The Quilted Snail: August 2023

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Call Me Crazy - My Day

Welcome to the "Call Me Crazy" Blog hop.

The theme this month is "Sew something that you wouldn't normally sew or share something you can't believe you sewed. We all know that crazy and scary feeling of wondering what we were thinking when we started or were in the middle of sewing something out of our comfort zone."

Because I do a lot of commissioned work I often get asked to make many different projects. Some of these projects get to be "interesting" for lack of a better word. In 2022 I was asked to make 2 quilts for a girl who had just graduated from high school. She had been on one of the competition level cheerleader teams for 8+ years.

The first quilt was a t-shirt quilt. That one was fairly simple, altho it did have it's moments where it became interesting.

The 2nd quilt, however, was another story altogether. The second one the mom wanted made using her daughters competition outfits. You may not have seen any of these up close, but they are made from a heavy weight 2-way stretch material. Think of swimsuit fabric, but twice as heavy. And they typically are heavily 'stoned' with lots of glued on rhinestones,

Yup, enough of a nightmare to make most people run for the hills when someone asks them to work with it....LOL. Me, well I tend to have an attitude that says "I can figure it out". And then drive myself crazy doing it, lol.

There were two requests for layout - there were 3 complete outfits to be featured, and the tops were to be features. result was I used the front sections of the tops and outfits. to make it lay flat, I ironed interfacing onto the back of the background fabric.

Then just one outfit/top at a time started pinning pieces on and sewing them down. That in itself was an interesting process with the many rhinestones on some of the items.

My customer loved the final outcome, so I'm happy with the project in spite of some of the headaches it gave me along the way.

Don't forget to check out what everyone else has posted today.

Wednesday August 23

MooseStashQuilting Guest Post

Gratitudes:
1. For slowly making progress in getting estate matters wrapped up.

2. For past experience in embroidery, cross-stitch designing and quilting - I'm going to need it as I try to finish off some of the UFO's my Mama left for me to find.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Treasure Hunt and Stitching on UFO's

After my Dad's earlier a few months ago I've been working on clearing out some of the stuff there, well actually a lot of the stuff in the house. I'm finally starting to see some progress after many hundreds of books, lots of clothing, and lots of other things have been donated. Lots of boxes and bags of clothing type fabric have been among the donations as well.

There have been quite a few interesting things found which I'll post about at a later date. But among the first things found was a bunch of UFO's in multiple mediums and in various stages. These mediums include embroidery, needlepoint, crewel and quilting. And much to my chagrin some of those UFO's while stitched I can remember were originally mine....oops.

I've started working on finishing up some of the embroidery pieces my mom left unfinished. Several of these only lack a wee bit to finish the stitching on them. This little doily only needed 2 leaves and a branch stitched. Why she stopped here, who knows, maybe she ran out of thread.

I pulled as close of a match to the green she had used and finished stitching the leaves and branches to match the other end of the doily.

This little bluebird motif was next up to be worked on. This piece too had been mostly stitched but not all. I rummaged in my leftover threads again for a close matches to the original thread.

And here is the finished piece. Not sure what this one will end up being used for. Perhaps a postcard, or perhaps in a little quilt of some sort.

Gratitudes:

1. For a couple of days with temps under 100 degrees thanks to Tropical Storm Hilary

2. For the memories that are there as I'm working through things at the house.

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

ScrapHappy August 2023

Lots of time spent working on clearing things out of what had been my dad's house meant not a huge amount time left for me to actually. I did sneak some in there though.

One of the things I've found in the house are lots and lots of UFO's that my mom had stashed. These UFO's include needlepoint, crewel, embroidery, and cross-stitch pieces. Much to my chagrin, some of the UFO's were ones that I had stitched and the apparently abandoned for whatever reason.....oops....

At any rate, I've started working with some of the UFO's I've found at the house, These two postcards have been completed. Top one has a faux jeweled trim as the water the fish is swimming in. All fabrics used in the cards were scraps, and the leaves were ones that had been scavenged at one point.

Finished 3 more of the scrappy string postcards that I started years ago. Scrap pieces of lace and trims from my stash finished off the fronts of these, and scraps were used for the backs of the cards.

Third piece of needlepoint, finished off into a postcard. "Framed" with a piece of polka-dot grosgrain ribbon.

And I finished this little piece of cross-stitch. This was one of my moms UFO's. And apparently the second on made by the pattern because she had started using leftover bits of thread for it. I had to dig in my leftover bits of thread to finish off a couple of the colors as well.

And for something different, a couple of scrappy UFO's that I found in my mom's stuff this past week - a grandmother's flower garden started at some point by my great-grandmother on my mom's side of the family. Hand-pieced, but not much put together on this one. Am debating about what to do with this one. Might sell because I'd found another one much further along than this one is.

And a tin full of cut squares. No blocks pieced so I have no idea what was in the cutter's mind. I'm not even sure if it was my great-grandmother or my mom. Will likely do something with these at some point in time.

Gratitudes:

1. For all the wonderful things that I'm finding as I work in the house.

2. For the fall being nearer, even if it still hot as blazes here in AZ.

Sunday, August 13, 2023

"Call Me Crazy" Blog hop coming August 21-24, 2023

For this blog hop we were to -

Sew something that you wouldn't normally sew or share something you can't believe you sewed. We all know that crazy and scary feeling of wondering what we were thiking when we started or were in the middle of sewing something out of our comfort zone.

Be sure to check out what everyone has done for the blog hop-