Victorian Crazy Quilt Handbag

My latest purse is finished!  Here is my Victorian Crazy Quilt Handbag:

I love the contrast of the black and the pink!

I also have a few photos of my Mom's new Hanging Hearts:

I'm currently stitching up a few Crazy Quilt Cellphone Pouches.  I'll post photos of those soon.

Crazy Quilt Class Lesson 9

Jason has released Lesson 9 of my Crazy Quilt Color and Composition Class.  The Great Pumpkin is now available:

Lesson 9 - The Great Pumpkin

In Lesson 9, our focus is on Creating An Illusion.  This publication is available at Magcloud.

And here is the pattern for the pumpkin:

I also thought that today's post would be a good time to share Maria's Lesson 8 block:

Maria did an excellent with her Stumpwork grapes and grape leaf.  The colors are beautiful in this block and I love the touch of pink on the left.  The grape theme is beautifully balanced throughout the block and all the required elements are here.  Thank you Maria!

Ladies, we're going to have a beautiful sampler of crazy quilt blocks in our finished quilt!  You'll be able to refer back to your quilt for future projects.  It will give you ideas for themes, technique's, stitches and color combinations.  If you missed my post yesterday, here are the first 9 of our 25 block crazy quilt sampler:

Black Crazy Quilt Purse

I apologize for my absence the past few days.  There's a lot of things to do this time of year.  I started trimming my yard back but still have some plants and Rose Of Sharon trees left to trim.  I haven't seen a hummingbird in over a week so I'll go out this afternoon and bring my feeders in.  I have all the windows done except for the living room so that's on my schedule for next week.

In the meantime, I finished up the black Crazy Quilt purse that I was working on.  Well, the stitching done.  I'm planning on sewing it together tomorrow:

And here are some closeup photos of the seam embroidery and bead work that I did:

I made the rose from a piece of velvet upholstery trim.

I satin stitched the flowers on this lace applique.  The flower buttons were a bit bright so I painted them with a pearly pink nail polish to soften them up a bit.

As I mentioned, I plan to sew this piece together tomorrow.

I've been stitching on some cellphone pouches so I'll have photos of those soon too.  And, for my students, Lesson 9 will be available soon!  Here's a sneak peek:

Would you like to see the first 9 blocks together?  Here you go!

The first 8 lessons of my online crazy quilt class are available at Magcloud.  Lesson 9 will be available shortly.  I'll will let you know when Jason has it uploaded.

Wish You Painted Your Lace?

I've been stitching along on my current Crazy Quilt Purse project.  When I first chose my lace pieces, I liked the way they looked in white.  Once I had my seams embroidered, I decided I should have painted my lace:

It looked very stark to me so what did I do since my lace was already sewn on and embroidered?  I grabbed my colored pencils:

I have the watercolor colored pencils so once I colored my lace, I used a small paint brush dipped in water to blend the color into the fibers:

You don't want to soak the lace because you don't want it bleeding into the background fabric.  Just a light dab of water will help the color blend into the fibers of the lace.

This is a great way to deal with coloring fabric, lace or trim after it's sewn on.

Hand Needle Felted Halloween Mouse

My sister Kathi made this absolutely adorable, little hand needle felted Halloween mouse:

Is this absolutely precious or what!!!  I really don't know how Kathi does these soft sculptured dolls out of wool!  I can do needle felting but not the beautiful things that Kathi makes!