New Meaning To The Word "Crazy"!

Yeah, that would be me! Can one of you, my dear readers, explain to me what the BLEEP I was thinking when I bought this quilt and decided to restore it? Ha, ha, ha!

My intention yesterday afternoon, was to replace 2 damaged patches on my quilt and then move on to working on Maxine's quilt. It didn't quite work out that way:



I was going to replace the red stripe and then the patch with the little victorian boot on it. I did my usual thing of snapping a photo with the digi, tracing the outline of the 2 patches onto tracing paper and then I tore out those 2 bad areas. While looking at it, I realized that the navy blue patch with the work boot on it needed to be replaced as well. Yikes! It was a little scary to have 3 pieces off at the same time! Since they all ran together, I didn't have a choice.



The boot repairs were the same as the first one that I did over the weekend. I had to cut into the foundation. Unfortunately, I found (in this area) that the muslin foundation is deteriorating. I also found that this quilt suffered some serious water damage before the backing and binding were put on. After reading this article titled, "Crazy Quilts In America Then & Now" by Patricia Cummings, I may have the reason for the deteriorating muslin.

I'm sure you're now thinking "why"? Well, fabric in the old days was not measured by the yard like it is today. Instead, it was measured by weight. To make fabric "weigh more", merchants soaked it in salt of one type or another. We all know what salt does to things! And in cheating the customer of the day, these merchants also cheated many future generations from having these beautiful heirloom works of art in good condition.

Back to my rotting muslin issue, I suspect that since the quilt got wet at one time, any residue salt on the fancy fabrics, soaked into the cotton foundation and therefore has rotted that as well. So far, most of the foundation fabric is fine. But this area is an exception.

I spoke with my mom about this and she told me that it's a good thing there so much that needs to be replaced. Since I'm stitching through everything that's here, the front, the flannel layer and the back, it should hold everything together just fine. Whew!

Ok, so onto my repairs:



I was a little freaked out over having 3 patches off at one time and as you can see, I didn't quite get them back on right. I really need to not stress over this so much! In some areas, there are 5 and 6 pieces all in a section that will need to be replaced and I know that I just have to do the best I can.

I'm sure you noticed that my stitching is a bit different than what was there. The red herringbone stitch to the right of the ladies victorian boot was intentional. I wanted more stitching on that area to make sure it was all held together well.

My stitches under the work boot are a bit different because I couldn't quite see what was there in my photo on the tiny little screen on my camera and I was just too lazy to get up off my butt, come in here to the computer and transfer the image!

Anyway, this area does look much better now and I still feel good that I have the ability to save Evelyn's quilt even if I don't get it exactly the way she had it.

I'm wondering now too if the 3 boots on this quilt represent something. Perhaps 3 family members? Mom, Dad and child? I may never know for sure but it's a gut feeling that I have. Do take a moment and read the article by Patricia Cummings. It's facinating!

Ok, now I would like to ask your opinion on something. I'm going to stop at Michael's Craft Store tomorrow to pick up the gold toned handles for my Mozart purse so I can get that assembled and use it! I was wondering what ya'll think of this trim:



I like it but wonder if it's too heavy? Or does it work? Please let me know you're opinion. I have gobs and gobs of this but if you think It's too much, I'll go with something else.

A New Counted Cross Stitch Design!

I spent yesterday afternoon working on Maxine's quilt. There isn't anything all that exciting about the process on that one at the moment. All I'm doing is cutting away the deteriorated patches and appliquéing new patches on in their place. I'm not even worried about replacing the stitches at the moment since I will be doing some insane embellishing on it.

So for today, I thought you would enjoy seeing one my newest counted cross stitch designs just released in the June 2007 issue of The Cross Stitcher magazine:



The Christmas Cat appears on page 40:



This design is based on a gorgeous kitty named, "Miss Lily" who belongs to Vicki, one of my fellow bloggers. Vicki's blog is Turkey Feathers and what a great blog it is! Do check it out if you have time.

Vicki had posted a photo of Miss Lily on her blog about a year ago and I absolutely fell in love with her. I emailed Vicki and asked for her permission to use Miss Lily as a model for a cross design. The Christmas Cat is that design!

I have an extra copy of this issue of The Cross Stitcher. If anyone wants it, I'll gladly send it out to the first person who emails me with a request for it.

Making It Up As I Go Along.....

Repairing this antique quilt isn't all that different from embellishing a new piece. Each repair requires a different approach.

I started yesterday by replacing these damaged fabrics on the corner:



Here's the "after" photo:



Ok, so my herringbone stitch is a bit smaller! Ya'll know that the herringbone is not one of my favorite stitches! At least I was able to match the color!

The next repair was a bit of a challenge:



I love this little boot but I needed to replace the background fabric. The boot was appliquéd onto the quilt so it was attached to the muslin foundation. I only had one choice here, cut into the foundation fabric. Because this quilt has a backing and I'm stitching through that, cutting into the foundation was not a big deal. I did find that this quilt has a middle layer of gray flannel!

Anyway, I cut the boot off, removed the rest of the damaged fabric and replaced it with a new piece. I then cut the excess fabric away from the boot, as close to the stitching as I could and then appliqued it back onto the new patch. Here's what it looks like now:



My next repair was to deal with this spiderweb:



I'm trying to keep as much of "Evelyn's" work here as possible. Several of the threads on the web were damaged but overall, it was in pretty good shape. Rather than re-stitch the entire web, I decided to simply couch all the threads to the quilt using one strand of sewing thread in a matching color.

Here's what it looks like now:



After that repair, I replaced the stitches on several seams.

So that's what I have to share with you today! A very interesting process isn't it? There's still a long way to go on my quilt but for today, I'll be putting it to the side and focusing on repairing Maxine's quilt which doesn't have nearly as much damage as mine.

Stash!

I didn't get in any stitching time yesterday. When my husband came home from work, he asked me if I would like to go see Johnny Depp in the new Pirates movie. No need to twist my arm there! I have a thing for Johnny Depp!

I had a lovely time but I must say, now that I've seen the 3rd one, the first is definitely my favorite. I don't want to spoil it for anyone so all I'll say is that I thought the ending was totally stupid. I'll leave it at that.

On to stitching, I received some wonderful stash yesterday! My mom, was at Hobby Lobby the other day and bought me some fabrics that she thought might work on my antique Crazy Quilt:



There are several areas on my quilt where the fabric is totally gone leaving me with nothing to clue me in on what was there. In those cases, I'll just have to pick something that I like and that works and use that. These should work nicely.

Several patches are a blue & cream silk stripe fabric and several others are a red & cream stripe silk. Those are in pretty bad shape so I'll be replacing them. You can see in the photo what I'll be using to replace them. I'll most likely "age" the blue stripe with some fabric dye. It's not an exact match, but it's close enough.

More stash arrived in the mail yesterday from Lynne. In the past, I've always felt a bit embarrassed when fellow stitcher's blogged about stash that I've sent to them so I've never really shared photos of gifts here on my blog that I've received. And there have been many wonderful gifts and I truly treasure them.

After thinking about it, I realized that it was my problem and I decided that anyone who takes the time to think of me and to send me gifts deserves a public "thank you" so from now on, I will make a point to share photos of the beautiful things that I receive.

This is what arrived from Lynne in yesterday's mail:



Aren't these beautiful?!!! Lovely fabrics, lace and a very beautiful & delicate dragonfly pin! Thank you so very much Lynne for your kind and very generous gift!

Today, I would like to work some more on my quilt and I really need to get going on Maxine's quilt. I have some ideas for that one that I think will combine what she wants me to do with it along with my need to at least keep it antique looking.

I plan to do a lot of appliqué on it. Lot's of velvet yo-yo's, velvet pansies, meandering vines with couched stems and I have this really cool idea for sunflowers! I want to head over to Cartwrights Sequins & Beads and order some sequins in vintage colors. Browns, golds, dark reds and such. The ones that have the pearly finish on them rather than the bright metallic colors. This should add the sparkle that Maxine asked me for without it being gaudy. Oh, it needs butterflies too!

More tomorrow.....

More Repair On My Quilt

I hope I'm not confusing anyone, working on 2 antique Crazy Quilts at the same time. From now on, I'll refer to these as either "My Quilt" or "Maxine's Quilt".

This one is my quilt:



Here you can see the damaged area that I worked on yesterday. I only replaced one fabric patch and then focused on replacing some of the damaged stitching in the area around it. In the case of this patch, I wasn't really sure what stitch was used directly on this patch. I think it was the Feather Stitch so that's what I did.

Here is a photo of the repaired area:



I do hope you all find this interesting and not boring. I plan to take a break from these projects here and there to do some of my insane, extremely embellished things. I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to repair this quilt. I'm assuming it's due to my appreciation of handmade things as well as my love of historical textiles. Because this is dated 1888, has the stitchers name on it as well as references to the location in which "I think" it was made, it called to me when I saw it at the flea market and it's almost as if I have to do this. It's kind of a strange feeling but there's something so wonderful about having the ability to save this quilt.

It's not my intention though, to replace every teeny tiny bit of damage. I want to keep the integrity and aged look of this quilt. I only want to replace what absolutely needs to be replaced to keep it from further deterioration.

I promised to share some historical facts with you in relationship to this quilt. My friends Susan and Bennie shared this information with me. The following is quote from Bennie's email to me:

"Seems like the souvenir ribbon was from the presidential campaign of Grover Cleveland & his running mate Allen Thurman. Actually, they lost the election that year, so maybe that makes your quilt more valuable? I'm not sure what the auxiliary stock exchange referred to - the stock market wasn't established until 1892. Maybe it was just a group of men who invested in stocks. I'm sure you are right that the quilt was made in NY - since Grover Cleveland was raised in upstate NY."

Very interesting, huh? Here's a photo of one of the 4 souvenir ribbons dated 1888:



Well, that's it for today. I want to work on this one some more later and I want to work on Maxine's quilt as well. I think you'll find that one very interesting as Maxine wants me to not only repair it, but further embellish it. And not in the traditional antique style but in my "insane Pam Kellogg" style. This will be a challenge as my heart & mind are resisting. Scott told me that I can't look at it as "defacing" it but instead, I have to look at it as "making it better". I already have a couple of cool ideas but first I have to replace the damaged fabrics.

Repairing The Damage

I must say, this is certainly an interesting process! I sat on my sofa yesterday, staring at my antique crazy quilt, trying to muster up the courage to just throw myself into it and get it repaired. Eventually, that's exactly what I had to do.

I spoke with my mother yesterday and she reminded me that many of the old fabrics had acid in the dye. My original intention was to simply work over what is already there but due to my mom's reminder, I decided to remove the deteriorated fabrics and start from scratch. This also meant, in some cases, removing perfectly good stitching. Thank goodness for digi camera's! Thinking about it now, despite wanting to remove any chance of further damage, it's probably the easiest and most efficient way of doing this.

Here are the patches that I replaced yesterday:







And here it is again with my repairs:



Before I removed the damaged fabrics, I took some tracing paper, laid it over the quilt and traced the patch to be replaced. I then took a photo of it with my camera so I could replace the stitches.

Then, working with my embroidery scissors, a tweezer and a hatpin, I removed the stitches, cut away the bad fabric and pulled as much of the remainder of the fabric out of the seam as I could.

The next thing I did was to chose a new fabric. Remember, I'm looking to replace fabrics based on color rather than fabric type although when I can replace it with the same type I will. The black fabric that I removed was black taffeta. Now, I have taffeta in every color of the rainbow but for some unknown reason, I do not have black!

I then decided that I would use real black velvet but that didn't look right. It was too black. Thankfully, I keep several yards of black velveteen in my stash at all times. The velveteen has a slight gray reflection in the light so I went with that instead and it blends in nicely.

Ok, so basically what I'm doing is Needle-turn Appliqué. I cut out my template from the tracing paper pinned it to the new fabric, cut that out adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance, removed the pins, laid it on the quilt and hand appliquéd it in place, turning the seam allowance under with my needle and blind stitched it down.

Once I had it stitched down, I replaced the stitching with threads that match as closely as possible. I must tell you, I'm really bad with free-handing the double herringbone stitch! And there's a ton of it on this quilt! But, by the 3rd patch, I did get better at it.

Ok, so that's where I'm at on here so far. I promised you some history that my friends Susan and Bennie shared with me but I have to dash out the door at the moment to meet with Maxine, the owner of my commission CQ project. I should be able to share that with you tomorrow.

Antique Quilt Repair

I started the repair work on both antique crazy quilts yesterday. The first thing I wanted to do with my commission piece was to repair the beaded area and to re-anchor the beads:



This one patch took me 5 hours to repair. The beading was worked on a net lace and then attached to the quilt. The edge of the lace had deteriorated along the seam so the first thing I did was to sew the lace onto the quilt along that edge. The edge was quite shredded so once I had it secure on the quilt, I went back over the thin area with long straight stitches (black sewing thread) and then I couched those down.

My next task was to re-anchor all the beads. Oooh, that was tedious! I used the tiniest, thinnest beading needle that DMC makes and for many of the beads, I couldn't get the needle to go through. When that was the case, I took a tiny stitch over the thread that ran through the bead. One stitch on each side.

The beads were originally sewn on with the finest silk thread I've ever seen! It's no wonder so many of the beads were loose!

So now I'm ready to replace the deteriorated patches of fabric. I will be starting on that over the weekend.

Once I had the beaded area repaired on that quilt, I moved on to my quilt. I decided to start with this beautiful little velvet star:



The poor little thing was hanging on only by the orange threads in the middle. I appliquéd this piece back onto the quilt and then reinforced the seams of the star onto the quilt. I then removed the orange perle cotton in the middle and replaced those stitches with new perle cotton.

So those are my accompliments for yesterday. After a few chores that I still have to do for today, I will be pulling out my boxes of fancy fabrics and the new things that my mom picked up for me and I will start the process of replacing the damaged fabrics on my quilt. I will take before and after photos for you.

My plan is to try to replace pieces with a similar color and not necessarily the same type of fabric. It's the color that I want to try to keep and that all depends on what I have on hand here to work with.

Stay tuned. This should be interesting! I'll have that history info on my quilt for you tomorrow.

A Treat For You Today!

So many of you have told me that it's nice to see the face behind the blog. The photos of me in Galena are a bit far away so I thought I'd share a couple of close-ups with you today.

These were taken back in March on my mom's birthday.



This is me with my fat little Simba. He's very shy and quiet and doesn't care too much for being photographed. He's very gentle and sweet, and because he's fat, he's very mushy!



And here I am with Nightmare. This little one is my baby. He's been with me since he was 3 weeks old and I truly believe that he thinks I'm his real mother. He has separation anxiety whenever I go outside or leave the house. He sits by the door or the window and paws at it until I come back.

Antique Crazy Quilt Repair Begins

First, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who left me comments regarding my Galena and Field Of Dreams photos. I'm so happy to know that you enjoyed seeing them. Thank you everyone! I love having comments to read even though I don't always reply to them. It's not that I don't want to, it's a matter of time. You know me, I'm always into a lot of different things!

Today, I'm back in the real world and ready to start the repair on my 2 antique crazy quilt projects. I cleaned them both yesterday. What a tedious project that was!

To clean them, I put several layers of cheesecloth over the hose of my vacumm cleaner and worked over the quilts doing a "set & lift" motion. After several hours and quite a bit of cheesecloth (yes, you wouldn't believe how dirty they were), I'm happy to say that they are clean. Or, at least as clean as I can get them.

The first repair that I will make is on my commission piece:



I'm going to start by repairing the beaded area. The beading was worked on netted lace and then sewn into the quilt. I have some beads that are a close match to the antique ones on this quilt so I think I'll be able to replace the missing ones. My plan is to anchor all of the beads to the quilt. Remember, when I complete this, I'll be adding a new back and binding to it so I'll be working through everything that's all ready here.

I plan to meet with the quilts owner on Friday to discuss my ideas with her regarding more embellishing and embroidery. Basically, I want to share my ideas with her first before I go any further on it. So once I have the beading repaired, I'll put this one to the side and figure out what to do with mine.

To be honest, mine feels extremely overwhelming. There's just so much to repair on it. I honestly don't even know where to start. Scott reminded me last night that I don't have to look at the entire "staircase". I just need to take one step at a time. I'll just have to pick a place to start and work from there.

Tomorrow, I will have some interesting information for you on my quilt. My friends Susan and Bennie shared some history with me that you might find interesting!

Back From Galena!

Hi everyone! I'm back! We had the loveliest weekend in Galena, Illinois. I know I've mentioned it before but if you're new to reading my blog, Galena is a gorgeous little historical town located in the northwest corner of Illinois. It's about 2 1/2 hours west of where we live in McHenry, Illinois.

The weather was wonderful this time! 80 degrees and sunny all 3 days.

Since I don't have any stitching to share at the moment, I thought you would like to see a few of the photos we took on our trip. I was finally able to get some nice pictures of the gorgeous rolling hills there:





Does this look like Ireland or what! Not that I've ever been to Ireland but this looks like the photos I've seen of Ireland. The view from the road is breathtaking! It looks like this on both sides.

The northwest corner of Illinois was left untouched by the glaciers so the landscape is nothing but rolling hills. Were we livein Illinois, it's flat as a pancake!

The next photo is The Belevedere House. It's an Italianate style Victorian and my favorite house in Galena:



The highlight of this trip for me was yesterday morning when we drove to Dyersville, Iowa to see Field Of Dreams:



This is where the movie was filmed. As you know, I love baseball and have so much been wanting to see this.

Here's the actual baseball field:



It's not quite the same without the corn but that won't be tall until August!

Ok, here's a fun one for you. Another rare picture of me. I'm standing on homeplate:



I always look so stupid in photographs! We were there at 8 am yesterday and I have to tell you, that wind was quite cold! This part of Iowa is all farmland as far as the eye can see and it is just so wonderful! The only sound was that of birdies singing.

Here's one more photo for you:



Scott and I sitting in the bleachers. Think about this, Kevin Costner sat here!!!

We met the nicest couple there. A retired couple from Florida and they offered to take a picture of Scott and I together. They were so nice!

Well, those are the photo highlights of our trip. There are more photos on my Flickr site. If you'd like to see them, just click on one of the images and that should take you to the rest of the pictures.

We did a bit of antiquing while we were there but I didn't find anything all that exciting. In fact, I only bought myself a necklace and a magazine! That's ok though, it's more about the "being there" for me than the shopping.

Galena does have 2 used book stores and both specialize in out of print books. Guess what I had hoped to find? Yes, I was hoping to find the Crazy Quilt book by Penny McMorris. No such luck though. In fact, I stood there, staring at the very small needlework sections, realizing they didn't have it and yet, expecting it to materialize right before my eyes! Scott keep saying, "Pam, they don't have it. It isn't there." He kind of had to drag me out of the stores! Oh well, I'll find it eventually. Probably when and where I least expect it!

Well, that's it for today ladies! I hope you enjoy seeing pictures of my favorite place in the world! For now, I'm off to start cleaning those antique crazy quilts!

More tomorrow......

The Mozart Journey Complete!

The stitching is complete on this:



Mozart looks happy, doesn't he? I would like to think that he would be pleased with my tribute to him!

I'll assemble this next week when I have some free time. Michael's carries beaded gold purse handles so I need to run up there for a pair.

Also next week, I plan to start work on the antique crazy quilts. My sweet mom was at Hobby Lobby earlier this week and she bought some fabrics for me that will work nicely to replace some of the damaged pieces. I need to pick up some #8 perle cottons in a variety of colors. I usually use #5 on my CQ's but my antique CQ is worked with finer threads.

Quick question for you: Does anyone have any clue as to when varigated threads were introduced? I was looking at my commission quilt and there are varigated threads on there. If I could find out when shaded threads started showing up, it would help me to "ballpark" date that quilt.

Ok everyone, I'll be away from my computer now until Tuesday, May 22nd. We're off to Galena, Illinois for the weekend and this time, I hope to see the "Field Of Dreams" movie set in Iowa!!!

Have a great weekend everyone. I'll see ya on Tuesday!

My Beloved Mozart

I don't know why I didn't think of doing a Mozart themed purse sooner. I have loved Mozart's music for as long as I can remember. I do enjoy other Classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi. But Mozart...how could I ever describe what his music does to me? Mozart's music is glorious! When I listen to it, I'm instantly uplifted. I get lost in it. It puts me in a "higher" frame of mind and I can focus for longer periods of time. Certain pieces, such as Symphony #25 and The Requiem, almost make me incapable of doing anything but listening.

Oddly enough, I've never heard anything by Mozart that I didn't like. In most cases, I don't care for vocal music. It's kind of like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, almost like the words get in the way. Mozart's choral works, even his operas (and I do not care for opera)are soothing on my nerves.

Well, I know Classical music isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I'm sure you can appreciate my tribute to whom I believe is the greatest composer of all time:



All I have left to add to this is my little signature cat so I will stitch him on this afternoon and then this will be ready to assemble.

I would like to share a photo with you that was sent to me by one of my readers. This is Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg:



What a thrill for me to see this! Thank you Michele for sending this image to me and for granting me your permission to share it here on my blog so that my other readers can enjoy it too!

Magnificent Mozart

Yesterday afternoon was cloudy and rainy. Although I always prefer sunshine, it was a good day to curl up in the middle of my sofa and focus on my stitching. I stitched for 6 hours straight!



As you can see, I've done quite a bit of embellishing on this. I added the vintage millinery roses to the antique metallic gold lace and then added some green glass leaves to that.

There are now Mother Of Pearl flower beads on the SRE vine and some Czech glass fire polished beads and seed beads.

I added some beads to the seam on the top left and I will be adding some more beads to that.

I also started beading the rose applique. I still need to finish up the leaves.

The Rhinestone Treble Clef pin will go in the center blue patch on the bottom. I'll be sewing that on today.

So this is how it looks at the moment. I'll be stitching on this again shortly so stop by tomorrow for another update!

The Mozart Journey Continues.......

The Mozart Journey is coming along nicely:



As you can see, I have his signature on here now. I think that makes it very clear as to who this is.

I added a SRE motif with roses because, when I think of Mozart, I think of roses. That will get some beads as well. I also have some vintage millinery roses that I will be adding to the antique metallic ribbon strip later today.

Don't you just love that salmon color? It really adds life to this piece and works well with the red in the painting. If you remember, I didn't want any more red on here so the salmon color is perfect!

I still need to figure out where to put my rhinestone treble clef pin. I'm sure that will fall into place when I get a bit further along on this piece.

Stay tuned! I'll be working on this again later today!

Repairing The Past

I brought my quilt stand down from the guest room and laid my 2 antique crazy quilt projects on it. Both have that funky "old" smell. Since they can't be washed or dry cleaned, the only way to get rid of that is to let them air out.



Every day, I will refold them and eventually that smell will dissipate. I also thought this would be a good way to store them while I work on them. I'll probably work on them at the same time. I also felt that it would be good to have them near me while I do other things. I'm already getting a good "feel" for them. It's an energy thing.

Right now, I so much wish I owned a copy of the Crazy Quilt book by Penny McMorris. I had hoped to find one at the flea market this past weekend. Instead, I found a quilt! Hmmmm..... If I focus on the quilt now, do you think I'll manifest the book? Ha, ha, ha!

I looked around for it online yesterday and found several available copies but quite honestly, there isn't a book on this planet that I'm willing to spend $75.00 on. So I will exercise patience here and eventually I'm sure I'll find a copy at a flea market or garage sale for the price that I'm willing to pay.

In the meantime, I'll focus on the reference books that I do have which are The Crazy Quilt Handbook by Judith Montano and The Magic Of Crazy Quilting by J. Marsha Mitchler. Both books contain photos of beautiful antique crazy quilts.

The reason I'm in need of seeing photos of antique quilts is because I was asked to further embellish my commission piece. I really feel that I should stay with traditional motifs and colors. I know the owner wants more beads on it which isn't a problem. I can use them as flower centers and butterfly bodies.

I was chatting with June R. yesterday in email and she asked me what I was going to do about fabrics for the patches that I have to replace. Excellent question!

I searched at Ebay for vintage velvets and other fabrics and didn't really see anything suitable for these projects. I have a fabric stash that is beyond explanation so in some cases, I will be able to use some of what I have. I may be able to "antique" some of them with fabric dye but many fancy fabrics these days have synthetic fibers in them and therefore won't hold the dye.

Scott and I will be visiting some antique stores this coming weekend so I plan to keep my eyes open for some old fabrics and one other idea that popped into my head yesterday was to look for a "cutter crazy quilt". One that is beyond repair but that may have some good areas where I can take the fabrics off and use them to replace rotted patches on the 2 quilts that I have here.

Kim left a comment for me mentioning that she's never seen buttons on any antique crazy quilts. I haven't either. That doesn't mean that there aren't quilts out there with buttons on them, I just haven't see any. Most likely, it's a contemporary thing.

In closing this post, I'd like to take a moment to thank Sue in Western WA for reminding me that the dated silk thingy's on my quilt are called Souvenir Ribbons! My mom told me that on Sunday but somehow it slipped from my brain, never to return! Thank you Sue for reminding me!

A Practice Piece

Call me "crazy"! It's ok, really!

I bought this antique crazy quilt yesterday at the flea market:



I guess I felt I needed a real challenge! This quilt is in desperate need of love and repair. I also felt I wanted to practice a bit before I started on my commissioned quilt. And this one will give me plenty of practice!

It's dated 1888 in 3 different places:



There are 2 of these Cigar Wrappers on here, both the same and then there's this:



I can't for the life of me remember what these are called! Can someone help me out here? It says, "Auxiliary New York Stock Exchange. Cleveland & Thurman Club 1888"
It's rather clever how the stitcher used it as the handle for the fan.



The name of the stitcher is embroidered on here. Her name was Evelyn.

If you look closely at the above photo, you can see a shaded hot pink patch. That is a repair. And there's another repair on here that mom and I found yesterday. That one isn't as obvious.

And oh my gosh, looking at it now, there's another one of those things on here (the one I don't know what it's called). This one is in white and most of the gold printing is worn off but it's still readable. It says, "Wholesale Dry Goods. Cleveland And Thurman Club. 1888.

Wow! So it's dated 1888 in 4 places! Cool!

Ok, so my intention for this quilt is simply to replace the rotted and damaged patches and replace the damaged stitching.

Mom determined that the backing and binding is newer. The quilt was probably stitched and then sat around for awhile before it was "finished".

Again, I will make the repairs through everything that's here and then I will give it a new backing and new binding. I'll add a quilt label stating that it was repaired by me in the year (whenever I get it done).

There's alot of butterflies on here and quite a variety of stitches. Honestly, it's not a beautiful or perfect crazy quilt by any means. It just called to me so I bought it and I'll fix it and when we build our Queen Anne Victorian style dream home, I'll hang on the wall.

Can anyone out there give me some insight into the Cleveland & Thurman Club? There are 3 other silk patches on here that say, "Read The New York Weekly". I think it's safe to assume that this was made in New York.

Antique Crazy Quilt

Dear readers, do I have a treat for you today!



I have been commissioned to repair and further embellish this antique crazy quilt! And this is the first of 2! Wait until you see the 2nd one! But that's down the road a ways because this one will take a couple of months to complete.

It's actually in pretty decent shape. The first step is to clean it. The proper way (and only option) is to put some cheesecloth over the hose of my vacumm cleaner and vacumm it well on both sides using a "set & lift" motion. Never drag the hose over a quilt like this.



If you look closely, there are a few patches that are almost completely rotted away. So the 2nd step will be to replace those patches by hand-appliquéing new pieces over the top and then restitching the seam treatments. Thank goodness I have such a huge variety of threads on hand!

This is the center square:



Looking closely at this quilt, it seems to me that the stitcher tried several embellishing techniques on this but I get the feeling that after awhile, she became bored with the project and finally just assembled it.

So far, I haven't found a date on it but I need to examine it further. Using the fabrics as a guide, I may be able to put it into a decade. At the moment,I'm thinking 1910's or 20's but I really need to look at it better.

There is one beaded motif on here, 2 or 3 examples of decorative painting and some embroidered motifs.





The majority of the fabrics are velvets but there are some others and most of the seam stitching is done with a double feather stitch.

The backing is in good shape but I will be adding a new back once it's complete.

The current owner wants more stitching and more beading on it. I have several ideas, including some velvet pansies. I'll use Judith Montano's pattern from her Elegant Stitches book for that rather than my pattern. Judith's pansy pattern was recreated from pansies on an antique pillow.

And one thing I won't be using is a hoop. I'll be stitching this in hand. Because of the age, I don't want to strain the fabric any more than I have to. I plan to roll the quilt up in a sheet of muslin, to the area that I'll be working on. The excess will have to lay next to me on the sofa.

So that's the news for today! How exciting huh? I will post my progress as I work on it. I need to lay it out on the floor and look at it for awhile. Once I get a better idea of where to go with it, I want to meet with the quilt's owner again and share my ideas with her before I start on it. She's given my creative license to "get crazy" with it but I feel it's best to talk to her about my ideas first.

So, stay tuned for and Antique Crazy Quilt Journey! In the meantime, Mozart is calling to me.....

Mozart In Slow Motion & TAST

Yesterday was a bit hectic and rather tiring. By the time I completed my work for the day, I didn't have much energy left to use for stitching. I did however, manage to cover one seam:



Sharon's stitch pick for week 18 (last week) was the Woven Wheel or Whipped Wheel. I was intrigued by her Woven Fans so I thought I'd give it a try. Now, I should have made my fans larger. They're a twinge small but they look like little shells. And I truly enjoyed doing the weaving. I think these will look great once I add some beading to it.

I did this using 8.5 count waste canvas. Stitching the fans first, removing the waste canvas and then weaving the fans. I will definitely be experimenting more with this stitch.

In the meantime, I've charted out several Fan Borders for you to use if you would like to try this using Waste Canvas. Click on the image to go to my Flickr site where you can download a larger version of the pattern.



For now, I'm off to take some things up to my showcase at the Brick & Mortar store. When I return, I plan to stitch the rest of the day.