Pink Birds Crazy Quilt Finish

I've been playing with Contained Crazy Quilts for quite some time. I like to put borders around things, its true. I love putting borders around my scribbles, in my writing, doodling around the edge. I really like this border in bold RED and black.

Pink Birds crazy block is a contained crazy block, I liked the calming influence of this setting the one crazy block inside its dark beige border. Now, for me to put beige anywhere near by work is a rare thing to see.

Beige is not a color to me, I find it all too often in homes these days and can hardly wait to cover it up with some awesome orange or red paint. But this time, for this piece, it just called out for a low key background. Beige and pink give this piece a patient femenine feel as pint sized birds south, settling in like they'd been there all the time!

But I'm loving getting back to making fun feminine clothing, some made from "new from my stash" and some upcycled from other clothing too. This Egyption fishing vessel from some old rubber stamps bought at a thrift store have proven to be fun to print onto my hemp/cotton cloth I love to make clothing from, but it always needs to be dyed first.

This quilt has some new directions for me as well. It all began with play. 

I machine quilted the entire size of the little quilt top in my own swirly fern leaf pattern.

Then it sat patiently for 5 years while I went back and forth between my new homeland and my old homeland.

Its been a block moved here and there in my new sewing room. Finding a home for a while in a drawer and then back into a bin. Do you have sorting of semi-finished projects going on too?

When the Pink Birds arrived and began getting comfortable on this block. I was sitting on a lawn chair with my Spring Salmon rod in its Bar Fishing holder, pounded into the rocky beach of the Skeena River. It was semi cloudy day with varying temperatures. So you see I've been stitching out of doors for decades.

It was a new thing for me to hand embroider overtop of machine quilting. I did find that the sandwiched quilt for hand embroidery a wee bit of a challenge. But then I started thinking "isn't that just called Big Stitch Quilting?"

The thickness was bulky and harder to get my needle through it all.

Pink Birds is one of those Improv quilts where you can see it hung in a variety of settings. 

I am slowly moving through progress on many of my unfinished items. One at a time.
#slowstitching #handmade