Crazy Quilting

I’ve always wanted to learn how to make a quilt. Every time I see a quilt, I am amazed at the elaborate design and meticulous artwork. It seems like every quilt is made with so much tender loving care.

I plan to start small, making use of old fabric swatches I’ve collected through the years. Once I’ve gotten the hang of it, perhaps I can make a king quilt for my bed and begin to use my crazy quilt supplies to create gifts for my friends and family. While giving expense present is nice, it is always rewarding to bestow something that you actually created.

To my mind, completing a crazy quilt is a bit like playing the childhood game of telephone. In that game, kids sit around in a circle and one person whispers a sentence into the ear of the person on his left. From that point on, one crucial piece of information is changed about the sentence as it’s passed from one child to the next. By the time it gets all the way around the circle, the structure and meaning of the sentence has changed completely.

With a crazy quilt, I start out with some inspiration and a few disparate pieces of fabric. By the time I’ve stitched them together, more ideas have entered my mind and I go off in an entirely different direction. I like to embellish the stitching with pieces of hand dyed silk ribbon, buttons, lace and other eye-catching accoutrements. The best part about it is that you can’t go far wrong. While it’s important to keep some sort of overarching theme in mind, there’s nothing wrong with going off on a creative tangent during the course of your embroidery.