Yellow Crazy Quilt Hankie Pillow

Just a quick update on my Yellow Crazy Quilt Hankie Pillow.  I have the seams embroidered and am ready to start with some beading and other embellishments:

Look closely at the seam embroidery to the right of the yellow flower.  That's a woven border that I worked with my waste canvas technique!

Machine Embroidery Vintage Hankies

I've been collecting vintage hankies for quite a few years now and I love to use them on my crazy quilt projects.  My favorite hankies are the ones with machine embroidery flowers on them.  They're quite easy to find for a dollar or 2 at flea markets and antique shops.

The purple rose on this hanging pillow is from a vintage handkerchief:

I finished embellishing this door hanger yesterday and then last night, I started on one with a pink rose:

I spent all day yesterday sewing.  I put a good couple of miles on my sewing machine, piecing loads of new blocks.  I wish I could sew some more new blocks today but I have other things that need to be done.  I do plan on having a few hours of stitching time later today.

Marie Antoinette Crazy Quilt Block #8

Being that today is the first full day of Spring, I thought I'd better get a move on with my Marie Antoinette Crazy Quilt!

After running into town this morning and doing some paperwork, I took several hours for myself and started stitching.  This is the block with the lace & trims:

And here it is with the seams embroidered:

Can you find the borders that are from my Elegant Crazy Quilt Seam Treatment book?

Beading Crazy Quilt Seam Treatments

I started beading the seam treatments yesterday on Button Block #34:



I mentioned yesterday that I intended to chat a bit about how I go about the beading. Generally, with my own charted borders, or any borders for that matter, I always look for the points and intersections.

If you look at any of my CQ pieces, the points of any border are always topped off with a bead or sequin. This adds color, light and extends the border even further. It also adds clarity which keeps the points from getting lost in over all design.

Intersections are another good place to look for possible bead placement. I use quite a few cross stitches in my charted borders and if you look closely at the bottom right-hand border, you can see that I placed beads in between the arms of the "X".

I'll talk a bit more about beading CQ borders tomorrow.

For now, here are pages 2 & 3 of my Needlecrafts Embroidery & Fancywork catalog from the 1930's:





Click on the images to go to my Flickr site where you can view the large version.

Enjoy!

Maxine's Quilt

I've added a few things to Maxine's quilt now. I'm really happy to have the majority of the repairs out of the way! I'll admit, I'm still a bit overwhelmed with embellishing a quilt this large so I'm kind working here, there and everywhere at the same time. When I get an idea, I just do it. Basically, there's no rhyme or reason to how I'm working. I figure it'll come together eventually.

So here's what I have done so far. You may remember this painted flower that I stem stitched around last week:



I added a vintage button and some beads to that now. I'll be adding more things to this motif but I haven't decided on what yet.

Next, I found this little leaf on the quilt. It was just hanging around by itself doing nothing so I added a crocheted flower to it and then beaded that:



Last, I painted some small vintage tatted flowers, did some stem stitched stems & leaves and beaded those with some bugle beads. The flower centers are vintage mother of pearl buttons:



As I suspected in the beginning, this quilt was one that someone got bored with and lost interest in. While repairing it, I found some silk patches with outlines of flowers done in light pencil marks. Very interesting. They're a bit hard to see so I won't be stitching those. Instead, I'll be doing my own embroidered motifs on it. In some cases, I will be stitching them on fabric first and then adding them to the quilt. It'll probably be easier that way.

I doubt I'll have time to post tomorrow. Scott's birthday is today and he has tomorrow off so we'll be driving up to Galena for a nice lunch and a little shopping.

I'll see ya on Tuesday!