Tone on Tone DYB

Last, but not least in this DYB it was the turn of Ati's block for me to work on. She pieced lovely white-off white blocks, each with a vintage piece of crochet lace or cutwork embroidery in the center and we were to use white, off white and silver embellishments.

Have a beautiful day, Everyone!

 

PS: I know I promised you the tutorial for the rosebud and leaves to be my next post, but I have been having a hard time taking good photos - and believe you me, I have been trying - so consider this post the one before the next and be sure that the tutorial will be posted too, as soon as I can take usable photos.

Chirrup!

It is cold and windy outside, and it has been raining cats and dogs since yesterday, but this little birdie just doesn't care about the bad weather.

She is happily chirping around and in and out her brand new house on Helga's block :)

Some more beading is still to be done, so I am off to work on that while listening to Birdie's chirrup.

Have a lovely day, Everyone!

Sneak Peek

This is the fifth round of the Tone on Tone Do Your Block Round Robin and I am working on Helga's pretty block.

My favorite seam treatment on this block is this row of pink-green butterflies with detached chain stitch wings, straight stitch with French knot antennae and bullion stitch bodies.

Helga asked us to add our monograms to the blocks. Here are mine, 8mm "high", stitched with one strand of DMC stranded cotton, using whipped stem stitch. Had to wear my glasses for this one...

Have a beautiful day, Everyone!

Tone on Tone DYB Round Robin

Magdalena's block told me it wanted to be a sunlit meadow with lots of flowers. Who am I to argue with that? :) I do hope she likes it...

Have a great week, Everyone!

Tone on Tone DYB Round Robin

Margreet's blue block:

Happy Wednesday, Everyone!

Tone on Tone DYB Round Robin

Today I finished working on Ritva's white and cream block.

Working with these soft colors was just so soothing... 

Now off I go to weave more daisies :)

Have a lovely weekend, Everyone!

Fabulous First Timers no.17

When I signed up for my first Round Robin with the Crazy Quilting International Yahoo Group, I knew it was going to be an adventure. After all, I have never been in a RR before, I was new to crazy quilting and new to the group. I was really looking forward to finally be able to see up close a crazy quilt block, the embroidery of the other participant ladies, and to the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone and seeing what happens out there :)
Not to mention, how curios I was to see my block embellished.

And an adventure it was, indeed! For more reasons than the five of us would have ever imagined...
This RR went through floods and fire, one of the members having lost her home in the Bastrop fires in Texas - can you imagine that when evacuating her home she remembered to take along with her the RR block she was working on?! -, some of us had, others still have to struggle with serious health problems or to face radical changes in our lives. But against all the odds, here we are, with gorgeously embellished blocks starting to arrive back to their owners!
My block arrived home yesterday and I can't wait to get it framed and hang it in front of my working table, so I can look at it and admire it all the time.

My theme was "If I Had A Rose Garden" and I asked the other four ladies to join me for a stitching tea party in my imaginary rose garden.

And as I look at my finished block, I am so glad that they accepted my invitation and judging by the beautiful and happy, colorful stitching they have done, I have a strong feeling that they have even enjoyed themselves.

Thank you ever so much, Genevieve, Jocelyne, Marianne and Michele!

Three pink blocks and an angel

As promised, here are the other three tone on tone blocks. And they are pink :)

Thank you, ladies, for playing this little game with me. 

Four of those who left a comment guessed right, and with the help of my DH I had a little draw from the hat. Sorry, I couldn't take photos, you will just have to trust me this time. 

And the winner of this hardanger angel is 

Ati

Congratulations :)

Made my choice

Thank you, ladies, for sharing your opinions about my color combinations! They were all helpful and greatly appreciated.
My very first choice was purple, to begin with, but as I didn't have enough purple fabric to make all the six blocks, I had to "diversify". Hence my dilemma.

We had such a wonderful sun this morning and I managed to piece all six blocks. I started with purple, of course, all yummy silks, silk satins and taffetas:

The photos just don't do these pretty colors justice, but this is the best I could do, with the sun being gone by the time the blocks were ready for posing.

The color of the other three blocks is...................... well, what do you think? 

I will show you tomorrow, but until then feel free to take a guess! There just might be a little prize for someone who guesses right before my next post :-) 

Preparations for a party of six

Getting ready for a new crazy quilting Round Robin that will start in January.
This time it will be a tone on tone, Do Your Own Block type RR - each of the six ladies in the group makes six 15x15cm crazy quilt blocks and sends them on to the next person, who picks one out, fully embellishes it and then sends all the blocks on to the next person, who again chooses one block to work on and so on. When the blocks arrive back home, five of them will be embellished and one will be left for the owner to embellish.

I've had this small piece of pretty silk satin in my favorite colors for a while now and it kept falling into my hands whenever I was going through my fabrics, so here's her chance to shine in the center of the blocks:

Its true color is best captured in the photo below:

Now I am contemplating whether to make

three purple and three green blocks,

 or three pink and three green blocks,

 or three pink and three purple blocks, 

or two pink, two purple and two green blocks...

What do you think? Will you help me decide? I would love to read your opinions!

Fabulous First Timers no.17 - The End

Well, almost.
I have just finished working on the last block in this Round Robin with the Crazy Quilting International group. It is Genevieve's Victorian Christmas block, which I received like this:

and for which I made the miniature crazy quilted Christmas stocking:

The holly with berries and a poinsettia made from satin ribbon and beads:

A small trim embellished with a few stitches and a green satin ribbon:

And, finally, as Gen loves fans, I also added a fan lace motif which I beaded and embroidered a little:

Before sending it on to Marianne, here's a full view of the block, with the white poinsettia, Christmas tree and Santa by Jocelyne, and beaded snowman by Michele:

Working on this block has put me in the Christmas mood...

Now I can't wait for my block to arrive back home :-)

Tutorial - Holly Berries / Karácsonyi magyal

Wanting to add some 3D holly berries to the Christmas themed RR block I am working on, I realized that all I had on hand to make them at that moment, was thread and needles (daughter sick, me not able to grab stash from studio)... They say that one of the challenges of crazy quilting is to use what we have, so let's try to get creative. My first idea, the padded satin stitch just didn't give the dimensional result I was looking for, so I decided to try and "close" the raised cup stitch and it worked so well, that I decided to share it with you, too.
Here's a snap shot of my doodle cloth:

There is a great tutorial for the raised cup stitch on Sharon Boggon's blog, Pin Tangle.
Based on that tutorial, I worked a raised cup with two rows/circles of knots (one knot in each space):

After completing the second row, I continued going around, working one knot in every second space of the previous row of stitches, closing up the flower cup shape into a round berry shape.

When I ran out of stitches, I took my needle down through the center of the berry: (taking care not to pull the thread too tightly, because that would have distorted the berry.)

And there it is, a 3D berry, just the shape and texture I was looking for:

It can be completely closed, like in the picture above, or it can have a little opening at the top, as shown below. It all depends on when you decide to stop reducing the stitches:

And here you can see my progress on the RR block, with the holly and berries already in place:

(Additional work by Michele)

I kept calling them berries, because they were the ones who called for this experiment and I think they would work to make any kind of berries, but looking at my doodle cloth, I can see this stitch used to make also hydrangeas, for instance.
Want to give it a try? Please, let me know how it went!

Have fun!