More CQ

The early stages of the second block in my fall tone series.  Silk ribbon roses.

I was playing with straight stitches, lace trim and french knots.

I decided to extend the flower motif in the brocade fabric.  These were created with french knots.  Branches are stem stitch with lazy daisy leaves.

More on Friday.

Thrift finds

 Some of my most recent thrift finds - one can never have doilies!

And what about lace, especially BLACK lace!

They are not really me but since the season is coming up thought they just may come in handy for something.

Well you know I couldn't resist these!

More crazy quilting on Wednesday.

More crazy

Another seam treatment using silk ribbon work, chain stitch, crocheted flowers and mokuba flowers.

This is the block part way through.

This is the completed block #1.  Lots of fun! 

Wishing all of my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving weekend and for those who shop on Black Friday, have fun!

Crazy!!!!

Over the next several weeks I'm going to be sharing an ongoing project I am working on. 

 In the last post prior to my vacation I shared some close up photos of roses I had stitched during a silk ribbon workshop in June of this year.  Prior to the class I decided to use crazy quilt blocks as a base for the roses so put together the above four 12" blocks in fall tones.  I started by experimenting with Pam Kellog's technique of using waste canvas for layering stitches.

This is how the seam turned out after adding several layers, beads etc.

Then I started playing a bit with Carole Samples Dream-A-Seam templates.  Am quite fond of this seam treatment.

More on Friday!

Thanks to all of you who left comments about our cat.  He is on the road to recovery - something we are truly THANKFUL for.

Back again!

Am starting off this week with a 5x7 fabric collage.  Various scraps of muslin, lace, fabric and cheesecloth.  

During my absence I purchased a new computer and WOW, is it ever fast.  Now I realize how slow my old one was.  I am doing a bit of re-organizing of files etc so a bit larger task than I had anticipated.

We had quite an eventful weekend which both DH and I are recovering from.  Our cat went out for a short stroll on Saturday (the usual) and was either attacked by a dog or coyote (most likely).  He managed to make it home after our searching and calling for him for over an hour.  He was shaky and obviously in pain.  He has already used several of his nine lives recovering with a large puncture wound in his head.  Fortunately no surgery was required, only antibiotics, pain medication and rest.  As expected, he is moving very slowly and stiffly.   

 I'm thinking it is time he becomes an indoor only cat!!!!

Roses

In June of this year I attended a silk ribbon embroidery workshop taught by Karen which I wrote about  previously in this post. 

The second workshop focused on silk ribbon roses and we did I believe a total of 10 different roses.  As my focus is crazy quilting, I decided to complete these on four crazy quilt blocks I had constructed prior to class.  These are some snippets of some of the roses.  I am currently working on completing the fourth block and once it is completed, I'll be sharing all the blocks here on the blog.

It has been challenging to design around silk ribbon work already on a block and am not sure if I would do it this way again.  I think it would have been better to put more thought into placement first but live and learn!

This is my last post for two weeks as I will be on vacation.  I should have LOTS to share on my return.  See you all November 21st!!! 

Gifts

I found a wonderful surprise in my mailbox on Monday.  Several weeks back in one of my posts, I mentioned I was going to be working on a future crazy quilt in greens.  I received an email from Gerry shortly after the post saying she would send me a package of greens.  Can you believe it - oh, those wonderful textures.  Thank you SO much Gerry.  Not only is the selection wonderful but it is very helpful for newbies such as myself to see what an experienced crazy quilter collects.  I can see hunting for lots more textural fabrics in my future thrift visits. 

I think I may be about ready to start sewing blocks now as I've added these to my collection.

Gerry has an excellent blog called Block Talk.  She shares helpful design ideas for stitching crazy quilt blocks.  Stop by for a visit.