An Interesting Discovery

Scott and I went over to my parents house for a few hours yesterday afternoon. Mom hadn't seen my Crazy Quilt book yet, nor had she seen my little crazy quilt that I bought at the flea market two weeks so I took those with me.

While looking at the quilts in my book, we discovered that this little embroidered frog on my quilt:



is the same exact frog as on this quilt in my book:



They're reversed, but it's the same pattern. Was I at all surprised with this discovery? No. Embroidery patterns in the Victorian days were mass produced and "shared" almost as much as they are now. I just thought it was kind of cool!

Happy 4th Of July!

I was too tired to stitch last night so I don't have anything to share with you today.

Instead, I'll simply wish you a safe and happy 4th of July!

More On Maxine's Quilt

I added 3 more motifs to this quilt over the weekend. First, an antique crazy quilt is not complete without a spider and web! That's my opinion anyway! So I added one:



I love stitching the webs! That's why they show up on many of my CQ's. I just plain like doing them. As for the spider, I keep a big of misc. chunky beads in my bead cabinet. These are perfect for spiders. Because this quilt is so large, I used the biggest glass bead I had for the body and then a smaller glass bead for the head.

Next, I added a fan:



The fan idea came from looking at the pictures in my Penny McMorris book. Maxine had given me an 8 inch doily from her collection to use on this quilt. It was almost too large to use as it was so I cut it into 1/4's and used one to create this fan. I also had to "age" it which I did before I cut it. The trim that I used is also from Maxine's collection of vintage things and the tassel was from my collection. The flowers are a vintage corsage that Maxine gave me to use on this.

I'll be using the other 3 sections of the doily to create fans too. All will be different.

Last but not least, my mom crocheted a few more pansies for me so I sewed one on, did a chain stitch for the stem and used some large green beads that I had for the leaves:



All in all, I've been enjoying the process of further embellishing this quilt with the exception of not being able to use a hoop on it. I really dislike stitching "in hand". The easiest way I've found to work on this is to roll the excess up and lay it to the side of me on the sofa.

At the moment, I'm working on balancing it out with some more "points of interest". Once I feel that's done, I'll fill in with some small embroidered motifs here and there. It's a slow process really. It takes much longer to embellish a large motif on this quilt as opposed to the small motifs that I do on my cellphone pouches and purses. But it's a nice change of pace for me and certainly, an interesting challenge!

New Brief

I have a few updates for you today. First, I finished this motif on Maxine's quilt:



The flower centers are beads that I found on sale at WalMart yesterday. I have some butterflies that I found too but I thought I'd wait on adding those until I had everything else done.

I couldn't decide on what to do next. I have a bunch of neat ideas but I just couldn't pick one so instead of starting a new motif on this quilt, I put it to the side and picked up my B/C Awareness purse project:



I didn't quite get the whole piece in the picture but you can see what I worked on yesterday.

I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who either left comments here for me or who emailed me to tell me what a Biscornu is. Thank you! I had no idea. If you haven't checked the comments, a Biscornu is a pincushion. An 8 sided pincushion I believe. I still have a few links to look at but have enjoyed what I've seen so far! They seem simple enough to make and am thinking that a CQ one would be very interesting. Although, with everything I sew onto my CQ's I doubt there would be any room left to put pins!

A quick final note for today, I have some of my mom's x stitch stuff listed over at Ebay and they are all ending this afternoon. If anyone is interested, you can search by my username: kitty-and-me .

I still have more of her de-stash to list so if I have some free time this afternoon, I'll list a few more things for her.

More On Maxine's Quilt

I worked on this for a good couple of hours yesterday. I didn't get as much done as I thought I would but progress is progress! The first thing I did was to help this poor little pansy:



The moment I saw this quilt, I thought this pansy was pathetic and the silk behind it was shattered. I wasn't able to determine if the pansy was appliqued in pieces directly to the quilt or if it was made ahead of time and then sewn on. To deal with this issue, I sewed the pansy down through all the layers to make sure it was stable and then I hand-painted the leaves (from my Sunday flea market trip) and sewed those on as close to the pansy as I could. Then I added the beads & sequins.

Speaking of beads & sequins, I read in my Penny McMorris book that antique CQ's from the UK were loaded with beads & sequins! That gives me some peace of mind! Beads are one thing but I was a bit uncomfortable adding sequins to this antique quilt. Now, my mind is at ease!

Ok, next, I had a small deteriorated patch to deal with. It was only about 1 1/2 inches X 2 inches and it didn't seem worth the effort to replace it. To manage that issue, I sewed a crocheted piece from my collection over it. This piece has a straight edge so again, my intention is to make it look like a basket filled with flowers. I hand-painted these little flower appliqués (more flea market finds) and I'll be sewing them on today.



As you can see, I also wove some metallic gold ribbon through the edge of the crocheted piece.

So that's my stitching for yesterday. Doesn't seem like much but if you do beading, you know that it takes some time to sew them on!

I have an easy afternoon ahead of me. I'll be working on this and just doing a load of laundry. That's my lot in life you know! Ha, ha, ha! Anyway, I should have some more to share with you tomorrow.

In the meantime, can someone tell me what a Biscornu is? I've read about this on several x stitch boards but I never heard of it before. Someone, please clue me in!