Big Honkin' Needle

My local Embroidery Guild of  America (EGA) chapter (Constellation, Baltimore, Maryland) last week hosted two crazy quilt workshops by Betty Pillsbury. I was especially happy about this because I had gone to workshop Betty gave at the Adventure in Crazy Quilting retreat in Connecticut in 2011. She is good: clear instructions, interesting projects and fun. It was there we first heard her refer to using a "big honkin' needle" for embroidering with chenile thread. We used it again at the Constellation chapter workshops.

The first workshop was entitled "Motifs from Antique Crazy Quilts." Betty has a wonderful collection of antique crazy quilts from which she selected three to teach. I might have named this class "honkin' big motif" because they were, at 4x6 inches and 5x7 inches, way bigger than I have used on my quilts. After this class I will think bigger.

The first motif was a sprig of goldenrod worked in chenile on velveteen using our "big honkin' needles."

We were supposed to use silk chenile thread for this, but it was somewhat hard to find and I used rayon. It is a flat thread, whereas silk puffs out around the whole center. I like the way the rayon looks fine, but you can see the difference by looking at the lemon colored french knots in the lower center of the motif. These are in silk thread I got from a friend.

A second motif was also done on velveteen, a palette.

The flower on this is made with wired ribbon

Third was a pansy made of silk dupioni with ribbon stem and leaf.

 

I worked this on a crazy quilted 15" diameter circle I made up for use in the class.

 

This is it after the work from the second workshop entitled "Notebook Sampler." Here are the motifs made in this workshop:

A 3" flower made from silk essense fabric.

A 2 1/2" pansy  made from wired ribbon.

 

 

 

Two flowers with  needlewoven petals and two beaded dragonflies.

The green dragonfly is from a kit Betty provided.

 

 

 

Spiderweb made with metallic machine embroidery thread and 2 bullion roses.

 

These were two wonderful days of learning and fun with friends.

 



 





Something Special from Peru

In July I took the trip I had been dreaming of for years: an Amazon River Cruise and Rain Forest exploration. I loved it. The weather was perfect, it was less buggy than here in Maryland, the trip leader was excellent and fun, lots of wildlife showed itself and the villagers (riverenos) were friendly.

I had my eye out for embroidery, of course. At a gift shop at an archeological site outside Lima, before we even reached the Amazon watershed, I found my favorite piece. Yes it's a  mountain scene and I didn't visit the mountains, but I had to have it anyway.

You can see it is applique and embroidery with stumpwork. Just up my alley. I will use it for pointers to add figures to a years-old UFO I have, if I ever get back to it.

Below are close ups of some of the stumpwork figures  on it.

 

 

In Iquitos, the headwaters port on the Amazon, there were other embroideries for sale that I wish I had bought. Ah, well.

3-D Flower project finished

It's done! That was fun.

I did make an iris for the lower right corner. It was an adventure. I decided to try one of Allison Aller's techniques that she published in the CQMagOnline, April, 2009 issue: making millinery flowers. Actually, I can't claim to have used her technique. I modified it to use the materials I had. I made ovals of white silk charmeuse. Then, not having the glue Allison used, I sprayed the ovals heavily with starch and pressed. I used three for one flower. On two ovals I streaked yellow pastel on the center end of the oval to about the middle. Not having a ball-shaped tool to shape the fabric, I used the tip of my iron on a cloth bag of rice (not having any sand.) Then I gathered the center end of the ovals with a few stitches. The two lower petals needed a row of yellow fuzzy stuff, stamens with pollen? I made those with Ghiordes knot or Turkey rug knot. using one strand of DMC floss. I found the starch didn't completely prevent ravelling of the silk, so I used fray check around the edges. Then I sewed the petals onto the block with the bottom two skewed to the side. With ribbon stem and leaves added, the iris is done. I'm sure this would have worked better if I had used archival bookbinding glue, a millinery tool and a sand bed, but who could wait to get those things.

So here is the finished block. It has another flower added besides the eight Allison taught and the iris. Notice some sweet William's in pink fused angelina fibers. I traded this color with Robin Atkins for some of the orangy color I had in my kit for the dogwood. And, Susan, I did make the waste canvas based butterfly. It's cute and I did want to use all the techniques Allie taught. That was a great workshop. Thanks to everyone who made it happen.

Scrap block embellished! Solar hot water!

Whew! I thought I wouldn't finish embellishing my scrap block for the challenge on the CQ International listserv - but I did. All the embellishments are thread embroidery to maintain an old-fashioned look and to keep it flat to use as a table cloth. The block is 12 inches square and will have wide borders to make the cloth 24" square.

I just signed a contract for installation of a solar water heater. Turns out my roof is very good for collecting solar energy and the panels won't show from the front of the house. The system uses my current water heater for storage and backup heat. Hay, everybody, this is the time to invest in this. The federal, state (Maryland) and county incentives together reduce the price by about 84% for my system (40 gallons a day usage). Bye-bye to a big chunk of natural gas use from my budget and CO2 footprint.

Family visit, new blocks, and capturing rocks in thread

My sister, aunt, son, daughter-in-law, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter all visited for the Cherry Blossom Festival! I live in suburban Washington, DC. I had to put some of them up in a motel, but the visit was wonderful and so were the cherry blossoms. We toured the Smithsonian museums, rode the tour trolley, toured the National Cathedral,ate lunch in it's garden and made an auto excursion to Leesburg, Virginia. My 84 year-old aunt and 5 1/2 year-old grandaughter both kept up with all the walking. In Leesburg, besides lunch, we visited a thrift shop and a couple of antique stores. I bought a beautiful scarf in the thrift shop that I expected to cut up for crazy quilting, but I don't know. It may serve as a table cover instead, at least until I need a piece from it to exactly fit a crazy quilt block. It's 54 inches square.

Before the visit from my family, I made two crazy quilt blocks in greens. The first was in preparation for a workshop by Allison Aller at my embroidery guild, Constellation Chapter, EGA. She is giving two workshops, one on curved piecing of crazy quilts and the second on floral embellishment. I'm taking only the second so I made a block with curved piecing to be used there. The second is a donation block in support of breast cancer research for auction at the annual Crazy Quilt Seminar in Omaha, Nebraska.

My friend Susan reported on her blog about her trip to New York City's Central Park. She speculated on how to translate the many rock formations there into needlework. Well, I tried. My daughter, when she lived in Manhattan, was a rock climber. I took some pictures of her climbing with a friend in Central Park. In my first crazy quilt I translated one of those pictures onto a block representing her interests. I can't say I was satisfied with the result, but here's a picture as a challange for you to surpass.