Encrusted Crazy Quilting Week 1

After finishing my last project with the 3Sisters Art Cloth Dolls I decided to take another plunge into "needlework unknown".

I've always been a lover of Crazy Quilts and decided to take a class with Sharon b from Pintangle. as she was offering the class Encrusted Crazy Quilting. Yaaah!

Here is an excerpt about the class:

Encrusted Crazy Quilting offers students the opportunity to learn how to piece, develop and heavily hand embellish a crazy quilt block with hand embroidery and beading. Along the way we explore different embellishing techniques while solving design, composition and color issues.

Believe me, this class is more involved, like a college course verse on-line embroidery class. So glad I'm doing this and have the opportunity to do so.

Week 1
After reading and digesting this weeks material, it was now time to prepare the muslin foundation block and pull fabrics for the making of the block.

A colorway was the first concern, then the motif I would use in the center of the main block. As I have only been quilting with good quitters cotton, I didn't have any of the fancy fabrics and such. I decided on some pretty batik fabric and choose my colorway. Now I needed a motif for the center block and decided to use the pretty butterfly that had been waiting patiently in my stash box.

The center block is black moire with this pretty lace that I infused with MistyFuse. I choose the lace because it reminds me of embroidered lay stitches. I applied the cut lace with MistyFuse to hold it flat and prevent fraying all the while still leaving a soft hand to the fabric.

Now it was time to start adding patches to the block. We used the sew-n-flip technique much like paper piecing. I still get so turned around :)

I've made so many quilts with the paper piecing before, even a king sized quilt, why am I so confused? Could it be because I was trying to hard and was using the "old rules" - had to laugh at myself!

Actually I was ending up with to many long seams and was still thinking quilt piecing instead of crazy patchwork. I backed up, took everything out and started over. Now I had a better game plan and things were falling into place like they should!