Quaker Diamonds, Crazy Quilting

Its supposed to be warm today, about 10C or 50F more or less, but the wind is too strong for it too be very enjoyable outside. At least there is sun and some semblance of heat!

I have four brothers and a sister and we are all alike... Ask us what time it is and we tell you how to build a clock, so I will try to keep things to a few words today! Highly unlikely but a girl can try!

I finally got my Quaker Diamonds finished! What a relief! I even ironed it for today' s presentation! Not framed yet, but I have quite a few finished projects and not sure what will get framed.

Quaker Diamonds:
I'm sure most people know this but it never occurred to me to do this until I saw a friend do it to her stitching. Rather than pay money for 4 or more inches of border around your stitching area for framing, you can just leave 2 or 3 inches around the stitching area and sew some spare cotton or similar fabric around your stitching fabric. I used a Q-snap frame for my stitching so could comfortably stitch at the very edge of my stitching. I hope this photo makes sense and shows what I am trying to explain.

I also added a few more rows of stitching to my crazy quilt piece. I won't tell you how many stitches were put in and then taken out. But, I either like it or I don't and if I don't like it, I take it out.

That row of dark green along the top left of the block had a couple of rows of red beads in it but I found the beads a bit too overpowering so took them out. There is a purple ribbon at the bottom in the green area that I began to couch down but I do not like it. It is the third item I have tried couching down but don't like anything I have done so far. I searched through all my books and came across some silk ribbon work that I might use. I only did one small piece in silk ribbons about 15 or more years ago and very little since, so it is not easy work for me! I will see what comes of it.

This is a close up of some of the stitching. With each row that I stitch, I get a bit braver and do a little bit more complex stitches. At least they are complex to me. Most of the stitches, if not all of them, come from Sharons' notes from her Encrusted Crazy Quilting course.



I haven't done a thing with TAST this week. For week 10 we are to do the running stitch which seems to be fairly easy and basic but not too much comes to mind as to what to do with it.

I'm sure its happened to all of that when we have alot of fabric hanging off the ends of our stitching frames, we run the risk of stitching the end of our fabric to the back of our stitching if we aren't careful. Doing crazy quilting especially, I have sewn my stitches to the block and the hanging edge more than once! To help prevent this, you can get hair clips at just about any dollar store and either bundle up your excess fabric underneath the frame, or in the photo below, just pull it up the side, to hold it out of the way with a hair clip.

That's it for today....

Enjoy your day and if you have some sun, get out in it!

Todays words of wisdom: from Natasha Josefowitz

Tomorrow I will Change

Tomorrow I will change
turn a new leaf
become this new person.

I will exercise before breakfast
not eat cookies between meals
not fret over trivialities
not run about
getting upset
that I'm not getting
everything done.

Tomorrow I will change.

I say this every day.