You're Crazy! Project Quilting 12.5

 I was so excited when I saw the 5th Project Quilting Challenge on Sunday. The prompt for the week is "You're Crazy" and we are to create our own personal interpretation and be inspired by the "Crazy Quilt".

I LOVE Crazy Quilts. There is something so simple, yet oh so elegant about them. Women made them as show pieces, using their left over "Fancy" scraps of fabric and then probably sat around all winter long by lamp light and embellished them with bright colored thread, beads and baubles.  The fact that they are just random pieces of fabric put together without rules is what really attracts me to them. This is my kind of quilting. 

Taking an excerpt from the article "Crazy Quilts and Mad Women", [...] the crazy quilt trend of the nineteenth century, incorporated motifs from Japanese art and decor, English embroidery, and fairyland. [...] In an era obsessed with female hysteria, it is no surprise that crazy quilts were the order of the day.

Somewhere in my stash of quilting books I have a book about the history of crazy quilts and how to create your own. Of course this week it felt like too much work to dig it out and get some tips, so like the crazy lady I am I just decided to wing it. 

A number of years ago our quilt guild purchased a stash of fabric and then divided it amongst those of us who wanted to "buy into the stash", the lady who had owned the stash made costumes for the theatre and was a quilter. This was (is) the most amazing stash of fabric, in my share of the stash there was a box full of what I like to call "fancy" fabric. It was mostly dress lining fabric, satin and taffeta. It must have been from a specific show, or maybe a wedding, but all the colors are in varies shades of ivory, rose, coral, grey and pinks. I have absolutely no use for that box of fabric, but no one throws fabric away, so I knew I still had it somewhere and I needed it to use for my crazy quilt! The following photo is what the box looked like after I dumped it out on my sewing room floor....just like a crazy! LOL 

I love crazy quilts and HATE the color Rose pink. Which is what I had to work with, that and a little grey. I have absolutely no velvet fabric anywhere, but I did have some wool and also thought it would be a great idea to add some minky fabric to replicate velvet. (it wasn't but I made it work). While digging through my boxes I came across a little piece of embroidery and thought it would be fun to add this to my project to make it feel more authentic. 

My sewing machine has all sorts of different fancy stitches so after I cobbled together my "CRAZY" quilt I used a rose colored thread and a maroon thread to create some fun stitches. I started out doing this before adding batting and a backing and realized it would work better if I used the decorative stitches as my quilting. 

The ring tone on my phone is the Waylon Jennings song "I've Always Been Crazy", so whenever my phone rings it blares out my life's theme..."I've always been crazy, but it's kept me from going insane". So I used the letters feature on my machine and attempted to add that to one of the larger sections of fabric. Of course I have never used this feature before and I really didn't know what I was doing, and probably should have practiced first! I tried to fix my lettering with a sharpie, and you can imagine how that worked out on silk fabric. I went too fast when I was stitching the word CRAZY and it looks more like CRABBY, which my husband would tell you fits better anyway! LOL 

I also dug through my mess and found some lace and rick rack to add to the completed top, and then added buttons to hide the corners that didn't quite match up. This would not win a prize for well executed sewing. After I had it quilted, I decided if I was going to create a train wreck I should probably just keep going, I had a scrap of the mint green minky and found a pillow inners and made the finished quilt into a decorative pillow case. 

So that is my finished project for the week, its not the most amazing project I have ever made, or the most beautiful! My phone keeps picking up oranges and browns instead of the rose and grey. But it could be because it is on a brown couch.  The finished pillow is approx. 10 X 15. 

 I hope someday to have "fancy fabric" in rich colors I actually like and brush up on my embroidery skills, and create a real crazy quilt. Someday!