Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

Here is the tulip applique that I started about a year and a half ago as my first attempt at hand applique. I was inspired by the Tulip Time quilt show both to try hand applique and to make something to enter in the show the following year. Of course, that year has come and gone. I finished the tulips pretty quickly, but it took me a while to get around to putting the squares together with the borders and setting triangles. Then, about a month ago, I finally put the layers together and got it ready for hand quilting. I haven’t done much hand quilting for a while, due to the 5 and almost 7 year old time constraints in my life. But it’s been fun to get back to it, on a manageable scale. I’m outline quilting the tulips, which you may be able to see faintly here:

Then, the plan is to do a tulip pattern to fill the setting squares, which is a little more visible here:

This may take a while, so it may not make this year’s quilt show, but there’s always 2010!

Here’s Andrew’s pillowcase along with a picture of the happy owner. He chose one of the fabrics Helene sent me for Christmas. It was a little smaller than the pillowcase pattern called for, so I made the red cuff part bigger. He’s very pleased with it!

My current crackpot project is making pillowcases for Nicholas and Andrew. Nicholas picked out this flannel fabric himself. This was my first pillowcase, and I found it to be quite easy! It really took only about 30 minutes, just as the directions from Field’s promised. There was some leftover fabric, so Blanket Bear got his own matching pillow. Here are the happy pillow owners:

Now I’m working on Andrew’s pillowcase. I’ll post pictures when it’s done!

It is time to reveal some of the Christmas secrets. Here are some very cute pot holders Nancy made for all of us.

Mine are blue and Rebecca’s are red. I don’t know what other colors were used. Perhaps Nancy will post about her process of combining two sets of instructions.

Here are some thread catchers I made for the other crackpots. From the side:

From the top:

The thread catchers can sit on your sewing machine table, and you can put all the snips and ends of thread in them to save for another occasion (or to keep them out of the vacuum cleaner). Or you can fill them with chocolate. They are made from some of the hand painted fabric I made during the summer. Aha! At last an answer to the question about the fabric, “What is it for?”

You can read more about my fabric painting adventures here.

I found the pattern here. Thanks, Leanne!