What's In A Quilt - 1

I recently finished my crazy quilt project Crazy for Crazy, and now want to write its story.

Ever since I joined TAST (Take A Stitch Tuesday - an online free embroidery stitch adventure) and got to know the extraordinary Sharon Boggon I have admired her beautiful embroidery and gorgeous crazy quilts. 

So when Sharon's book 

was published I jumped to the challenge of making a crazy quilt of my own. After all I had have LOTS of remnants of 'fancy' fabric, the perfect choice for crazy quilts, and a good stock of ribbons, braids, buttons, beads and whatnots.

You learn by your mistakes, and too late I found out I had made a grand one! 

Inspired by all those who make hexagon quilts, I thought that would be a nice shape for the blocks. 

Alas, in my ignorance I drafted an eight-sided template, so the blocks are all octagonal! 

The problem of joining octagonal blocks together was discovered, and dealt with, later. Luckily, there was a good solution, but I'll discuss that another time.

The first naked block looked like this, stitched together.

The piece of silk in the middle is from a tie of my nephew's, there is also upholstery fabric, silk from a pall I made for Nacka Church in Sweden 2008, 

The lacy braid was bought at Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival one year.

Below is the finished block.

I stitched on top of the pattern of the silk tie, 

added a heart of felt, 

there is a cluster of pink beads, 

the five pink Turk's Head (knots) that I bought in a shop in Tokyo brought back memories of an outing with my friend Julie,

I love the Thorn Stitch and floral sequins,

and the plain button with Woven Picots.

Many people helped me make this block, one way or another. I'd like to thank: Sharon, Masahito, Ms Iwama, Nacka Kyrka, Michan, Julie, Jacquie, my grandmother, Sue and Sylvia, and all readers who kindly commented and encouraged me during the four weeks it took to make this block.  

January 31st - February 28th 2018.