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!
