Modern Crazy Quilts

Laura and I have been getting together every Mother’s Day weekend for years now.  (We’re old college roommates and neither of us have been able to have kids, so the obvious solution to our mutual dread of Mother’s Day was to get together and party.  And our version of party typically means we go buy whatever fabric we want and sew like we’ve never sewn before.)

This year we both came with a project to work on, and we really did make a bit of progress on them.  But while we sewed, we talked.  Somehow we got on the topic of Crazy Quilts.  It seems like all the old quilting techniques have been modernized through the years, but for some reason Crazy Quilts have stayed the same.  (If you’re not familiar with them, click here for a Google image search that shows what they look like.)  They’re still almost always made out of silks and velvets covered in hand embroidery.  Don’t get me wrong- they’re beautiful and the tradition behind them makes them so fun.  (Ladies would make them from scraps of fabric left over after making clothing- which is why such rich fabrics are used.)  We just got caught up in figuring out how to modernize them.  And if you’re like me, you’re all too familiar with that excitement that comes as you create a new project.  Before we knew it, our other projects were cast aside and we were standing in line at the local quilt shop, watching YouTube videos to learn how to actually make a crazy quilt.  (Yes, we did buy the fabric before actually learning how to do it.  It sounds crazy now… but it seemed to make so much sense at the time!  Here’s one that helped.)

With fabric in tow, we returned home with a mission.  Laura only had one more day left in town, so we’d have to quilt like mad.

And quilt like mad we did.  🙂  With a couple good YouTube videos we figured out how to do the whole Crazy Quilting technique, which requires no real measuring or detailed precutting (cue the Hallelujah Chorus here!) and really goes pretty fast.  We sewed our crazy pieces onto paper that we tore off the back after we were finished like a tear-away stabilizer.

Once that part was done, we went into auto-pilot mode.  We were each making a quilt, but instead of only working on our own, we sped things up by each doing the parts we were best at.  One sewed borders as the other cut (on that teeny tiny cutting mat!  I’m almost embarrassed to post it and admit that I cut all my enormous projects on that tiny thing…) I got my embroidery machine going to make a quilt label, which gave Laura the opportunity to sew in my awesome Sewing-Bed contraption.  The day was pretty much a sewing adventure all around.

 

I am still so surprised that by the end of the day we both had a completed quilt- it was awesome!  I love how they turned out and would definitely do the crazy quilting technique again- I loved that it didn’t required hours of measuring and cutting.  Plus, I personally think it could be used to make an adorable I Spy quilt for a little kid.  I think that might just have to go on my quilting To-Do list.