Friday, January 31, 2014

Crazy Quilt Journal Project (CQJP 2014) - January Quilt Block

The Crazy Quilt Journal Project is about promoting the art of crazy quilting and expanding each participant’s individual artistic creativity and technical knowledge. Quilt blocks are any shape and can even be a finished item that meets the size requirement.

The goal is to construct and complete a crazy quilt block each month (January through December) in 2014 that measures at least equivalent to a 6-inch square block. For my quilt squares, I am doing an 11 3/4" square (this includes the seam allowances).

My finished crazy quilt block for January 2014.

As I did for January, I plan on creating the quilt squares from a wide variety of different all-cotton fabrics.

The start of attaching pieces of fabric to one another.

I have quite a bit of fabric on hand, so I'm using only what I have and not purchasing any new fabric.

After all the different pieces were machine-sewn together,
I ironed the fabric so everything would lay flat.

By using what I have in bins in my home office, it will free up some space by the end of the year.

After ironing the fabric, I put down the white 11 3/4" square piece of fabric
to use as a pattern to make all the quilt blocks the same size.

As I'm going through the bins, I'll donate whatever fabric I don't care for any longer or don't plan to use in the next year or so.

When I was done trimming the machine-sewn fabric,
it was close to the same size as the white fabric.
Now it was ready to be embellished.

I'm going to embellish each of the quilt squares with trims, buttons, and other items that can be sewn onto the quilt square.

Another view of the completed quilt block.

Another goal of the Crazy Quilt Journal Project is that the blocks should challenge the participant's individual skills. I'm definitely at the start of crazy quilting. This is my first crazy quilt...and the first block I've done.

There are different types of trims used.
All are attached to the fabric using cotton embroidery floss.
Some of the trim has beads and sequins added to it.

Participants are encouraged to set individual goals so that the work does not get overwhelming, and discouraging. Keeping this in mind, I've set some personal goals in 2014:

=> Create 12 different quilt blocks using Pinterest for inspiration, but doing my own designs.
=> Incorporate at least 10 different embellishments per quilt square.
=> Use a combination of embroidery stitches I learned through Take a Stitch Tuesday in 2012 as well as my own stitches that complement the embellishments.
=> Combine the quilt squares at the end of 2014 to create a functional item (e.g., lap quilt, bed quilt).

I like this trim with the circles since a sequin and bead 
fit perfectly in the center.

I took a look at a pin on Pinterest that I found that I liked. There was a Block of the Month for August  and two different patterns - Pattern 1 and Pattern 2.

The plain blue fabric needed to have some textural elements on it 
as did the polka-dot trim. 

I also looked for examples of stitches that would be good to use with a crazy quilt. One pin led to nothing...just an image of the different stitches. Another pin linked to Crazy Kwilter Too on Flickr. Although I didn't use the examples of stitches for this block, I would like to in the future.

To submit photographs to the challenge, they need to be of high quality and not "reduced" before sending. Participants email photographs for posting on the CQJP2014 Block to cqjpchallenge@yahoo.com .

Participants who complete the challenge will have their finished photographs also added to the permanent CQJP Blog for the year the challenge was completed (e.g., CQJP2014, CQJP2013).

1 comment:

Rita said...

This is going to be really special!! Can hardly wait to see it at the end of the year. :)