Emily's block

This Emily's block in progress.  Emily is 5 months and a bit.

These are Kiko's flowers.  Sharon B showed us how to do them.  Mine always turn out looking different from each other.  

I love these little lilies.  They're acrylic and I bought a bunch of them from an Etsy shop.  By themselves they sit awkwardly, but in threes I think they look super.

A patch with buttonhole rings, chevron that needs more decoration, and my favourite scallop seam. 

I'm working with bias silk ribbon here, and it's lovely to work with.  This is a patch in progress.

Tone on Tone DYB RR - My blocks

I'm so happy to have my Tone on Tone blocks back home.  This is how I sent them out:  Six inch squares in rainbow colours.  Five would be chosen by the group and the remaining one I would do.  In the booklet I mentioned that they would probably be made into a small wall hanging for a child's room.

Cathy L. chose the orange block and added a wonderful dinosaur, a sparkly corner with a beetle, and some neat ric rac. I also see some tiny kiko's flowers in among the winding chain. 

Cheryl A worked on the yellow block .  She brought it to sparkling light with the enormous  sun.    It's clever the way the sun's rays show off her neat stitching.

Ritva worked on the blue block.  In amongst her wonderful seams, she's added  the perfect charms for a wee boy:  teddies and the truck.

Candji's choice was red.  Her dramatic dragon is definitely the focal point.  There's sparkly seam treatments  and a neat kite to complete the scene.

Green was chosen by Rita.  Her spider is just waiting for his next meal!  Look closely and you will also see a butterfly, some fishes, worms and a turtle, not to mention some lovely seamwork. 

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Thanks, ladies.  I love all your work.  

Flower quilt

I've finished two more blocks for the Flower Quilt.  That's eight completed.  They are small, just 6" square, so I'll probably need 64 blocks to make it a decent size.  It's a fun project because every time I learn how to do a new flower, it becomes a new block.  The flower always sits on a green centre patch, and the rest of the block is shades of the colour of the flower.

This flower was made by gathering up a wired ribbon on a smocking machine.  

This block was inspired by two things:  I found a faux ultrasuede jacket in a lovely shade of eggplant.  It had a long zipper and two different kinds of gimp trim that matched exactly.  Cathy K. showed me how to make a zipper flower.    

The stems are in a raised stem stitch.  The curves came from  a heart-shaped piece of plastic canvas.   For  raised stem stitch the horizontal stitches need to be measured and marked very accurately, the plastic canvas holes worked perfectly.

You can see the other blocks on Flickr - see my side bar on the right or click here.  I didn't realize that I haven't blogged about this project before.  My inspiration came from Alison Aller's workshop at last Spring's Adventure in Connecticut.  In her class we made flowers and leaves and drooled over her most beautiful flower quilt.  

All About Angels RR

This is my naked block for the CQI All about angels RR.  I began with a cute little impressed angel image on the centre velvet patch, but it was too small.  I checked through my "angel" stash and found this perfect angel.  I put her on a cloud of tule which covered the velvet image.  I fiddled a long time to get my picture on point, but it's still a little off.

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

Karrin's Stumpwork block ...... continued

I added a wheelbarrow carrying a fir tree that's waiting to be planted

Elijah's birth announcement block

In between the CQI Round Robins that I am working on, I have been trying to get caught up with these announcement blocks for my five grandchildren.  This is Elijah, my youngest at 4 months.  The two next in age, Brynn, one year and a bit, and Josh, 2 years and a bit I have completed.  The other two, Jack nearly 7 years old and Caleb 3, were born before I began crazy quilting, so I am playing catch up.  Jack's is almost finished and will be featured soon! 

Deanna's Pines Group - Yellow Study moving on

This is Deanna's almost finished block with Vicky, Reneta, Cathy and my work. It's going to Daphne next. I've not worked in yellow much, and it's not my favourite colour, but I was loving it by the end of the first seam.

Here's what I added to the block. Some scallops. I wanted to do more to this patch, but couldn't make up my mind on what else to add. Perhaps Daphne will finish it off!

The paisley was fun to do. I also did the seam above it.

This began with small straight stitches. Then I wove six strands of sparkly green thread in and out of the straight stitches, and added a small green pearl. After that three lazy daisy stitches in orange DMC pearl #8 and in between those three straight stitches in one strand of gold sparkly thread with a gold bead on each stitch.

A little patch of chicken scratch on the gingham patch with a pea-pod seam below.

I filled this patch with herringbone and small cupped sequins. This is the final Pines block that I will work on. What a variety there was in this group! It was great fun!

Daphne's Pines block on it's way home.

This Daphne's finished block. It looks great in reality, the photo doesn't do it justice. Last year we were in another RR and her block was a match to this one with shoes and boots. So the pair of them will look great together.

I worked on this clutch purse. Wide orange satin ribbon with big orange sequins and green seed beads keeping the pleats in place. Seed bead border on the orange fabric. Gold trim and a green sequin flower as the "button". And various beaded bits decorating the orange fabric. It was lots of fun to do - great colours together.

Whatever Goes RR - Pines Group

My block is home and it's beautiful. The Pines ladies that worked on it are Vicky, Reneta, Deanna, Daphne and Cathy. I've taken some close up photos to give you an idea how lovely their work is.

The spider and web and pink and green seam are Vicky's work.

Vicky also embroidered this pretty seam.

This lovely assortment of flowers and the purple beaded seam on the left are Vicky's work too. Deanna embroidered the delicate pink beaded feather stitch.

Renata made this lovely cluster of pearl flowers.

The seam of silver and pearl flowers are Daphne's contribution, the purple seam is Cathy's. I couldn't find any mention of the purple and green bead seam so I can't give credit.

Daphne embroidered this gorgeous silk ribbon bouquet.

The hearts and flowers seam and the corner embroidery is Deanna's lovely work.

This seam is Cathy's.

This pretty purple cluster is also Cathy's.More lovely embroidery from Vicky.

Thank you all so much for your lovely work. This block is a real treasure and will be part of a wall hanging soon.

Cathy's Cowboy Block

Cathy's cowboy block has made it's first stop at my place. It's part of the "Favourite Things Round Robin". It's totally brown except for a great picture in the middle of a cowboy on a hill with his horse, looking at his cattle in the distance. The all brown block was intimidating at first, and it took me a few days to get going on it. I'm not finished yet, but here is some of my stitching. The trees are wrong, they should line up with the posts on the fence, so they will have to come out. Also I see a few red tacking stitches that I missed. I still have some more to go on the block, but rather than be a worry to do, it's become fun!

"Sparkle"

Her name is "Sparkle" and she's my newest dotee, made from a baggie swap at Swapbot from Sandy. In the baggie was everything you see and more! My swap partner made the adorable face which I just love.

Whatever Goes RR

This block began it's journey today to Deanna in Minnesota.

I didn't do a stitch on it before it left here. The colours are lilacs, purples and pale green. It will be back home in August if all goes well!!

Over the past year I've accumulated a few blocks. Below are two scenarios using the block above. One is using three lighter coloured blocks to make up a group of four. The other is a six block group using lighter and darker blocks. The background fabric is a dark eggplant/purple colour. Do you think that the dark blocks in the 6-group dominate too much?