Dimity's Fiber Adventures

My 2009 Making Memories Crazy Quilt block is finished and in the mail.  For the last 2 years, members of the Crazyquiltinternatinal Yahoo Group have been donating their time and embroidery skills to create crazy quilts for the Making Memories Organization.  This year the theme was butterflies and dragonflies, and the guidelines allowed us to use our embroidery machines.  This is my block:

It is a combination of sewing machine embroidery and hand embroidery.  The center butterfly was from A Stitch and a Half.  The dragonflies were from Criswell.  My daughter purchased some embroidery designs for me as a birthday present last year and the dragon fly design was in one of the packages. 

The center butterfly is all rayon threads – mostly from Madeira.  Each dragonfly had a different colored thread for the wing outline, then Sulky Sliver was used to embroider the rest of it.  I broke 5, yes 5 needles, sewing out those dragonflies.  It was worth every one of them.  That thread made the dragonflies come to life.

Before you all think this was a quick project, after spending an afternoon sewing the crazy quilt block, one evening was spent going through designs on the computer, the next evening I spent arranging the designs on my sewing machine screen, then test sewing them.  The forth day I sewed them all out on my pieced crazy quilt block hoping and praying I had everything arranged so that butterfly would be where I wanted it – smack dab in the center patch of my pieced block.

Then I added the hand embroidery – the seam treatments.  They were a lot of fun and I enjoyed selecting threads and colors for them.  Threads used were KNK silk buttonhole twist, DMC rayon, DMC cotton floss, Oliver Twist variegated, Krenik metallic, DMC metallic, and some of my hand dyed 12 wt cotton.   That took 2 days.  What takes me so long is deciding what stitches to use and what thread combination look good with each other.  2 seams were totally redone and I enjoyed every single minute of that process.

Last but not least are the tiny butterflies scattered about the block.  We couldn’t use beads on this block and I had the perfect little butterfly buttons and beads that yearned to be on that block. Putting them firmly out of mind, I went back to my sewing machine and found a 9mm butterfly design.  Perfect!!!  Out came the threads again.  This time I used 30wt variegated and solid Madeira cotton threads and some Madeira rayons.

I hope it arrives safe and sound to our esteemed project co-ordinator.  She’s a saint for putting all these blocks together into a quilt.  A big round of applause to Debbie!!!

Hugs…

The first block in the Faces DYB group has been completed.  It was Nicki’s block and I loved all the faces she sent along, but the one I used practically stood up and shouted, ME, ME, pick ME!!!  So I did.  LOL

At first, it looked like a face that belonged in the sky, and the wavy fabric on the upper right corner seemed like starlight, then I looked closer at the face and it seemed like there were flowers along the right edge, so my goddess in the sky, morphed into a leaf goddess.

I happily sewed the head in place with lots of leaf beads and flower beads with colored centers, then I realized it would look really nice with a tree branch behind her head.  Off with her head, and on with the branch, thanks to Jo’s seam book.  It was a motif taken straight from her book and it’s the part I liked making the best.  There is nothing like sewing with KNK silk buttonhole thread, and that entire branch was stitched with it.

Back went the head, a few stars in the upper corner, and then I spent an evening selecting threads for some elaborate seam treatments.  When I woke up the next morning I thought, no, the seam treatements I had selected didn’t relate to the foliage theme.  Off I went to my lace collection.  I found some that fit with the leaf motif, but it was stark white.  No problem.  Off to the dye room. 

I had the perfect dye powders and thought, do I really want to mix up a bunch of dye concentrates?  That would be a lot of standing around, a lot of mixing and measuring, and I’m not supposed to be on my feet for long periods of time.  Out came the paints.  A base of tourquoise followed with some watered down chartreuse worked well.  It always look nicer to me when more than one paint color is used on a piece of lace.  The undertones do wonders for creating complex shades instead of in your face blue, or in your face green.

Next the shell bead was attached.  First with squiggly, curvy beads – the same ones used for the flower centers.  They looked like worms.  Off they came.  Then I added a bunch of different color, shapes and types of beads.  I’d have liked to make it a much longer bead trail, but was concerned with how heavy the piece had become.  One of the ladies in the group lives in Canada, and it would be nice to keep the shipping costs reasonable.

I was trying to take with a monochromatic color scheme for the block, but by this point, it was getting a bit too monochromatic for my taste.  Back to the thread choices I made for the seam treatments.  A nice rusty orange would look great against the green, so I did a bit of stitching to couch the shell button in place.

The crochet motif I made out of sewing thread was added next with some beads.  Then the small seam treatment was added.  It needs some more to it, but time was running short and I was already 3 days behind with getting this mailed.  If I added any more to that seam, I would have missed the mailperson and I did not want to wait till this week to mail the package. 

So there you have it.  My first contribution to the Faces DYB.  I hope that Nicki will be happy with this block and would you believe, Leslie’s blocks arrived Saturday.  This time I’m starting on the block this week.  I WILL NOT BE LATE mailing this one. 

Hugs….