A Crazy Quilt Round Robin Ends

It was a delightful experience to get all of my round robin blocks back from the tone on tone crazy quilt. I had a wonderful array of talented stitchers to work on these.
Thanks to Diane, Cathy, Ritva, Rita, and Candji for creating such beautiful memories for me.

Gerry Krueger of astutely says that one of the best things that crazy quilters can do to learn and become better crazy quilters is to do a round robin and I happen to agree. I want to produce my very best work that is going into someone elses hands, and while I am working to make that happen, I am also seeing the best work of others and getting inspired.

Round robins also ensure that you keep a regular stitching schedule to meet the deadlines of sending out a block. The more you crazy quilt, the better you will get.
And if you follow blogs like you will get a lot of ideas on how to improve the design look and feel of what you are doing.

My local crazy quilt group will be doing it's first round robin here. We are starting out with a 10" fan block and will do the seam treatments and then embellish.
I hope everyone will get addicted!

The Future's so bright I wanna wear shades!

Wow...is this a bright CQ block or what!!??

I just completed the last of my tone on tone RR blocks, and the color for this one was yellow. What a challenge to do justice to Diane's beautiful block. These blocks are going to be used for a crazy quilt for her grandson, so she wanted a lot of "bling" and I needed to lay low on laces and SRE which are more girly girl.
My first inclination was to do a koi fish, having a lot of fun with the scales, tail and such. But the nekkid square didn't like that idea. I needed to find something that would move my focal point more to the top, so the beautiful swirly fabric in the middle could be maintained.
What child doesn't like a sunny day? Happy, happy. So I went about creating the sun using Gerry Kruegers felt technique. I covered the circle with translucent yellow sequins and beads and then couched a braid around the outside of the circle. The triangular rays were also done in felt covered by a yellow bead mix.
I added a variety of rays to the edges of the block using different weight, textures, patterns, and colors of thread. The rest of the areas were filled in with lighter and daintier pieces.
This round robin was a great teacher of tone on tone techniques. And now my attention will be focused on creating more ecru tone on tone blocks to match the
ones I got back in the round robin. More on that next time.

Maximizing design through repetition

Gerry Krueger's Block Talk has reinforced the importance of repetition to me. Using repetition as a design tool helped a lot in putting this block together. I began the block by stitching the main Art Deco motif with a single strand of silk and silk ribbons in the middle/top.
Much of the rest of the design on the block repeated the element of the open V shape of the primary motif. The dyed lace motifs had that same type of opening, as did the
Cretan stitches on either side of the main motif. The feather stitch, detached chain stitches and straight stitch seam treatments also had the same general feel. After repeating that "V" element, I went on to repeat the curved element and highlighted the curves in the lace, and added chain stitch curves.The overall piece ended up with a sort of a dreamy quality to it that had lots of contrasts in texture and size, but lots of repetition in shapes. This is the last cream on cream type block I am doing for the tone on tone RR. I have really enjoyed working in this palette, and plan to do more in the future!