Crazy Quilt Progress

Several people have asked if I plan these things ahead. I learned the hard way a while back not to, when I "planned" one quite a bit larger than this, and had every patch, including color swatches of the threads taped on. That didn't work - as nothing looked quite right when I followed this pre-conceived notion of mine, and I ended up changing almost everything. I have found also that it is much more entertaining to just dump out threads, choose a basic color scheme and build as I go - not really intending to use them all, but having plenty of choices available.



In this case, I had been studying Allie's "Spring" quilt that has lots and lots of silk tie fabrics, (see this quilt here)and wanted to start with the pink and blue patch, which closely resembles a patch on hers. I will put little "pearl" beads in to the spaces marked with dots that are between the criss-cross Hungarian stitches. Having started with one patch, it is easy to select the next color and figure where to put it, so it's really just a matter of adding a bit at a time - it seems to fall together as it should. That little bit of teal rick-rack happened when the thread fell out of the bag onto the colors I had chosen, and looked so fine I decided to go ahead and use it. Notice that on the darker pink/purple patch on the left, the dots were marked before stitching basketweave around them for later placement of beads.


The next step is to begin the seam treatments. I like to make the main "vine" effect first, onto which the silk ribbon flowers will be made as the main embellishment feature. I won't know what color these flowers will be until I pour out the bag of silk ribbon and see what looks best. I don't dare work on this when I'm tired, as I will get careless or get in a hurry and make a mess - soooo will put it away for this evening and start background patches on the yellow one. I'm making the patches mainly with silk, and rather plain, as the predominant feature will be some new flowers I want to try with the 7mm ribbon I found at Riversilks - gorgeous stuff!.