Quilts!

Well, not real quilts--although I have always found them to be quite beautiful.  Especially crazy quilts, with intricate embroidery worked in amongst the different textures and colors.  Well done crazy quilts are a veritable feast for the senses (especially those made with velvet).  I have started many such quilts, but do not seem to have the focus to actually finish one.


So I suppose, instead, I should have titled this entry: Wow!  Quilt-inspired pretties that aren't actually quilts, but are still somewhat similar!  That is a bit verbose, though, so hopefully Quilts! should suffice.


Anyway, first up: my skirt reconstruction.  


Recently, I noticed that one of my absolute favorite skirts was starting to die.  The fabric has become so thin in places that it's just wearing through...  not to mention the numerous stains from, er, lots of love.  So, inspired by crazy quilts, I decided to patch it up.


It all started like this...

And then I started adding other patches.  Some were for aesthetic purposes, others to reinforce particularly weak parts in the fabric.  After a week of occasional stitching (mostly while watching my husband play video games), it turned out like this:

That should have been enough.  A few patches, and I could start wearing my favorite skirt again.  But nooooooo.  While poking around in a fabric store, I found these:

Mwahahahahaha!  Granted, I know two embroidery stitches.  Three, if you count cross-stitch.  But, I decided not to let that deter me.  While on vacation with my husband and my parents, I started using the backstitch to doodle some squiggles on the skirt:

And:

And:

I am still not done.  Honestly, I don't know when I'm going to just leave it well alone.  My last time at the fabric store, I picked up more colors of floss (they were only $0.20!--a beautiful price for anyone on a budget).  I am enjoying it a great deal...  drinking tea and embroidering while watching my husband play StarCraft II or something on the Xbox.


One last picture of the whole process, just because I like it...

So, that was the first quilt-oriented thing I've been working on.  The second is a set of pretties that I just posted on my store.  I made the set awhile ago--before our move in June, actually.  I simply hadn't posted it yet, because I didn't know what to call it.


And then, tonight, while looking at the skirt I've been working on, I had the inspiration I needed: the name Patch-Quilt Queen.  While trying to come up with the story to go with it, I didn't want it to be something where patch-quilt had a bad connotation, almost akin to Cinderella's rags.  Like quilts themselves, I wanted the story to reflect a proud heritage.  The story that I finally decided on, I think, reflects that.


And so, I proudly present the hairsticks:

And the necklace:

Not crazy quilts in and of themselves, but a patchwork of different colors all brought together to make something beautiful....  just like the quilts they are named after.