In the month of January The Lost Pines Crazy Quilters worked with "Flavor Stitches". I know that most of you are asking what are flavor stitches??? Flavor stitches by The Lions definition are stitches that can be used with other stitches to build your seams and add interest. These stitches are: Fly Stitches, French Knot, Lazy Daisy and Straight Stitch.
These are the only stitches that are used on the block for this month. The next two pictures are of the example block that I did for the LPCQG.
Using many different combinations of just the Fly Stitch, Straight Stitch, Lazy Daisy and French Knot you can create a very beautiful block. In working on this block I also learned some things. The biggest one is that as an "encruster" I can encrust with nothing but stitches. As you can see from my picture there is nothing but stitches, as a friend of mine says, my fabric can't breath.
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Now here is where you learn what you are to use your composition books and map pencils for. As you can see from my pictures I have a book not a composition book but a journal. I have quite a few of these laying around the house that I use for notes on anything from crafts to designing a Crazy Quilt. I pick up 4 or 5 at a time when I find them for a dollar a book.
I chose to use one of the nicer journals for the making my "Study of Stitches" book. In this book I am taking the one stitch a month for the rest of the year and making notes on how to build my seams. As you can see I have already started with the "Flavor Stitches".
As you can see from the pictures of the pages I mixed the colors to define the different stitches you will use for the seams. Under the map color drawn "seam" you can see that I described the seam for future reference.
In the many books that we purchase there are the author's favorite seams that they use. We might use them and we might not. This is where this book of seams comes in handy. This book is of the seams that YOU use or have used written down for future reference. You might have a seam in it the you use only once but it is a seam that you have used. You never know when you might use it again.
Feel free to explore all combinations of seam treatments. Take notes on them. Enjoy your crazy quilting!
TTFN
The Lion
