Basic Crazy Quilt - An Online Workshop

This post is dedicated to the basic crazy quilt; a free online workshop I took early in August with Kathy Shaw. Please Google her if you are interested in doing her workshop. I don't know if any of you noticed or read that Blogger now limits third party URLs on your post. It will affect all sorts of add-ons on your blog. I lost many of my sidebar links because I was trying to do the right thing by linking people and places I visit. 

Anyway back to my CQ. I love CQ and have been making bits and pieces for years. I've even taught classes back when I lived in the Emirates. I thought I would take a workshop to get me back to it again. Not knowing what I got myself into when I signed up, it was more involved and not as crazy as I thought it would be, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned heaps more than I already knew about CQ. Kathy Shaw is an excellent teacher. She points you in the right direction and you learn by the end of it.

Our first task was to choose fabric and supplies. You know I didn't need to buy anything new for this course. We were supposed to use light colour fabrics for our blocks, but I already had lots of hand-dyed fabric in yellow that I wanted to use, so I did. 

Please read the captions on each photo for more details. 

Fabric, embroidery threads and hoop. 

Pieces cut from provided patterns.

Beads, sequence and charms for embellishment.

The block base  is sewn together ready for
the embellishment.

Layers of embroideries started in on the seams.

Some beads and French knots are going on next.

Most of seams are now covered with embroidery.

Close up of the French knot flowers.
I did them in multi colours.

All seams are now covered. The stem is for
silk ribbon embroidery.

Silk ribbon embroidery Irises.

Silk ribbon spider roses.

And here is the finished block. I was told
to put a couple more motifs on the top left
and bottom left corners. I think
I will before taking it off the hoop.

There is also a private workshop blog that we post our step-by-step tasks as we were doing them. Kathy gave us her feedback each step of the way. We also received workshop instructions by email on all different embellishment as the class progressed. 

I get totally inspired by the workshop. I think I'm ready to embark on a CQ of my dreams, the Victorian CQ in black and jewels colour using fabric I have been collecting for years. So watch this space everyone! Hope you enjoy and get inspired to start your own CQ. 

Until next time

Nat