This is a Crazy Month!

Here is some progress on my Journal Page for June..Its not done by a long shot...But its turning out to be a blast. I decided to do a Crazy Quilt block...It's something I have wanted to do for a long time and this month seems just crazy enough!

One of the Crazy Quilters in the blogosphere - sharon b - is doing a series in her blog on a 100 Details For 100 Days Her site is a veritable treasure trove! I am kinda 'playing along' but I will run out of seams long before the series is done... Unless....I MAKE MORE CQ BLOCKS! Allison was the one who pointed me to this series...I am grateful! Her Crazy Quilts are a treat to look at! She is going to be following along with the series too.

This is the naked Crazy Quilt block, made out of mostly velvet with a chunk of silk in the middle. These scraps came from the stash I acquired from my Granny. She did lots of charity quilting and people would give her bags and boxes of fabric - she saved the 'fancy stuff' into a separate box:


The innermost white stiching is the outer edge of the size for the Journal Quilts. I plan on making a pillow style backing (with the two overlapping pieces of backing), slipping the Timtex stiffening piece in thru that and buttoning on a piece of fabric with the normal stuff I put on the back. That way I can take it apart if needed...

When I finished the naked block I said to myself "I don't think I particularly like this style of quilting"...But then I started in on the seam treatments and that is FUN FUN FUN!

Here is my progress on decorating the seams as of Sunday AM:
I attempted the first day's treatment (the seam with the green French knots) - I got it just a wee bit cramped so I didn't get all the elements in but I think it looks ok...I did the second day's treatment (the orange and purple seam)... The pink ribbon on the blue piece at the bottom is my attempt to make something like rickrack, which is the basis for day two's second treatment...Which I haven't started. I put in a call to my mom to see if she has any - if she does, I may take my ribbon attempt off - or not! I still have day three, day four and now day five to do!





This is one of the detail seams - its hand made lace with the beads from a necklace that the clasp came off years ago and has been sitting in a baggie in the kitchen drawer waiting for me to fix it...I 'fixed it' alright, eh? (my camera is not taking very good closeup shots...I think there is another setting I need to use...gotta get the book out and read up on close shots - Hopefully will get better pictures as this progresses.)








I went on a hunt for beads and buttons that I could use for embellishment and found I DO have a few hanging around. I found another dead necklace that has some nice maroon beads, some wooden beads, a few bugles, a few beads that are a bit larger than seed beeds, even a few little metal feathers! And the piece-de-resistance...Some milliflore beads I think my daughter made out of Fimo years ago... I dumped out my button collection and separated out all the 'interesting' buttons. We'll see if any of them make the cut to actually get places on my block.