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I really liked how the beaded centers turned out on the crazy heart so I used them on the center of the bottom smaller heart too. I tried to match the coloring of the centers as well. The lazy daisy flower swag was made with variegated ribbon and filled with beads for centers. The butterfly was tacked down with beads also. The spider has 6 legs now (i know he's supposed to have 8 but I didn't think there was enough room) if it weren't for Kay Lawrence he still wouldn't have any legs...she came to the rescue with the black embroidery thread!! The web has entrapped a silver dragonfly and now has clear dew crystals on it to add a little glitz. The big empty brown space that was driving me crazy, has been filled with twisted yarn and buttons and beads. Not sure I'm quite finished with it yet though. Still feel like it needs some more embriodery but it's starting to go over the top...more later...
This is the latest picture of the crazy heart. I've used the Elegant Stitches book for the grape vines done in stem stich and lazy daisy for the leaves. The grapes were made from Miyuki fringe beads. The buttons and beads were added as well as the ribbon flower - ribbon is Fabulous Fibers Ribbon Glitz in Bronzite. I also used seed beads for flower center pistils and green glass leaves. The red cat head from Oriental Treasures was added just for fun.I've added all types of beads to the red ribbon and a bone butterfly to the flower fabric. Red lazy daisy with bead centers were sewn along the edge. I've started the spider and he has a head and body but no legs yet...no black floss so he may be legless for awhile!!
Here's a closeup of the finished weeping willow. I used Judith Baker Montano's Elegant Stitches book as a guide. However, I used a chain stitch for the tree trunk and branches instead of satin stitch. The feather stitch was used for the feathery branches in a light and darker shade of green. I took her advice and started with the darker stitches first and then did the lighter green. I really like how it turned out.
Since my mother received the first Crazy Heart that I made for Mother's Day, I wanted one of my own. This time I wanted to create it in the folk art colors that I have come to really like and want to be surrounded by. This needs to be completed in time for our Quilt Show in October so, that gives me 31 days to be done in. No pressure!! I did get on a real roll for the first one so hopefully I will with this one too. For sure I will finish the button hole on the smaller tonight and at least start on the button hole for the larger one.
My husband and boys went camping this past weekend and took my truck with them...I hate that part...I mean taking the truck part....however, the up side is that my husband fills my gas tank and washes my truck for me...woo hoo! Soooo, that being said, I finally got my Intergallactic Bead Show sticker put on the truck (my daughter Brandy and I had gone to the show in Newark, DE back in July)...Well that wasn't the only thing I managed to accomplish either, I machine stitched on 3 of my swap blocks for the Mary Lou 
Weidmand group I'm in...I'm doing puppies with peaches for the state of Georgia...We are also sending postcards from where we are from and to add something in our block to show where we are from...I've been sewing together the peaches a and started stuffing them...yes stuffing...we are to embellish any way we want and I'm incorporating stuffed peaches and noses and embroidering vines and flowers and beads for centers.
I dug out the quilt my great-grandmother, Lydia Lee Hobbs made in 1959. She was almost completely blind and my grandmother, Martha Hobbs Fee, would tell me stories of Lydia piecing the quilt and quilting it by hand, feeling her way across the quilt. The stitches aren't perfect, the rows aren't either, the quilt is done in white and black thread and it is probably the most beautiful quilt I've ever seen. It's the one that made me want to quilt as a kid. Lydia inspired me in that she was so adept that she could make a quilt when not being able to see what she was doing at all. She just knew how to do it. WOW! 
The quilts that both Lydia and Martha made were purely utilitarian, using old clothing for patches and leftover material from when making clothing. It wasn't until I was grown and married that I realized there were fancy crazy quilts, dresden plates, etc. but the utilitarian quilts were the ones that whispered in the back of my mind to one day learn how to quilt. In January 2003, my dear friend Pamela Kervin patiently taught me how to make a design, cut, piece, sandwhich and finally quilt and bind my first 'real' quilt. Since then I have almost ravenously started stash building. Mostly I fell in love with every kind of quilt I saw, it has only been this year that I have started to develope a style of my own and really refine the look I want in my quilting. 
As a side note on Lydia's quilt, the binding was originally a light blue. My mother replaced the binding a while back because it had started to deteriorate. Yes, she machine sewed it which would mortify all purists I know, but in the spirit of my grandmothers, they would have done the 
same today too. Remember, this was a utilitarian quilt and if my great-grandmother could have used a sewing machine she would have to have made the quilt in the first place. The neatest part of this is, when I repair the seams that are pulling apart, add a sleeve and a label, 4 generations of women in my family will have worked on this quilt. Cool, huh?!
Well, I finally took the top I made for Project Linus off the railing and gave it to Gloria to finish (of course she had to ask or it may have hung there another 6 months..lol). It was just too big to try and finish on my machine without my losing my mind. I desperately want a new machine and am seriously thinking of the Janome 6500 since it has come highly recommended.
Well, the pups and I started out, me pulling and cutting down vines that were wrapped around the deck railing and all through the garden on the side of the deck...gracious was it overgrown! Of course Wilbur wanted in on the action too and was weaving himself in and out of the vines. The flower bed when all the vines were yanked out, the mint thinned out and the butterfly weed seeds dispersed throug
hout in hopes that it will spread, looked, as my friend Denise would say, a bit ratty-tatty. Well hopefully we will get a shower soon or I may even turn the sprinklers on to help out. I did find some wild strawberries in there, the 
creeping jenny that looked so pretty down at the Riverwalk that took forever to find, some ferns transplanted from the back, leggy stems from the windflower that have long since bloomed. The violets are propagating very well and I've even 3 crepe myrtle trees that were 'give mes'...you know, the ones that seed themselves (maybe the birds helped with that one). I do know for sure that the squirrels have planted my backyard full of oaks, hickory and those hateful sticker ball trees t
oo which I spend forever trying to rip out by the roots before they get too big.I dug up the cactus (sorry mom) that my mother had given me (I do believe I gave her the original starter piece) and planted it in one of the deck boxes instead. I have let the flower bed it was in overgrow so badly since the cactus was in there...remember that cactus your mom had on the kitchen table or in the window sill that looked sooo fuzzy and cute and you just knew she couldn't be telling the truth when mom said it would 'bite you', well let me tell you...this big cactus that has the gorgeous yellow flowers in spring, is the granddaddy to that hateful thing your momma had in the kitchen. I wouldn't touch it and used the shovel to transport and plant the thing in the box...and yes I jumped out of the way when it looked like it would fall in my direction...I'm not stupid ya know!!! 
It was finally a decent day to be out in the yard...a little sun, not too much heat and a slight breeze...the makings of a fine work day outside in Georgia. It's hard when I think of yard clean-up and weed destruction, I can't help but remember growing up in Cape St. Claire in Maryland. The house we lived in started out as a summer party bungalow and was updated and winterized when my mom and dad bought it. The place was in a waterfront beach community and the yards were full of sand and seashells and bitty rocks and pebbles. It was quite delightful but my mom wanted grass...daddy was content with green stuff so...I grew up appreciating anything that was in the yard and green...so what if our yard 'bloomed' every summer..I was quite fascinated with the pretty little blue flowers, lavender ones, white ones and I think my all time favorite were the ones 
that made my chin turn yellow and said that I liked butter...what fun memories of childhood.ON the other hand, I now live in a much more civilized community with paved streets and sidewalks, street lights that come on at dusk and much smaller yards and all the houses have numbers on the mailboxes and houses and even the curbs out front...my neighbors probably think the Beverly Hillbillys moved in next door (did I mention that my ancestors were Virginia Hillbillys??) and much to their probable dismay I still don't have the heart to kill the pretty flowering grass...Well, onto the garden clean-up...Keep in mind that I am originally from up north in Maryland...I was not familiar with the wild and wide assortment of bugs, critters, and foliage that grows down here in the south. We moved here in 1999 and it took me until last summer (yes 5 whole years) to realize that that intrusive yet pretty little vine that kept trying to overtake my backyard flower garden, draping itself ever so tightly around the jasmine and porch window boxes, not to mention the deck railings and even up the siding and around the windows , was kudzu...yeah, go ahead and laugh I did...okay remember the grass story, kudzu has pretty little white and lavendar flowers that resemble morning glories...and the vines start out as such pretty little heart shaped leaves...who'd have thought it was that great big honkin vine that drapes the highways and interstates covering all the trees, shrubs and plant life and effectively strangling it all to death...it has such cute little flowers!! Well all that being said, I think I will go out tomorrow with that big bottle of round-up and take care of the weeds in the yard!
I really liked how the beaded centers turned out on the crazy heart so I used them on the center of the bottom smaller heart too. I tried to match the coloring of the centers as well. 
