Woolie Crazy

I suspect a fair number of you have either worked on or at least seen the Wool Crazy quilt project designed by Joann Mullaly, and you may well have seen my earlier posts referring to it. To recap, though, Gran and I will be teaching the quilt at Bearpaws & Hollyhocks this fall in two sessions. We'll be teaching techniques for making the background/base of the quilt and embroidery for the seams during the first class, and then we'll teach the applique and additional decorative embroidery during the second class about two months later. And I've chosen to make a class sample using flannel from the Woolies line as the background, just to show a possible variation to using wool, although I'll most definitely use "real" wool for the applique. So that's what I've been working on lately.

At this point, I have the background fabrics all stitched down onto batting and I'm adding the decorative embroidery to the seams. I've probably gotten about two-thirds of that done. Want to see?

You might be able to see it a little better if you click on it, but I'm not sure how much it will enlarge. Anyway, I brought it with me to work on Saturday when I got together with some of my quilting friends, and I think they all liked the way it looked so far. It's also been kind of fun coming up with different embroidery stitches for the various seams--sometimes I've referred to books and sometimes I've just started in with my needle and perle cotton and made stitches up as I went along--very liberating!

I plan to add a little bit of the applique before I stop, just so any potential students can get an idea of how the quilt will look if they decide to take our class. I think it will take me a few more evenings to finish the embroidered seams and another few to add a little applique, but I think I'll be done with this project--at least as far as I plan to go at this point--within a week or so.

When I was cleaning house today, I went into the Sweat Shop to put some things away and clean a little bit in there, and it felt kind of odd. I realized then that most of the time I've spent sewing lately has been spent on the couch in the living room stitching, and I'm starting to miss the Sweat Shop. I DO have a couple more wool projects to work on for classes, but I also have a Schnibbles-type quilt to make for another class. I think that will be my next project because I sure miss sitting in front of a sewing machine! How about you? Do you have withdrawals if you've been away from a sewing machine for long?