Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Rainbow Crazy Quilt Finished At Last

After bidding a tearful farewell to the third fledgling to desert our fair shores there was nothing to do but submerge ourselves in distracting activities.  Mr Shoestring took to the front fence with a lot of white paint while I went indoors and attacked the rainbow crazy quilt squares.  One problem (for me anyway) with crazy quilting is that you are never quite sure when you are “done” – there are always a few more additions of beads, embroidery and ribbons which could be made.  But if I didn’t get the rainbow crazy quilt put together I wouldn’t be able to press on with all the others I had planned, so it needed to be done.  Plus which when I mentioned to a friend that it was hard to tell when you had enough embellishments on your squares she firmly told me that I definitely had reached that point.


The idea of a rainbow of colour in this crazy quilt was something which occurred to me but I had no example or model I was following so it was a bit of a mystery as to how it would turn out, and whether the desired colour wash effect would in fact eventuate.  When the quilt finally came together after much wrangling I have to admit that I am thrilled with the result, it is every bit as good as I had hoped and I have to stop in the doorway of the gypsy room from time to time and admire the result.  I was less fond of the red and blue coloured rows so I put them at the top of the quilt where pillows might cover a small amount of the quilt, 







while the green/orange/yellow rows were the most appealing to me, so I put them where they would be most visible.  







One thing I learnt was that it is best not to make your squares too large or you will end up cutting off and wasting some of your treasured embroidery and beading, which is what happened when assembling this crazy.  When I made some of the base squares for the quilt I couldn’t remember the exact dimensions I had originally planned, so erred on the side of large rather than small which I will try hard not to do next time.  One  serendipitous thing which happened is that some of the squares line up so that the lines of embroidery also match and run together, which reduces the effect of squares being put together and lends a more unified look to the whole thing.  Now that I have worked with silk for the first crazy quilt (hanging above the bed in the picture) and the rainbow crazy quilt, I don’t know if I will ever be able to go back to working with cottons.  Something about the texture of the silk and the rich lustrous colours is very appealing and for a colour addict like me the possibilities are endless!  Also there is the small matter of all the left overs still begging to be used up, and the fact that kind friends and co-workers have been donating old silk scarves and even pieces of their silk pajamas! 

Here are some of the areas of the quilt I was very pleased with. 












If you are wanting to spread your creative stitchery wings and not have to worry about counting and being exact and precise then crazy quilting could be just the thing for you.  There are lots of smaller projects which would lend themselves very well to crazy quilting, so it doesn’t have to be anything as large (and possibly daunting) as a quilt to begin with.  Jump in and give it a go!