I completed my last creation the last of November of 2020, but didn't get pictures posted as then the Christmas season took over my life as it always does, and so here it is, my original, Aboriginal Crazy Quilt made for my youngest daughter. She picked the material and my eldest daughter and I worked to machine sew the twenty five scrap blocks together using pieces with machine embroidery and well as pieces with appliqued designs. I started with my daughter's favorite animals including an elephant, and then onto an appliqued cat.
I have no idea about the elephant, as she had no pet elephant ever, unless it was possibly the elephants in the room that were too carefully avoided during her youth? But one animal begot another and I worked to master my Husqvarna Embroidery machine, the one that is old enough to need designs to be transferred to floppy disc that then are used in my machine. I also learned that "bird nesting" under the sewing machine foot plate is fixed by putting a loop of netting over the embroidery thread spool to keep it from feeding thread too fast causing such issues. An easy enough fix and works well. I think this excellent machine had flaws from the beginning but with an adjustment or two, works incredibly well.
We worked in pieces that I had pre-embroidered and then I went on to get ideas for applique designs that matched my daughter and her boyfriend's interests and played with those designs as well. Years ago we used to get special braiding to sew on the seams of our alpaca coat liners that became our furry outside coats dressed up with such trim, but not so accessible at sewing stores any more. I found many on line at reasonable prices and ordered wild braidings to again embellish and add to the machine embroidered seams of the piecework. The final embellishment was to add a hand-feather stitch in black around each block of patchwork and then around the outside edge of the quilt blocks using black pearl cotton. Although this was to be a "fast" finished quilt, with all the embellishment, it took me most of a year and then some. All of us were pleased with the results. Mind you when we started, we could not even imagine how a bunch of mismatched fabrics would come together. A priest friend wrote back after seeing pictures of it "that perhaps it needed a bit more color!!" His comment made me laugh! Color was hallmark of this bright quilt and its personalized embroideries and appliques were a source of much delight in making it. My daughter wants everyone to know that as usual, her mother and designer did not follow her advice, and yet she is still pleased with the results!
Some of the animals, I decided were symbols of various people in her life, though my husband did not agree with us depicted as a pair of slow turtles and seeing as how this was created in the midst of a separation between the two of us after forty years of marriage, I decided that perhaps my husband might well be symbolized as the chimpanzee which was embroidered from a machine pattern that gave great detail to his hind end, something that I didn't do in the colors it specified!! Humor prevails and was added into this quilt as well, though we never imagined that orange would be such a good contrasting color on the border, but black embroidery on black fabric would never work!! Truly this quilt had a mind of its own!!
Many pictures were taken so the viewer gets some close up visions of the detail that went into this quilt! I am glad that it is finished, and on the back are the best of dedications both embroidered and photographed of my daughter, her boyfriend and their cat, Sprockie and around a piece of patchwork my oldest daughter designed and sewed. My daughter is pleased with it, as is her boyfriend. My cat, Addie Boy was pleased with it as well, as he tried to roll on it and leave his gray fur everywhere! Likely Sprockie will no doubt do the same to leave his mark! I am on to new projects this year, but won't say much about those until they are partially executed and I am locked into finishing them!! Enjoy viewing this Original, Aboriginal Crazy Quilt!
