I am hosting another art quiltie swap for January!! You can check out these links for November & December. I have always loved the look of crazy quilts because of their randomness and their beautiful embroidery so I decided to go for it and made my January quiltie using that technique. I started with my back (on the right) so I could practice and start again if it didn't work out.
I started with a small dark piece and sewed a light one to it. Pressed them open and trimmed evenly the edge perpendicular to the seam and sewed another piece on that side. Repeated until I had a piece large enough to trim to 5" x 5". I was pretty happy with it so I chose the fabrics for my front and repeated the same procedure to create another crazy quilted square for the front of my art quiltie. I decided to machine stitch the outside edge so I put them right sides together and stitched almost all the way around leaving one side open so I could turn it over. Once I had my right sides out, I cut a 4" x 4" of batting, inserted it between the two layers and hand stitched the opening. Once it was pressed, I ran a line of stitching all the way around to properly anchor the batting to both sides.
Then, I started hand stitching. I had to download some stitching patterns off the internet to expand my repertoire of options for embroidery stitches. Once again, I started with the back, stitching in a variety of colourful embroidery floss over all the seams and in some cases adding beads as I went. I added a few flower sequins as well in a couple of the areas. It was fun to try new stitches and some didn't turn out quite like I thought they would but still looked good so I left them in place. Once I had finished the back, I started on the front. Again, I added stitching to all the seams and a variety of other stitching in the open areas. I added beads here and there as well!! I wanted to add at least one 3D embellishment so I went digging into my stash to see what I could find that would work. Quite happy with this little metal tag with "dream big.." on it. I stitched it on with embroidery floss. I am very happy with how it turned out though having added beads to both sides meant it required additional postage to get to my swap partner. No problem, it is still a reasonable cost for participating in international swaps. I added my credits using "iron on fabric label" by simply writing on the fabric label with a fine tip Sharpie and sponging on a bit of ink to tone it down before I ironed it onto the back of my quiltie. Details of the swap I added to a tag which I pinned on.
Therese