Crazy Monday 21

This time I show you the back of my crazy quilt. Some time ago Sharon wrote about the assembly of her crazy diamond quilt and this was very helpful for me. I sewed the blocks together by hand, as always. Then I embroidered a herringbone stitch (on the back of the quilt) on the seams and the foundation to keep the seams open. I didn’t iron it first, I was afraid it would damage the embroidery or the beads and lace. It was a lot of work, but it helped flattening the seams so it was easy to quilt. I’m not showing the result yet, because I want to finish the label first. I use a back stitch for the text on a piece of unbleached cotton. Below you see a small piece of it.

Feeding the Rebels

. . . is the name of my next block of the Civil War Diary quilt. This one is hand pieced on a foundation (L11) in 3 parts. I used freezer paper to get the stripes of the fabric on the right place.

Frog

A few days ago I saw this cute frog. It reminded me of a frog I made very many years ago from a 3Suisses pattern. I still had some cotton of this frog left, so I had to make a new one. My circles are about 4 cm or 1,5 inch. I used a single crochet with green instead of sewing them together.

Postcard from Norway

I was one of the lucky winners of Ati’s give away! Today her fabric paper postcard arrived at my home and it’s beautiful. It’s on a display on my desk, so I can see it while I’m stitching. I’m very happy with this card, thank you Ati.

Crazy Monday 20

This week I sewed the two parts of my crazy Monday quilt together, now the size is 15 x 20 inch (about 38 x 51 cm). I’m not sure if I want to add a border.

Sinterklaas ATC

A week ago Sinterklaas arrived in our country. This was a great excuse to make this ATC for my friend M, who recently started to make ATC’s too. I made the embroidery in back stitches on unbleached cotton with a batting. The background is colored with a felt-tipped pen.

Blue bird

Nikki made this lovely crazy ATC for me. The doodle-stitching bird is a pattern from ‘Doodle-Stitching’ by Aimee Ray. She used back stitches, detached chain stitches and a French knot. We did a swap by using this book, she already received the pink owl ATC I made for her.

Totally Useless SAL November

This time I show you my TUSAL-jar on top of my embroidery for the long and short stitch lessons. First I finished the circles and a few days ago I started with the fourth element in the top right corner. Below you find a close-up of it. But that’s not all I did this month. I finished my last blocks for my crazy Monday quilt, block 15 and 16. For the Stitch Explorer challenge I made a laidwork foundation fish. I made a pink owl ATC for Nikki and a crazy ornament for my friend B.

Crazy ornament

I didn’t touch my crazy quilt this week; I was working on a crazy ornament for my friend B’s birthday. The embroidery is done in off-white stranded DMC and cotton broder. It’s stretched over a CD for the back and the front (with a piece of batting). Then I attached a hanging loop and sewed the 2 parts together. I attached a ribbon on the edge and decorated it with some seed beads. There is a bigger picture here, with some info about the stitches I used.

Pink owl

I made this ATC for Nikki. I used a pattern of a stuffed owl from my embroidery book ‘Doodle-Stiching’ by Aimee Ray. I changed some of the stitches and added a branch. I used split stitches (outline and decoration on the belly), running stitches (wings and branch), stem stitches (branch), cross stitches (branch), laced back stitches (body), satin stitches (eyes and beak) and French knots (eyes, decoration on the belly and background). I did the embroidery on the body after I added a piece of batting. The edge is an organza ribbon.

Doodle ATC's

Last week I received this lovely doodle ATC, Dinie made it. I promised her to make a doodle ATC, it was on my to-do-list for quite some time. But I made 4 different ones with different pens and watercolor pencils on watercolor paper. So I have 3 ATC’s left to swap. There’s a bigger picture here where you can see which ATC’s are available.

Crazy Monday 19

My crazy Monday quilt is growing. This week I sewed 6 blocks together. I only had to remove a bead on the edge of block 12, because it was on the seam. The first time I attached it with a piece of tacking thread and I left a piece of the thread I used for the other beads on the backside. This way I could take a picture and it could not get lost!

Block 31

Last week I finished another block for my Groninger blanket. It’s the last original block I wanted to knit. I only need 3 more blocks, but my knitting needles will stay in my knitting bag for some time. I’m making a black crochet blanket for my daughter. She needs one for her new room when she’s moving out in January. So I want to finish hers first. I need to make 14 rows of 16 squares and I’m halfway on row 8 already. Every square is attached to the others when it’s finished, so I only have to weave in the thread ends when I’m done. I tried to make pictures of it several times, but black is a difficult colour to photograph!

Circles

This is the third element of the long and short stitch shading lessons. I wrote about the first circle here. I had problems covering the split stitches with the second one, so it’s not circular any more. But the last one went very well.

Russet and blue

. . . are the colours of the lovely ATC’s Hannah made for me. She called them ‘Study in russet’ and ‘Blue draping’.

Crazy Monday 18

This week I started to sew my crazy Monday blocks together. I thought it would be difficult to find out how to arrange them, but it was wasn’t. It’s fun to see my blocks change into a small quilt. I only added a part of a damaged doily to the block with the dogs. I’m not making any more blocks for this quilt, but I want to make a small crazy Christmas quilt when this one is finished!

Laidwork foundation embroidery 3

A few days ago I finished my fish. I already wrote about his body. For his fins and tail I used an open fishbone stitch with 1 strand of DMC. The size of this fish is 8 cm (about 3 inch). There’s a bigger picture of him here.