Visit to Morin Heights



Caleb's birth announcement block



This is the centre portion of the block.  The photo and letters for the birth information was printed on silk.



My son Neil and his family live in Quebec, about an hour north of Montreal in the foothills of the Laurentians.  I have two adorable French/Canadian grandchildren, who at 2 and 4 can speak both English and French.  I visited this past weekend for their birthdays.  I also delivered Caleb's crazy quilted block.  I've been making these birth announcement blocks for each of my five grand children.  This is Caleb's and he's just about four years old now.  I've only been crazy quilting for less than 3 years, so I was able to add extra information to his block because he's a little older.  For starters, he's crazy for cars (just like his daddy), so I found some neat car fabric to include in the block.  When Caleb began to talk it was in two word sentences, and I included a sampling using alphabet blocks.  Here are a few more close ups:

A button patch



Feather stitch, chevron, buttonhole and fly stitches



Rose vine, chain scallops and some of Caleb's first words 



Button cluster



Carolyn's Tea Time II Round Robin

One side of Carolyn's tea cosy

The second side



Carolyn's tea cosy is made from old fashioned prints and was fun to work on.  I chose the chicken scratch on the first side (above).  I love doing chicken scratch and I was glad that she had one on each side, and one was left still to do.  I also embroidered some blue bullion daisies on both sides of the cosy.    On the first side there was a small rectangle that looked just like a table, so I filled it with beaded goodies.  And on the second side I added a simple cross stitch seam treatment in red, white, yellow and royal blue.

Bullion daisies

Chicken Scratch

Cakes and Cookies!  Chocolate eclairs, Empire Biscuits and a chocolate cake

Cross stitch, straight stitch, French knots and lazy daisies

Arlene's Basically Beaded RR and some fun in the mountains!






I arrived home in the wee hours of Tuesday morning after a wonderful time in Salt Lake City with Cathy K.  Then we set out on  a scenic drive through Wyoming, and arrived in Estes Park, Colorado to spend from Thursday to Monday morning with the CQI September Shenanigans Group.  What fun we had!  Some of the ladies I knew from the 2009 Retreat, but we had grown in number and I enjoyed putting names to Internet faces for the new ones.  There were 18, and on Saturday, 19 of us teaching, learning, sewing, beading, etc. etc. in a spacious 6-bedroom cabin, 7,000 odd feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains. The four guys in charge of CQI did a wonderful job of organizing the Retreat - thank you to Kerry, Lesley, Cathie and Hideko. 

Above is Arlene's basically beaded RR block that spent some time up in the mountains while I worked on it.  Below are close ups. 

  



This is a bouquet of lavender.

Feather stitch  with a few added fantasy flowers!

A seam of sequin flowers and beaded leaves

Glass flower

Beaded herringbone

Fall Colours a la Sugar

Our Fall colours haven't yet reached this stage in Southern Ontario,  it will be a few more weeks.  But my friend and I played Mother Nature this week filling an order for sugar maple leaves.  We had lots of fun playing with our gum paste and creating these multi coloured real- looking maple leaves (to be truthful the cutter we used is actually a Japanese Maple leaf).

One block's seams

These are all the seams from the block mentioned in the last post.  I purposely used more fabric pieces so that I would have more seams to embroider. 

Chevron, chain with hearts, and fly stitch with pearls

Feather stitch

Coral stitch

Coral stitch

Chicken scratch

Chain stitch "pea pods" with 13/0 Charlottes

Chain stitch with beads

Buttonhole stitch

Double cretan, chevron, coral, buttonhole and chain stitch

Chain stitch scallops and chain stitch with bullions

Chain stitch

Embroidering text.....continued

Here's the silk printed piece now attached to the block.  I tacked it down and used a thin needle and one strand of DMC floss to embroider tiny chain stitches within the outlines of the printed letters.  The next post will be the finished block.

Embroidering text

Silk page with two sets of lettering

I'm working on a baby announcement block for the latest addition to our family.  Lucas is my niece's first baby so that makes me Lucas' great aunt.  Three of my five grandchildren have blocks and I'm in the process of finishing the other two.

There is a lot of lettering needed on the block:  name, date and time of birth, and weight and length.  Getting the writing neat and even is tricky, and for the first couple of blocks I transferred the letters by tacking through a printed paper copy.  When I started using the silk to print off my own pictures, I also tried printing the text information on the silk.  For the lettering I used the font Comic Sans, size 30.  I chose pale blue ink because I will be using a pale blue thread, and chose the "outline" effect.

Close up of lettering

To get the best use out of the silk, I cut a piece of 8 1/2" x 14" legal size silk from the roll and adjusted the text and printed several times on legal size paper before I printed onto the silk.  To get two to a page, the format for each set of lettering is the same on the page using the landscape format.  When you are printing the second set of lettering, feed the paper into the printer from the opposite end.  Be sure to practice first on legal size paper.

Lucas' unfinished block

Most of the embroidery is finished, and the space at the bottom is where the silk piece with the lettering will be attached.  The printed silk page is cut from corner to corner so that each lettering is on a large triangle. 

Cathy's Tea Time RR block

Cathy's block after my additions

China Mug

What fun this was to work on!  Calthy's fabrics were all cotton and vintage.  The centre block is an embroidered teapot. The first thing I looked for was an area that could be a table, and I found it directly below the big teapot.  I added a beaded teapot, cup and saucer and a crystal footed cake plate with some Empire Biscuits.  The tablecloth is a little piece of lace with a scalloped edge.  Below the lace was my first attempt at a white damask tablecloth, but it looked too heavy, so I added the lace. 
To the left of the table is a large china mug with a rose design.
I also worked on four seams, chain stitch with pearls, stem stitch and lilac flowers, featherstitch with pink flowers and a herringbone with pink seed beads above the table. 
I love the empire biscuits!

Stem stitch seam

Afternoon tea with Empire Biscuits

Featherstitch seam

Cobi's stumpwork block

Stumpwork is one of the most interesting ways to decorate a crazy quilt block.  Cobi's RR block has such a wonderful variety of techniques, all in one way or another three dimensional.    I asked for some advice from Gerry K since I had the spot directly above hers on the block, and when she suggested a long and short stitch bunny, my heart dropped at the thought.  Not my favourite stitch to be sure!  But working on other folk's blocks makes me try harder, and I tackled the rabbit.  In fact I had some fun, and found that the long and short stitch wasn't so difficult as I had imagined it would be.  Here's Cobi's block finished after Gerry (the blue birds in the nest and the painted button), Arlene (the bee skep and bees), Karrin (the squirrel on the branch) and my bunny and hydrangea blossoms.

Cobi's finished stumpwork block

Bunny in long and short stitch, and hydrangeas. 

My CQI Silk Ribbon Embroidery RR is home!

This is my completed block from the CQI Silk Ribbon Embroidery Round Robin.  It travelled far and wide.  From Canada it's first stop was Uraguay, then on to Australia for two stops, next to Ohio, USA, then home again to Canada.  The lovely work by Meg, Susan, Arlene and Candji is much appreciated.

Susan's cottage garden

Candji's lace and rose motif

Candji's cherry blossom branch

Arlene's lace motif, rosebud and chevron seams

Arlene's loopy ribbon flowers and fargo roses spray

Meg's blossom branches

Meg's peach and yellow roses spray

Stumpwork RR - Gerry's Block

This block has been the biggest challenge I have given myself since I began crazy quilting.  Stumpwork itself is by far the most challenging of crazy quilting techniques, and I would never have guessed that two years after I began to crazy quilt, I would be tackling this type of embroidery.  The first photo is Gerry's block with Arlene, Karrin and my contribution.  The next photo is my work which tells a story, a true story about a sick bee.  Sometime in the 1980s, my mum was out in the country picking wild blackberries and spotted a bee in obvious distress resting on a leaf.  She watched it for a while and then placed a blossom next to it on the leaf hoping it could gain a little nourishment.  A little later mum said it was able to fly off, but before it went very far, it made a u-turn, flew back and landed on mum's hand as a gesture of appreciation, it rested for a moment and then flew off.                                   Real blackberry fruit and blossoms.