Daily Detail: CQJP Block 3

Since I have a number of photos in my blocks, it's been challenging to come up with unique and appropriate ways to attach them to the quilt. I relied on lace and trims initially. Here I've used ricrac couched with a zig-zag chain, then added a fly stitch and laisy daisy on the outer edges. 

I love this photo of my Aunt Mae. She must have been very young here - in her 20's - because her hair turned gray at a very young age. She's quite attractive and was very intelligent. She never married and had a deep sense of duty to her family. 

More uses of the fly stitch

I was browsing the photos on the Flickr TAST group and saw this beautiful use of the fly stitch. Fascinating how such a simple, easy embroidery stitch can be used so many different ways - so simple, and so elegant!

Here's what I'm doing with one of the photos for the first cq block. I'm using the fly stitch to couch some ribbon around one of the photos:

I stitched that crocheted edging by machine and I'm adding ribbon to cover the raw seam and the stitching. I couldn't get the needle through the photo and the two layers of fabric in the cq block.  I have a sore thumb resulting from very dry skin which splits right at the corner of my thumb nail - on my right hand of course! This happens every  so often in spite of using hand cream liberally every time I wash my hands. I handle library books all day and they are very dusty. It just saps all the moisture from my hands, plus I feel I need to wash my hands all the time because handling library books is kind of like handling money. So I wind up with very painful dry skin. It's really difficult to push a needle through several layers of fabric because of this. This is only slightly easier but I like framing the photos this way. Those scalloped edges of the crochet also have lots of possibilities. 

CQJP, TAST, and Fog...

I woke up this morning, looked out side, and saw this:

which really doesn't do the depth of the fog justice. But it sort of relates to my state of mind.

I could not get to sleep (both girls were out) until around 2 am. Dogs woke me at 3 am needing to go out. Woke me again at 4:30 am wanting to be fed. DH woke me at 6:30 am when he came home. finally got back to sleep and woke at 8:30 am. So yes, I was a little foggy when I got up.

Here's what amounts to a very basic fly stitch, the first stitch of TAST 2012, on my CQ block.

Of course I envision much more embellishment in the next few weeks. I've laid out some of the photos I printed on Saturday. Do three seem like too many to add? I also think maybe they need a border, or something around them to give them some definition? And to make it easier to stitch them to the block! 

These pictures are of my mother's oldest sister, Emma. The photo in the upper left hand corner is Emma with her husband Walt. Around 1926 the family - meaning my grandfather, his wife and children, even Emma who was married -- went to Florida where they thought they were going to make their fortune in a big building boom. It didn't work out and they headed back home. By them my grandmother was pregnant with her 8th child - she rode back to Atlanta from Miami while pregnant,  can you imagine?  There was a family joke that the reason my uncle Frank was moody and a "black sheep" was because of that trip - he was born shortly after they returned to Atlanta. Emma would have been about 17 or 18 - she married very young. 

And by the way, some of the work being done by the TAST participants is really amazingL such beautiful stitchery! I need to shape up! What I've done is so lame compared to some of the work over there- it inspires me to challenge myself and push myself farther. 

I have a lot of work to do.