Bits & Pieces

I can hardly believe that it's been over three weeks since I've blogged!  It's not that I haven't been doing things, but mostly just finishing up "bits and pieces" and getting stuff ready for the Crazy Adventure in Connecticut coming up at the beginning of April.  

Oh, the innocence of it.  This is my first storage for "lace & trim" from 2008.  It's 10" x 4" and has long been discarded for lace and trim!



My find of the week is this little evening handbag covered with  mother of pearl beads.  There are a few missing, but I picked it up at my favourite store for $1.24, which works out at 2 beads for 1c.

I signed up for my first DYB (do your block) CQI RR.  Six 6" square blocks are sent around to the participants.  The first chooses one and finishes it.  Then they are all sent to the second person, etc. etc.  This is a "tone on tone"  I chose the rainbow:  a block in each of yellow, green, orange, red, purple and blue.

And this is one of those "quilt as you go" strip quilts.  I seem to be quite taken with this pattern since learning how they work on the Ozzie flood relief quilt blocks that I made.  For this one I used strips from men's shirts with the centre strip a piece of silk tie.  I have just begun joining the blocks up with navy blue strips.

Kathy's Basically Beaded RR Block

By the time this block arrived at my place it was a heavy piece of work.  Peggy, Meg and Arlene had added plenty of sparkle and unusual pieces.  The empty spot left for me was the middle (!!) and a section of embroidered lace.  While I was working on the other two RR's I had this one on view to get some ideas of what I could do on the lace section.

I followed the inside pattern of the embroidery and added tiny beads, charlottes and delicas.  And in the centre of each of the three a crystal.  The flower, top right is a piece from a chandelier and to bring it to life I sewed sequins underneath.

This is a rose.  I pretended I was doing bullion stitches with beads, shading them to look like petals.  Did it work?   The two small beaded seams are beaded daisy chains.

This was the last block in this round robin.  I have really enjoyed trying to come up with something different.  The book with the instructions for the daisy chain, "The Beader's Floral" is a wonderful book and I'm determined to progress further than the daisy chain!

Basically Beaded - Meg's block



This is Meg's block ready to move on to Kathy now that Arlene, Peggy and I have added our beaded embelishments.







I added these beaded flowers and leaves and the seam to the right.

And this jewel in the bottom right corner.

And this dangly seam treatment.

Nicki Lee's CQI Tea Time II RR heading home

This is Nicki Lee's Tea Time block as I received it with Carolyn, Cathy and Thearica's work. 

Carolyn, Cathy and Thearica really worked hard and filled Nicki Lee's block with loads of neat stuff.  Just look at the detail, there's lots to see and admire. 



My challenge was the top right hand corner, a triangle of white satin.  My first thought was:  This block is missing some goodies, sweet stuff to go with a cup of tea!

And this is what I added.  They are cut-out cakes from a piece of fabric that I embroidered and beaded.  

After that I added some silk ribbon embroidery to the cup and saucer in the middle of the block.  And worked on the pink, green and gold beaded seam to the right of the cup and saucer.

And finished off with a little embellishing on the items on the second shelf.  And below the block is finished and ready to head home.

   

Tea Time II RR

  This is Thearica's Tea Time CQI Round Robin block that I have been working on for the past few days in sunny Florida, just resting up for a couple of weeks before the holiday rush.  The block arrived with Carolyn's gorgeous work already completed under the tea pot - an embroidered tablecloth with the two sweetest napkins.  Cathy made the steam drifting out of the tea cup, the hanging tea-bag and a candy sitting in the crinkly wrapper.  She also added the crocheted party hat with all the trimmings.  Cathy also added a pretty rambling SR rose vine.  Above is the block with Carolyn's Cathy's and my work.

I embellished the top right tea cup with beaded bunches of grapes, gold vine embroidery and silk ribbon leaves.

I also chose to do the teapot with various stitches, and beads.

I echoed Carolyn's wavy rose vine with a scalloped chain stitch in silk ribbon with clusters of  flowers and leaf beads at each point

Since writing this post, I've embroidered another of the teacup and saucers.



Peggy's Basically Beaded CQI RR

This is Peggy's Basically Beaded Block after Arlene and I have done our bits

The navy blue small centre patch was perfect for these sequin flowers..  The seam on the left is beaded cross stitch.

This is a beaded fly stitch with added gold flowers

A row of randomly chosen beads. 

A mother of pearl button and bead patch.

Elijah's birth announcement block

In between the CQI Round Robins that I am working on, I have been trying to get caught up with these announcement blocks for my five grandchildren.  This is Elijah, my youngest at 4 months.  The two next in age, Brynn, one year and a bit, and Josh, 2 years and a bit I have completed.  The other two, Jack nearly 7 years old and Caleb 3, were born before I began crazy quilting, so I am playing catch up.  Jack's is almost finished and will be featured soon! 

Busy, busy, busy....

How can it be 3 weeks since I blogged last! Time just slips away. I haven't done a lot of stitching, but I have managed to work on piecing some of the RR blocks that I have signed up for in the New Year. This is my naked block for the Asian #2 RR. The design is similar to part of a wall hanging that I liked and mentioned in a previous posting. The fan fabric only came in those vibrant (fluorescent!) colours, but I'm going to encourage my RR friends to bead/embroider/embellish over them to tone them down a bit!

This could either be for the Brazillian embroidery RR or the Stumpwork RR. I haven't decided yet.

And this is the design, on paper, for the CQI 2010 Challenge. The first few monthly challenges include curved piecing, fans, working with velvet, birds and 5-layer stitching. Stumpwork and Silk Ribbon embroidery are two more that I have signed up for and need to make blocks, but so far they are one or two short of being filled.

Out of your comfort zone Challenge

CQ4Newbies recently ran a challenge where the participant would make two blocks, one where you were entirely comfortable with the colour, design, fabric, stitching and embellishments. The other would be out of your comfort zone. I started with my comfort block - pinks, lace, beads and the like. This is a needle case opened out to show front and back.

Below is my attempt at the "out of your zone" challenge. It's out of my zone as far as colour (no colour, just black, grey and silver), but not for any other reason, (like using big buttons, beads and butterflies), so I couldn't in all honesty, submit it into the Challenge. But I did end up with half of a nice tea cosy!!!

FFT#7 - Nicki Lee's block

Just finished and mailed Niki's block to Faye in Australia. I really like working on sea-themed blocks and Nicki's was set up so nicely with lovely fabrics and pretty stitching already completed by Mary. Here are some pictures.

These shells shine like mother of pearl, the photo doesn't do them justice.Lots of seaweed and a little shoal of tiny fishes to the right.

This braid has a lovely shimmer which I was able to match to some Sassa Lynne thread and seed beads. Below that is my representation of an octopus

I wanted a stitch that would disappear into the background because I didn't want it to interfere with the patch with the shells. The stitch I used is the up and down blanket stitch and is one of my favourites and every time I use it I have to look at the instructions. But it's an interesting stitch because the second leg appears is the most impossible way. Just try it out and you will see what I mean.

Now I am block-free until I receive Gerry's block from Mary. I should probably do some housework!

Whatever Goes RR

This block began it's journey today to Deanna in Minnesota.

I didn't do a stitch on it before it left here. The colours are lilacs, purples and pale green. It will be back home in August if all goes well!!

Over the past year I've accumulated a few blocks. Below are two scenarios using the block above. One is using three lighter coloured blocks to make up a group of four. The other is a six block group using lighter and darker blocks. The background fabric is a dark eggplant/purple colour. Do you think that the dark blocks in the 6-group dominate too much?

Coffee Sleeve

I made a coffee sleeve for a swap on crazyquilters-ca, a Canadian group that I belong to. It was my first attempt and a learning experience. I had another go and took photos at every stage, so it is an "on the fly" tutorial. Here it is finished.

These are the small and large sizes for a Tim Horton coffee.

I used the large cup, trimmed the top and bottom, cut about 1" off the top and 1" off the bottom., and cut straight down the seam of the cup. Then I marked on the pattern a 1/2" seam.
(Note: I didn't need this seam allowance because I added it on to the muslin as you will see below.)





I pinned the pattern to muslin and marked a line around the pattern and a cutting line on the muslin 1/2" from the pattern.









Here's the muslin with the solid line being the actual size of the sleeve, and the dotted line the seam allowance. The extra fabric was my insurance, but was not needed.

Here I have placed the first piece of fabric (black) on the muslin.

I added a second piece of fabric, placed the two right sides together and sewed through the three fabrics. This photo shows the two pieces of fabric pressed and ready for the third.

The right sides of the second fabric and grey patterned piece of fabric are together ready to be sewn.

Seam sewn and excess black fabric trimmed.

Grey fabric sewn.

Next piece of fabric pinned, ready for sewing.

Fourth piece, sewn, ready for pressing.

As each piece of fabric is added, I trimmed the previous fabric to the shape of the muslin. I added two more pieces of fabric using the same method as before.

Trimmed

Embellish

I cut out a piece of black felt in the shape of the original pattern, pinned it to the embellished piece and tacked over the seams. I trimmed the seams to a bit more than 1/4".

Pin it around the paper cup. Neatly sew together. Embellish the joining seam. This is the smaller cup as I had cut up the large size for the pattern.

Cut out the lining with about 1/2" seam allowance. Sew in place.

Finish inside join.

Finished. This is the sleeve on a large Tim's cup. Just a note to say that the patterned grey fabric and the striped fabric are both from the skinny ends of men's ties.