?

I've been thinking and rethinking my idea for 2012's Crazy Quilt Journal Project. In this post, I talked about my idea of each month representing a birth flower. But after giving this some thought, I think this will end up being a very tasteful and feminine quilt. And although there is nothing wrong with tasteful and feminine, it's just not me!!

So, I'm thinking I'm going to go for something a bit more vibrant and colourful, and have started pulling together fabrics in hot pinks, oranges and reds, with silks and sparkly bits and ethnic prints:




And with regards to the embellishment and embroidery I'm thinking BEADS and SHISHA MIRRORS and SPARKLY THINGS and SHINY THINGS and SEQUINS and RIBBONS - just generally no holds barred!

Now, doesn't that sound a lot more me??!!

The Excitement Mounts

As if I wasn't excited enough about the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2012, I have another reason to be even more excited! The reason is that my wonderfully talented and creative mum is also going to be participating in the challenge! And she has started a blog - check out her first blog post here, and see the beautiful crazy quilt wallhanging she made last year.

What's Your Flower?

So, to the snowdrops...if you guessed it was something to do with the Crazy Quilt Journal Project, you were right!

It started when I came across this in one of our homeschool books:



(Shakespeare for Kids)

Aha! I thought, I can use this list to give me a starting point for each of my crazy quilt journal blocks! And yay! The first month is snowdrop, one of my favourite flowers. So, I started gathering pictures from Flickr for inspiration, and this helped me to pull together this little bundle of scraps to work with for my first block:



The colours are much nicer in real life, but sadly the light in a British November does not do it justice :-(.

So, I'm thinking I will use each of the flowers as a starting point for each block, to help inform colour themes and embellishment ideas for each month. I may use actual pictoral representations of some of the flowers, but mainly it will be just to give me a starting place for choosing the colours. And as all the flowers will have at least some green for the foliage, this will give a commonality running through all the blocks.

Having had a gander about the interwebs at different lists of birth flowers, there is some variation in what are the "official" birth flowers, so I have chosen my favourites from a variety of sources and these are the ones I will choose:

January - Snowdrop
February - Violet
March - Daffodil
April - Daisy
May - Hawthorn
June - Rose
July - Delphinium
August - Poppy
September - Forget-me-not
October - Calendula
November - Chrysanthemum
December - Holly

I think this will give a nice mix of different colours and variations.

So, if you are doing the CQJP2012, what will you be doing for each of your different month's blocks?. I would love to hear other's ideas :-)

Going Crazy in 2012!

I'm signing up for two challenges in 2012.

The first one will be Sharon of Pintangle's Take a Stitch Tuesday. Check out the details here. Basically, it will involve learning a new embroidery stitch a week.

And so I have somewhere to put all these lovely new embroidery stitches, I am going to join in with the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2012. This past year, I've been increasingly realising that it's hand stitching that really lights my fire and I'd like to do more of it. Crazy quilting seems to fit the bill perfectly.

So, the challenge will be to create a crazy patchwork block each month (minimum size 6 x 6 inches) and the idea is that "Blocks should challenge your individual skills. Work to expand your artistic views and improve your technical skills." As I have never done any crazy quilting before, then this will definitely be expanding my skills! I have a bit of a planned theme for the blocks...but more of that in a later post...