INDEPENDENT NEEDLEWORK NEWS

It doesn’t have to be a bad word, you know — “newbie,” that is. I know most of us don’t like to be considered “newbies” anymore, but a fabulously enabling friend of mine (thanks, as always, Susan of Desertsky Quilting! ) has pointed me to something very special which is only available to people who are “newbies” to crazy quilting (defined in this instance as those who have been crazy quilting less than a year). It’s so special, in fact, I think Susan is more than a tad jealous she isn’t a newbie herself!

Carolyn Cibik, who owns the wonderful shop Evening Star Designs, has recently decided to start an ongoing program for crazy quilting newbies. All the information you need to find out if you qualify and to sign up as a CQ newbie is right here, along with a list of the first three items Carolyn has picked out to discount for you — and they are terrific items indeed! I already have two of them, so although I’m a newbie, too, I can speak with some knowledge, ha ha! Just looking through The Magic of Crazy Quilting by J. Marsha Michler or The Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches by Carole Samples will have any needleworker itching to try out this exceptionally attractive form of needlework for yourself. They are both stunningly gorgeous books — and written by perhaps the two best known authors in the crazy quilting universe, so these are both books you really NEED in your stash if crazy quilting is something you want to do. I’m buying Carolyn Cibik’s CD Book Blocks with Variations in my first newbie order!

Carolyn’s first Newbie sale is in effect through midnight eastern time, tomorrow, Sunday, March 9, 2008 — and don’t forget you have an hour less to shop (or stitch ) this weekend because we must unfortunately set the clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time.

At least as far as crazy quilting goes, I am definitely a newbie. While I’ve been admiring this type of needle artwork for ages for all the lovely ways it allows a stitcher to use those gorgeous sampler stitches we all love to look at (even if, perhaps, we may hate to stitch one or two or them ), and thinking for almost as long that I really must delve into it myself so I can actually use those same gorgeous sampler stitches — many of which I really do enjoy actually stitching myself — I have not yet taken the plunge.

Like so many of my fellow stitchers, though, I have plenty of stash. I’ve been collecting in preparation for crazy quilting for a long time. I’ve got fabric, trims, a pretty good stack of resource books, and all kinds of Internet resources bookmarked. Plus, for years, I’ve been saving all my scraps of fabrics and trims from finishing off my “regular” stitching projects. I have even been caught snatching up the scraps other people leave behind, knowing they’d be of use to me in crazy quilting (not to mention card-making and scrapbooking ).

But only in the last couple of months have I really gotten “serious” about crazy quilting.

For that, I went with my fabric choices for my first two “small” projects (they turned out much larger than I expected) to my mother-in-law, who is a hand quilter (but who usually does her piecing by machine, I believe), and asked her to show me how to piece them together. She did the piecing on her sewing machine for both of them in less than thirty minutes total. She’s also an amazing seamstress — so good she makes wedding dresses for hire. In other words, unlike me, she is certainly not afraid of her sewing machine, although, as I plan to tell you more about soon, I’ve been working on remedying that problem lately, too.

However, I have yet to lay my needle to fabric on either of the crazy quilt “blocks” (they didn’t come out to be squares, so I’m not entirely sure what shape they’ll end up being!) my mother-in-law pieced together for me. I’m still a bit scared to start actually stitching, to be honest. I want my crazy quilt projects to be as pretty as the ones I’ve imagined in my head, but for that, I need to be able to stitch fairly accurately without the guidance of the holes in evenweave, aida, or even linen, or, in other words, without the guidance of any holes at all. Gulp. (I did, at least, make it easy on myself to some degree by leaving curved seams out of my first two crazy quilted projects. Or, I should say, my mother-in-law left curved seams out of my first two crazy quilted projects-to-be. )

Suddenly, the task has become more than a bit daunting for me. So, when I haven’t been sick, or busy with medical appointments, I’ve been scouring the Internet and/or badgering Susan for hints on how to get the stitches to look nice along the seams.

My questions have included some of the following:

• Do I draw my “stitch guides” on first, and if so, with what? Not all of the fabrics I used in these crazy quilts are washable, so I will have to use something that does not need to be washed out if I draw on the fabric — or my stitches and other embellishments will have to completely cover anything I use to write on the fabric.
• If I were using all washable fabrics, and if I were then also planning to use all washable embellishments and threads, and to then wash my finished crazy quilted piece, what else could I use to draw on my “stitch guides”?
• Do I use something, on which I draw the guides for the stitches, on top of (and probably pinned to) the fabric as I work — and then remove that after I’m done stitching? If so, what do I use?
• Do I do all the stitching on all the seams first, and then remove whatever I’ve used to help me get the stitches the way I want them?
• Or do I do this a section at a time, removing whatever I’m using to guide me as I go?
• Etc. Etc. Etc.

I’m very fortunate Susan does not appear to think I’m a complete nuisance already! She has given me some great advice, all of which I plan to try to see which technique(s) I prefer — and I can share her answers later here on INN if she doesn’t comment and do so herself — but what I would really love to see are comments, or better yet, blog posts from experienced crazy quilters on your own blogs telling us how you go about this process. Please explain — and use pictures if you can — to us newbies exactly what you do to get your stitches to come out how you want them to look. Help give us that final instruction to make crazy quilting seem less intimidating. Then, so we newbies can find you, please comment on this article and include a link to your post. (If you aren’t sure how to include the link in your comment, email me the link to your blog post, and I’ll be happy to edit your comment to add it for you. A trackback link in your post to this article on INN would be much appreciated, too. )

By the way, I will write another article very soon reviewing a fantastic resource I found in my search for answers to the above questions, so anyone who is new to crazy quilting or at all interested in it will want to come back to Independent Needlework News very shortly. Even seasoned crazy quilters may well find this resource of use, though you will most likely already know about it.

Okay, now, hurry on over to Evening Star Designs’ Newbie Page and get yourself registered as a crazy quilting newbie! Then you and I can learn this lovely needle art form together!