Embellishing

[emmne]

I was thinking of some series to post and have a mystery quilt that might work but I have to work out how to get the pictures on line. If someone comes across this post and doesn't mind sending me a snail mail address, I'll send it as paper. meanwhile, I'll talk about my favorite topic, which is designing crazy quilts. I've done all kinds, including when I was cluelessly figuring out quilting without class or teacher. (My first quilt is diamond shaped because I didn't know how to square off). A couple of them are true patchworks: an old blanket or a couple of old beach towels appliqued with patches until one side is covered with patches and the other side has either scrap of the base material from trimming off the uneven edges or some closely matching material to peed the back the same color as the original.

Usually I pick a color theme: blue, green, and stick mostly to that with just enough variety to brighten it up. Mostly I pick very close range of blues, solids and patterns, but lately I've been looking at some scrappy quilts that are less close, yet still of a theme, a rainbow of blues you might say, with a rainbow of crams or some other color, matching or contrasting but subtlely so. I'm redoing green quilt that shrank a lot, expanding and flattening the pieces that didn't shrink as much. That I'll keep to the current country green as closely as possible, but the one after that will be more variable shades in the same family, maybe pinks with peach and rose and maroon, or blues from bluegreen to violet to sky blue to navy and see how much color a single color can handle. With that in mind, I've been shopping for fat quarters with patterns but less strong contrasts. Not my usual for shopping, but mostly because I didn't know what to do with them rather than because I didn't like them. With the mixed color patterns, I can more easily incorporate my overstocked stash of solids, perhaps.

Anyway, maybe I'll talk more about that in future posts. i do love a crazy quilt and they offer so many possibilities.

Comments

Well , lets get the topic

[emmne]

It's called embellishing because it is very much a crazy quilt concept, from the Victorian era, embroidery and such to "embellish" the quilting, though actually it's a way of doing the quilting. My current crazy quilt a "Space quilt" with space focus fabric and lots of black with stars and other patterns as well as bright "planets" and "stars". This one has a little embroidery, but more netting with sparkles, and will have sequins and glitter paint before it's done. They don't all get that kind of embellishment, but they often get bits of lace and brick-a-brack or fabric-paint pictures, if only because old clothes with them get included among the patches.