Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm going to show you the valentine I made for MisterStitches for Valentine's Day. I wanted to show you sooner, right after I made it. But MisterStitches reads my blog, and I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

I started off by crazy piecing red and pink and cream-colored fabrics onto a muslin base. I sewed in a few pieces of lace, too. In the photo above I'm finished with this step. If you look very closely you might be able to see my drawn line around the heart shape. I sewed a line of stitching just outside the drawn line, just to hold it all together nicely. Then I removed the pins and proceeded to do my decorative stitching.

I used the stitches on my machine, rather than doing this by hand, which greatly speeded up the process. Above is a close-up. Isn't that heart stitch great!?! And I love the little "swag" stitch, too. It's so dainty and delicate.

Here I am all finished with my decorative stitches, and I have trimmed the heart to its final shape. Now I have to finish the edges.

I did a nice, tight zig zag all around the edges to bind them. I went slow and easy, and used a stiletto to hold the edges together as I sewed them.

An alternative would have been to bind them with fabric, but this zig zag method was nice and clean.

Here are both hearts! Yes, I made two: one for MisterStitches, and one for

MomStitches and DadStitches.

I then sewed each fabric heart to the front of a blank card. Just three little threads, and tiny stitches that don't show on the front.

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.

Crazy Quilted Tote Bag

This is a crazy-quilted tote bag that I made for my dear, soon-to-be Daughter-In-LawStitches. Her wonderful friend gave a bridal shower for her last weekend, and I was working frantically to get this bag done in time! I was planning to do more embellishment, add some beads, etc, but I ran into time, so it is what it is.

This is the front (I guess) of the bag.

This is a close-up of part of this side of the bag.

And here is the other side of the bag.

....and a close-up of that side of the bag.