Project Quilting 17.4 and SAHRR, Round 5

Hi and welcome 😊After finishing the Cowboy Panel quilt, it was good to start a new small project and make another block for this year's SAHRR. Here is the link to this week's I Quilted This! party.

Project Quilting 17.4 - Another Era

This week's challenge is to explore another era - either through color and fabric choices or by style. After considering a few options, I decided to go play with the Victorians with a small crazy quilt. My crazy quilt is more subtle than some but I used lovely lush fabric like hand-dyed velvet and cotton by artist Elaine Quehl, vintage silk from Japan, upholstery fabric and other shiny scraps 😍.

Victorian era crazy quilt

I used 12 different fabrics for this piece. I started with the blue velvet and the Japanese silk fabric. From there I went through a basket of non-cotton scraps as well as another of hand-dyed scraps. After piecing the fabric, I added a fusible interfacing and used a pillow-case style finishing. I meant to stitch the piece on the outside, just at the edge, but ended up stitching it at a ¼" - a habit that's obviously hard-wired in me 😉.

Crazy Quilt created for Project Quilting 17.4

Once the piece was put together, it was time to do the crazy part, which is the embroidery 😍 I used Sharon Boggon's Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery to figure out what stitches to use. However, since I had less than a week to complete this project, I didn't have the time or the energy to get very fancy. I mostly used my tried and true stitches. The threads used were almost all perle cottons. 

In the photo below, i used a chain stitch - threaded with pink. The one below that, in a rusty colour, is a Chevron stitch - that I threaded in white (mostly to hide my poor chevron stitch). At the bottom is a stepped running stitch - in blue, threaded with a variegated pink and blue thread. Threading a chain or running stitch adds complexity to simple stitches.

Threaded stitches

In the photo below, an alternating buttonhole (or blanket) stitch adds interest. They are joined by small flowers in chain stitch (or lazy daisies).

Alternating blanket stitches with lazy daisies

On the left , the vertical line is a cable chain stitch. Unfortunately it's difficult to see the cable part because it's in the same ivory thread. 

Cable and regular chain stitches 

Finally, there are two types of feather stitches. The first light green one is a knotted feather stitch while the rusty one is a regular feather stitch. 

Feather stitches

SAHRR - Round 5 - Two Colours

Gail of Quilting Gail is hosting this week's round of the Stay At Home Round Robin. We get to choose any block, as long as it's two colours, or two colours and a neutral. Since I had no idea what to choose, I turned to a few books that were close at hand. One was Granny Quilt Decor. I was intrigued by a doll quilt in the book. I have no idea what the name of the block is, but it consisted of half-square triangles and four patch. That fit my idea of simple. I made two blocks. You can see the different layouts below.

2 colours, 2 blocks, layout 1

2 colours, 2 blocks, layout 2

 Here are my SAHRR blocks so far.

SAHRR so far - centre blocks and rounds 1 to 5

What I learned

• When I play with scraps it seems that I'm too engrossed to take process pictures.
• I should have used more contrasting perle cotton colours for my stitches. I sometimes forget that not everything needs to or should blend in.
• Although my piece is finished, I reserve the right to keep adding stitching to it 😊The embroidery stitching doesn't all have to be at the seams, as shown by the lazy daisies.
• As I mentioned, I chose the block for Round 5 based on a doll quilt in the book. Unfortunately the quilt layout is on point - so unless I put my blocks on point- it doesn't look like the picture. Maybe I'll figure out how to put them on point when I incorporate them in the quilt.
• Do you know if you can put a couple of blocks on point while the other blocks in the quilt are not on point? I know that I would have to add fabric to the blocks to make them on point, but could that look good?

Related links

• Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery by Sharon Boggon
• Pintangle by Sharon Boggon
• YouTube with Sharon Boggon

SAHRR so far

• SAHRR Round 4 and I Quilted This! February 11, 2026
• Project Quilting & SAHRR Round 3, February 07, 2026
• A Quilter's Cove QAL Link-up and SAHRR, January 31, 2026
• SAHRR Round 1 - hour-glass block, January 26, 2026
• Starting Things and I Quilted This!, January 15, 2026

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, particularly Project Quilting 17.4 and SAHRR Round 5, hosted by Gail. Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts, Slow Sunday Stitching, Sew & Tell, Monday Musings, 

Note: Here is the link to this week's I Quilted This! linking party.