Victorian Ladies Round Robin

This is my work on Rengin's block.

Helen Gibb Ribbon Flower Class

On Saturday I went to two Helen Gibb classes where she taught these lovely flowers and others.  I bought kits of her gorgeous ribbons to make these -- a pansy from wired French ribbon, flat velvet rose with a gorgeous Hannah silk-satin ruffle, and a rose made from wired French ribbon. We also learned the two leaves and a couple of other tidbits.  Needless to say, I spent too much on ribbons before I was able to get out the door, but left feeling I needed more.  lol!  I can't wait to try some more, but my plate is pretty full right now.

CQ Pillow

A couple of years ago I bought what was left of Jill P.'s crazy quilting stash.  She sold me everything -- all of her supplies and even CQ blocks that she had never made anything out of.  This block was one of the blocks she gave me and today I finished it into a pillow.  This was a block that Jill stitched on her own and she put some really lovely embellishments.  It isn't evident on the picture so much, but there are little crystals and lovely old rhinestones.  I love the little hat.

Victorian Ladies DYB

This is my work on Lisa Alff's Victorian Ladies block.  I started out with the mirror (the center is a tiny silky) and it led to all sorts of Victorian pieces that could be used for the hair.  I am especially happy with the two Victorian hairpins.  On the smaller one I cut a piece of wire out of some chicken fence, bent it the way I wanted, and then used a product I recently bought called Inka Gold to color it.  Very cool stuff.  It is like a wax that buffs up to a nice sheen and comes in all sorts of colors.  You can color charms with it too.  I think the color I used was called antique gold.  I learned about it on Joggles where they have a tutorial on ways to use it. The floral top is a gorgeous vintage jewelry part of which I had several.  I chose one that was missing a stone so I could replace it with a purple crystal that went better with the block.  The other hair pin came from two jewelry parts.  The pins came off a hair pin that had a huge gold butterfly on it.  The decorative jeweled piece came off a bracelet.  It had several of these jeweled pieces on it and I picked the one I liked best.  For the heart around Lisa's silky I copied a design off of a Victorian card.  I hope Lisa will like my work -- I certainly had fun doing it.

Horn Book

This is a horn book project I finished this week.  I started it last year as part of an Embroiderer's Guild project.  It was sitting in a project pile for months with most of the stitching done.  I guess the finishing intimidated me a bit, but once I got started, it was pretty easy.  It is based on horn books that were used in centuries past.  They were used as a children's primer and usually contained the alphabet and possibly the Lord's Prayer.  I found the site here where the designer offers this project to groups:  http://www.withmyneedle.com/WMNHornbooks.pdf  If you google horn books and look at the images, you will see all sorts of interesting horn books.  Mine is used to hold skeins of floss for a project.

Water Color Pencils

This is my first attempt at a drawing with my watercolor pencils.  I may try to use it as a silky in one of my memory quilts.  The drawing is of a ring box my Grandmother owned that is sitting in the center of a lace tablecloth edging my great grandmother made.  My great grandmother, Bertha, is pictured in the center of the photo below and her mother, Helena, is on the right.  Two of the other ladies are her sisters.  The photo was taken in 1885 when they made lace in Winterthur, Switzerland.  Wouldn't I like to have some of it now?  I think they must also have made tapestries since there is a tapestry hanging in the background.  Take a looks at the hanks of thread -- silk?

Victorian Women Round Robin

Here are the blocks I pieced for the Victorian Women Round Robin at CQI. These are all women from my family tree and were all born and grew up in the Victorian era. Soon they will be mailed off to my stitching partners for their embellishment.

Playing with Shrinky Dinks

Today I picked my Granddaughter's up from school. On Fridays they get off early at 1:00 and I was trying to decide what to do with them. I finally decide against swimming because I didn't want to be exhausted for the rest of the evening (lol!). What we did do was play with a package of Shrinky Dinks I had purchased a while back at JoAnne's Fabric store. I'm on a Yahoo Group called Stitchmap and some of the girls had used them and enjoyed them. I certainly didn't expect how this turned out though! I took a sheet of Shrinky Dink and laid it on an old wood plaque my Aunt gifted me with. I traced the design and colored them in with colored pencils. The picture is 3"x4" and the Shrinky Dink is about 1' x 1.5" after baking for a minute. Isn't it cute! I recommend you sit at a table while doing this. I was on my knees and after a long while tracing I realized my feet and ankles had fallen asleep -- not a good feeling. What a cute embellishment for a crazy quilt! I am anxious to try more. My granddaughters drew some cute little charms that they put on a chain.

Snowball for Molly

Here is the snowball I made for Molly.

Be My Valentine RR

This is my work on Nicki Lee's block. (-;

Be My Valentine RR

This is my work on Alice's block. It was a lot of fun working on this block. (-;

Snowball for Hideko

Here is the snowball I made for Hideko.

Third CQJP Block

 
This is my third Crazy Quilted Journal Program (CQJP) block.  The picture is of my Great Grandmother's sister, Amalia "Molly" Wangerin (1886-1952).  I think she is beautiful, but her story is tragic.  At about 17 years of age, Molly became very ill and got a very high fever.  When she recovered from her illness, she was never the same again.  She had violent bouts.  As her parent's aged they could no longer care for Amalia and she was institutionalized.  I think about the loss her parents must have felt, first when Amalia's fever changed her forever and second, when they had to institutionalize her.  I also think about all of the things that Amalia missed out on in life.  That's why I put the various charms on the block.  There is a key charm to open her life to her.  There is high heeled shoes for the growing up experiences she missed out on, a bird for her freedom from mental illness, a ring with "love" imprinted on it for the love she was denied, and a wedding ring since she never married.  My youngest daughter is seventeen and I have many dreams for her future.  I hope and pray her dreams will be fulfilled.  (-;

CQJP Block 2

This is my second block for the Crazy Quilting Journal Project.  This is my Grandma when she was just a baby.  She died when I was only three years old so I didn't get to know her.  My challenge was to put on the button cluster which I don't particularly like to do.  I spend a really long time selecting the buttons.  I have a large selection of lace so I use some of them on this block.  I also tried a beaded seam treatment around the curve and I like how it turned out.  I learned how to stitch the lettering from my friend Shari.  I started out using two strands of a pink variegated thread using the stem stitch.  It looked pretty, but was a bit too thick in places and because it was variegated you couldn't read her middle name as well where the lighter thread too closely matched the background.  In the picture I've used a dark brown single strand and made the lettering using the back stitch.  So thanks to Shari.  I have a lot of pink fabrics and trims because another friend, Jill, sold me all her crazy quilting supplies and she was a great fan of pink.  It has come in handy in this block and the wedding quilt I'm working on.  I took this picture over and over again and never could get the color quilte right.  The greys on the corner are really more of a brownish grey.

Be My Valentine RR

This is Cathy L.'s block, but the work is mine for her.

Be My Valentine RR

This is Ely's block and my stitching. (-; I added the corner of the hankie in the lower left-hand corner to balance off the red in the upper right. I made the little white flowers in the upper right-hand corner out of a narrow lace trim. I thought it toned down the red fabric a bit. The "Be Mine" motif was a motif on some fabric that I cut out and appliqued down. The rest is just a button, some trims, and some seam treatments. Hope you like it Ely.

Snowball for Thearica

This is my snowball for Thearica. She wanted a hexagon in the theme of "Pigs on the Farm" -- think Charlotte's Web. I took an embroidery design for a pig from http://www.french-knots.com/cute-pig-embroidery-transfer-pattern/ and made an applique pig of some thin light pink linen. Then I accented the little guy with some embroidery. The fence is from a decorator fabric. The tree is chikan embroidery that I am learning in a class. There is a spider's web which is difficult to see in the picture, but it is made from a sparkling gold thread. The spider is dangling near the pigs tale. I also put a bullion embellished vine on the fence. I think he is cuter than this in person. Maybe I will try to get a better picture in the light tomorrow. If you single click on it you can see it better.

Chikan Embroidery lessons

I am taking a class on Chikan Embroidery which is an Indian stitching technique. I am taking the class through Anita at artisticfingers.blogspot.in . These pictures show my progress on the first 3 lessons. It is very much like shadow work. You can't really see the detail of the thread color, but it is a beautiful variegated thread with blue, blue-green and purple colors. I am wondering if my stitches are too small. I liked it with the small stitches. (-; We are doing this as a group on Stitchmap so we can help each other out.

Antique Store Find

I don't know why I keep buying these. I guess because I keep finding them at decent prices and I have fantasies of putting crazy quilts in them. Fantasy is right!

Kristie's Snowball!

Check out....

I bought this 1920's lamp at an estate sale recently. It was in one of the big victorian houses downtown. I can just imagine the lady's who have stitched under it and am so happy to have it!