Colori di Sardegna or Colours of Sardinia

After nearly six years I have finished another UFO!!!!  Jumping for joy as I never thought I would ever see the end of this one.  Six years ago some very good friends of ours who were originally from Sardinia in the Mediterranean and which is part of Italy, were building a new house.  I promised  I would make them a house-warming present and decided to create a crazy quilted picture entitled "Colori di Sardegna" or in English, "Colours of Sardinia".   I set about collecting lots of photos from the net and from travel brochures to see just what Sardinia actually looked like - lots of bright, clear blues and turquoises in the sky and ocean, buildings in cream and pastels with terracotta tiles, flowers of pinks and reds..........easy!!  Wrong.

Here it is, in it's frame although not yet fixed in the frame. Two views, one of the embroidery and one with the frame around the edge.  I guess one of the positive things about spending a lot of time sitting at home with a husband who is having chemo for cancer and who often doesn't feel crash hot, is that I am getting a lot of UFOs completed.  This one in particular has been my problem child from ages so it is soooooo good to be seeing the back of it.  I just hope our Sardinian friends, Ennio and Anna, like it.

I tried to cover most aspects of the island from jewel coloured bays and beaches, sparkling white sand, a school of Sardines, Orange coral, rocky areas where tiny lizards bask in the sun, vivid blue Dragonflies (the wings are wired so they are 3D), grape growing areas, Poppies in the fields and ancient stone Nuraghi  which are represented by the circles in the bottom right corner. It is not meant to be an actual picture but just to represent the colours...... The buildings and church were sewn ad-hoc so they are crooked and a bit crazy as they tumble down the hill but that is part of the look that I wanted to achieve. I hope it has worked because there is no way that I am going to change anything at this stage, it has taken too long.

This is my original pieced background - as you can see, a lot changed from this point onwards.  I got rid of the heavy brown bits on the left.  The bottom brown pieces were meant to represent rocks and frankly I have absolutely no idea now what the top pieces were supposed to be - not a clue!!  The houses in the village got removed and replaced by more realistic looking buildings while the church..........that church gave me so many problems and in the end I gave up.  I got half way through it and lost the plot.  So it stayed rolled up in my cupboard for a further four years and every time I looked at it, I shuddered because I'd done too much to throw it away but yet I couldn't see where to go next. I think it was the church that threw me. I used a scrap of material that was used to make a Bishop's cope and the creator gave me a tiny smidgeon as it was very, very, very expensive and the gold threads are actual 22ct gold threads. I wanted to show the opulence of the insides of the churches but it didn't work.  The outsides are what you see and they are plain, cream walls and terracotta tiles.....I was trying to show the inside-out and it stopped me in my tracks for all that time. 

GROW YOUR BLOG

  Today is the day of the Grow Your Blog party organised by Vicki of "2 Bags Full".  I have never joined a blog party before so it will be interesting to see what happens.  My own blog is all about my love of crazy quilts and the methods of embellishing them.  I love to blog about my swaps with other crazy quilters too because we can all learn from one another.  My big "life-time" project is to make a cream on cream crazy quilt and blog about each block as it gets completed.  Altogether my quilt needs 96 blocks (12 long x 8 across) and each one is constructed from fabric that are various shades of cream from almost-white-ivory to deep "choc-milk" colour and all the embellishments and embroidery are also in different shades of cream with the addition of pearls and tiny bits of metallic gold.  In the beginning, I just added gold metal charms but these are all going to be removed and replaced by gold thread embroidery which won't tarnish.......can you imagine the mess of trying to clean tarnished metal charms on cream fabric??? It will be worth my time and effort to fix this problem before I do anymore blocks.  So basically this blog is about all aspects of crazy quilting and the associated crafts of embroidery, silk ribbon embroidery, lacework, tatting, crochet and beading.

2012 and 2013 Christmas cracker swaps

These are the most recent swaps that I have participated in - Christmas cracker swaps with Southern Cross Crazies.  I really enjoyed making these as some of the favourite colour choices can be a real challenge.  It's great fun waiting to see the crackers which come back in return as well.

Here are the 2012 cracker outers.  Unfortunately I cannot find the image for the third but the colour choices were:
Faye - Autumn
Maureen and Natascha - both Victorian Pastels.

And here are the 2013 ones which were only posted off on December 1st 2013.  The favourite colour choices were:
Arlene - Yellows, Blues and Creams (because of the Mulberry colour in the woman's coat and feathered hat, I added that colour as well.
Jenifer - All shades of blue.
Glenda - Greens, Pinks, Mauves, Aqua colours.

 

Message in a Bottle Challenge

The last entry for 2013 was my entry for the "Message in a Bottle" Challenge organised by Thearica Burroughs.  It was shortly after this that DH and I went to England for three months to visit his 91 year old mother and also friends and extended family.  Unfortunately while we were there, DH developed terrible pains which the doctors in UK couldn't control and which turned out to be the spread of his bone cancer into his spine, ribs, hips, left leg and breast bone.

As soon as I got home and went to start blogging again, I couldn't.  I couldn't get into my blog to update or to post new entries.  I can get in to look at it and read it but that is all. So after all this time, I have decided to start again with a brand new blog and move on.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Message in a Bottle crazy quilting challenge 2013

At last I have finished my entry for the Message in a Bottle Challenge organised by Thearica Burrows from Crazy Quilting Supplies. I wanted to make something that would appeal to adults as well as to children and consulted my seven year old grandson Jesse who is learning about ecology in school for advice. The end result is a concertina style book which slides into a presentation box for safe keeping.

Here is the story in Pages.....there is a thin gold dotted line sewn across all the pages that tracks the journey that the bottle undertakes from being thrown into the sea to when it is washed up on the beach.

Page One

The bottle was thrown from a sailing ship by a sailor who was afraid of the approaching storm and the rocks below the sea. I stitched the sailing ship masts and hull first before attaching each white felt sail with tiny blanket stitches and finished off with the rigging. I thought that the two birds were not "flying" birds because they had no wings, so they are seagulls floating on the waves.

Page Two

Before it reaches the surface, the bottle is taken over the top of a brightly coloured coral reef.

Page Three

As it travels the world for one hundred years, the bottle is caught up in swirling currents. I found this block challenging because part of the kit was a piece of turquoise net on which was stitched these three ribbon roundels. I unpicked the roundels from the netting and re-stitched them back again onto the circular swirling current. The kit also included a ball of beige coloured Perle cotton which I used to make the length of tatting on the sandy sea-bed.

Page Four

The bottle is eventually picked up by the waves and carried by a huge surf towards the shore. In the block, I included the netting that was the background of the roundels and also included some of the sequins which were also attached to the netting. I enjoyed creating the waves out of lots of pieces of white lace, some of which were included in the kit and hopefully I have captured the movement of the surf.

Page Five

At last the bottle is thrown up onto a beach.........a beach polluted with dead sea creatures such as the turtle trapped in rope, the duck with a rubber band around its neck, dead fish caught in a piece of wayward net, more bottles, a rubber sandal, a tin can, beaded oil slick, plastic and now, our bottle.  The message spills out, a simple S.O.S., no longer for the sailor whom we assume sailed home safely but for our own Planet Earth. 

Eventually, people arrived who understood the problems facing our environment. They cleaned up the ocean and the beaches and educated  the general public to respect our world - the water as well as the land.

Page Six

The last picture shows the results of this campaign to clean up our environment. There is a pristine clean beach with butterflies fluttering over fresh sea grasses, there are dolphins playing in the sea and clean water lapping on the shoreline, all under a bright, warm sun. Two surfers have propped their surfboards in the sand while they take a break and their boards reflect the message. The most time consuming part of this block was the surfboards as both are cross-stitched onto 27 threads-per-inch canvas. 

I can only hope that I have helped to spread the message.......let's keep our world clean from pollution!!

Posted by Viv and Eddie at 3:47 PM 27 comments

Dollshouse Miniature Crazy Quilt in 1/12th scale

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Dolls House Size Crazy quilt

Today I finally finished the 1:12 scale crazy quilt that I have been working on for the last two or three weeks. The whole quilt measure 8 1/4 inches x 7 inches or 21cm x 17.5cm and there must be at least two hundred tiny patches, I haven't counted them all. Each one is embroidered around all sides just like in a real crazy quilt and the tiny black edging finishes it all off. The edging was one that I bought in England when we were there two years ago but it was sky blue, so taking up my husband's suggestion, I dyed it black and then slip-stitched it around the edges of the lined quilt once it was dry. I am posting this to both my crazy quilting blog and my doll's house miniature blog because it fits them both. The straight edge is the top while the curved bottom edge is designed to go down the end and sides of a four-poster bed.

I used the stitch and flip method of piecing the tiny patches by hand, using a 3 mm or 1/8 inch seam and tiny running stitches.

This is a close-up of the bottom right hand corner showing some of the decorative motifs such as a butterfly, Rose spray and fan.

Coloured Blocks 5 and 6 completed

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Block Six. Serenity Prayer Block

This is block six for my crazy quilt.  This was a nice, peaceful block to stitch and I really enjoyed it.  However, in the flesh the Serenity Prayer motif and beaded edge are fairly straight while squashed under the scanner it shows as crooked and all over the place.  Not to worry, I know that it is straight and that is the main thing........

I am finding that all my hoard of stuff from Flights of Fancy over the years is really coming in useful now, especially the motifs with beading and sequins attached. I get heaps of pleasure digging around in my large container of bits and pieces which I collected over several years.  The littte framed image of Violets under the prayer was a Charity Shop find.  It is cross-stitched on 40 holes to the inch canvas and requires a magnifying glass to even see the beautiful stitching. Obviously someone didn't appreciate the work involved or it wouldn't have been donated to the Op Shop for me to pounce on.....

Friday, October 26, 2012

Block 5. Butterfly and Owl

Here is block five finished.  I couldn't put this one down, it kept saying "put this here, add that there...." until in the end I couldn't put anything else anywhere else.  I like to cover every seam, I hate bare seams although I don't mind something trailing from one patch across a seam to another patch. Anyway as soon as this block is blogged, I am off to start block 6 which is sitting on the dining room table all ready and waiting.

The large Butterfly lace motif has been hand-dyed in mauve and lemon and then beaded with mauve beads.  The Forget-me-nots are tiny blue buttons while the tiny little Owl at the top was a cute brass charm that my husband wanted me to use on the block. 

Four coloured Crazy Quilt blocks completed

Thursday, October 25, 2012

New Crazy Quilt Happening

I have retired from full-time work.........yayyyy, clapping hands.........so at last I can get back to my crazy quilt which I started over five years ago.  I have just finished the first four blocks with about twenty more to go.  I have put my cream-on-cream crazy quilt on the back burner for now because I need to remove all of the gold brass charms and replace them with gold thread embroidery. As the charms tarnish and go dull and dark, there is no way that I can clean them without marking the cream fabrics and laces - I don't know what I was thinking of, putting metal charms on the blocks.

So I am back to the coloured one and I'm really having fun. I have no idea when I start stitching just what I am going to finish up with. It's like the blocks are telling me what they want putting on them next. Here are photos of the first four blocks which may all get sewn together into a very colourful and busy crazy quilt or they may get separated by strips of black velveteen fabric. Definitely NOT black velvet though or the house and my nose will be full of little specks of velvet pile.

Block One. Peacock is hand-dyed and sequins added to his eye and tail. I thought he went well with the Peacock Feather fabric to the right of the bird.

Block Two.  Angel block.

 

Block Three.  Floral Bouquet Block.  The floral embroidery in the centre was recycled from the lid of a trinket box which I did for a magazine article featuring Rajmahal Threads. The embroidery was all worked in a single thread. When the black fabric box got shabby from use, I unpicked the lid and used it on this crazy quilt block.

Block Four.  Fans Block with some gold metal fans which started life as a pair of earrings.