A Number Eight Shirt For GranddaughterStitches

It's time for GranddaughterStitches's new birthday number shirt!  This time I chose a light heather blue t-shirt for her.  I like the v-neck on this one.

 For the number eight fabric I used a piece of fabric that I'm pretty sure is from Judith Baker Montano's collection of several years ago.  I love the different colors in it, and how it looks almost shiny.

Fusing between the fabric and the shirt, and with a nice soft stabilizer behind the shirt, the machine blanket stitching went very well.  

I can't believe how old GranddaughterStitches is getting!  And pretty soon she'll be taller than I am!

Crazy Quilt

I have finally finished my crazy quilt! I have to admit that I'm embarrassed because I started on it in 2008. That was the first time I went to Empty Spools Seminars in Asilomar, California. I took a crazy quilting class that year from Judith Baker Montano. She is an awesome crazy quilter, and a lot of fun as a teacher; check out her website and see some of her beautiful work.

Here are some close-ups of some of the stitching and trims I added to the surface. It was a lot of fun deciding what stitch or piece of lace I would add where.

Making a crazy quilt is almost like sewing two quilts. First you piece all of the background together, which is in itself a big project of deciding which fabrics to use and how to arrange them.

When that is all done, comes the work of going all over the surface of the quilt again, adding embroidery, lace, trims, beads, buttons, etc.

The above photo shows the "'08" that I embroidered at the beginning of this quilt.

And in this photo you see where I had to add "2009" because I wasn't finished yet. Little did I know...

The tough thing about a crazy quilt is knowing when to stop! Traditionally, each seam is covered with stitching or trim. But you don't have to stop there. There are so many possibilities. At some point you just have to say, "That's enough."

What really made me get my rear in gear was when I realized I would need to add a "2010" to the quilt. And I sure didn't want to add a "2011!"

In the above photo you can see the small "TEN" stitched where I hoped it wouldn't be very noticeable. And I can say it's done.

I finished it by adding some black fabric triangles to the sides so I would have an en pointe square. I fused some interfacing to the black fabric, so it would be closer in "hand" to the actual sewn part of the quilt. Then I added some very thin batting, and a backing fabric. I sewed the front to the back with nymo beading thread on the back with a few small invisible stitches.

It really was a pleasure to work on this quilt. And I can't wait to start on some more "fancy work." It is a lot of fun.

A New Book

Here is a fabulous book which was recently published. It is by Judith Baker Montano, my guru for crazy quilting. The big surprise is that there is actually a photo in this book of a quilt that Little MissesStitches made! I am so excited about being in this book--it's such an honor. I think I'll buy several hundred copies to give to a few of my closest friends and relatives!

The book itself (even without the fabulous inclusion of my quilt!) is beautiful. It is an oversized book, with a spiral binding, and with beautiful, beautiful photos, almost all of which were taken by Judith. She's a fabulously talented woman, with lots of interests, and is a wonderful person to know and to learn from. The book talks about using different methods for creating a fibreart (as Judith spells it!) montage. In my case, I made a quilt/wall hanging of a landscape scene using crazy quilt piecing, embroidery, silk ribbon embroidery, burning fabric, dying fabric/trims, needle felting, and embellishing like crazy. It was a class that I took from Judith at Asilomar (Empty Spools Seminars), which is a fabulous place to go for week-long quilting classes.

Internat'l Quilt Festival--Long Beach

I can't believe it! My quilt actually made it into IQF Long Beach! Even after I was notified that it was accepted, it still was hard to believe until I actually saw it there hanging with all the other quilts in the special exhibit, West Coast Wonders.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I made this quilt in a class I took from Judith Baker-Montano, who is a fantastic crazy quilter. She is such a good teacher, a fun person, and so inspiring.

See, there it is (in photo at right), my little quilt among some of the others in the exhibit. BTW, you may notice how small mine is, compared to the others. Well, I had to add 5" of borders on all four sides to get my quilt up to the minimum size accepted!

And here is the neat little ribbon that I got to wear around the quilt show, saying "See My Work."

A big quilt show like this is just fantastic, seeing all the amazing quilts--so much inspiration! To say nothing of the vendors! Lots of people selling lots of things that are absolutely necessary to quilting! Including shoes and lint removers!

I went to the quilt show with one of my quilting buddies, Carol, who also had a quilt in the show. It's this one at the left, depicting bare trees in a forest fire. (It looks brighter and more orange in real life.) Carol's quilt was in an exhibit called Journal Quilt Project II: Elements--Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.

"Sonoma Coastline"

Sonoma Coastline

This is a photo of my crazy quilt landscape that got accepted into a special exhibit at International Quilt Festival. I am so totally excited about this! It will show in Long Beach in July, Houston in October, and Chicago in April '10. The special exhibit is called West Coast Wonders, and this is my little portion of the west coast where I live.

Here is a close-up of part of the stitching and embellishment.

Now, however, I have a lot of work to be done. When I originally made this, my teacher, Judith Baker Montano said to put it in a frame, as it is like a picture, and that will protect it from dust, etc. But before I did that, I put this quilt in my local quilt guild's annual show, so I sewed borders and a back onto it, as a traditional quilt. And that's what I need to do for the Long Beach show.

But the problem is that I did a lot of the texturing of the piece with the needle-felting attachment on my sewing machine. That means that some of the fabrics and ribbons are not sewn down, but are merely "punched" into the fabric underneath. Which would be ok if it were under glass, but not if it's going to be handled like a quilt. Some of the fabrics/ribbons could actually be lifted off. So now I have to tack it all down. This entails first of all removing the borders and backing. And now I'm taking similar-colored thread and making little tiny stitches all around the parts of the quilt that aren't already sewn down.

Now don't get me wrong. I like doing hand work--that's why I do crazy quilting in the first place. I could have sat for days and days and done decorative stitches on this quilt. But to go around and make stitches that don't show is really not very much fun. Plus I have a swiftly-looming deadline where I have to get it mailed in. So the best I can do is watch movies while I am doing the hand-sewing, which makes it go a little faster. I have some James Bond for this afternoon.........