dar627742

MANY yrs ago idid a lot of crewel ebbroidery & did nothng w/it.they turned out beautiflly[if i do say so myself!]now that i'm quilting,i'd like to use themas a center medallion.any suggestions on what to put around them,don't want anything larger than a wall hanging or throw.wish i knew how to send pics duh i'mdoing good reading this board & takes 10just to type this !!!any help,IF anyone can even figure out what i'mtalking about!! thanx,dar

LoisN

Depending on the size of the embroidery, you might just be able to use a coordinating fabric for a border or two.

sewred

You might be able to put doilies around them and sew them on plain blocks. Or you could just put a coordinating solid of the major color in your embroidery design, around in squares, diamonds, or prairie points.
I haven't done any crewel embroidery but am really getting into reading about it and all the other types so i can learn to do them.

CAROLJ

I agree. I would make the border next to the embroidery thin and the outer border wider. Think of a painting and how it is framed.

amma

How big are these crewel pieces? I love the idea of incorporating them into a quilt :D:D:D

The only concern I have in doing this is the need to do some quilting in the crewel area.
All batting has it's quilting requirements on the bag. If you don't quilt it, that area could end up sagging or the batting shifting in other ways...
This could happen whether it is hung, layed over a chair, or used as a lap quilt.

lab fairy

My only concern would be in the materials itself. The crewel yarn was is very thin and shreds fairly easily compared to embroidery thread. I have many crewel wall hangings my mother did but I'm not sure I'd put them into a quilt unless I were going to hang it on a wall.

dar627742

thanks for your ideas!they areall diffent sizes so will probablyjustdo wall hangings,w/ a couple of borders.i'm hoping that echo quilting will work,thanx again.you're all great!

lorli

You could maybe use it as a "best" quilt - on the guest room bed that nobody uses regularly, and then take it off the bed when the guests need to sleep!

If it is small, I can imagine it would make a lovely central medallion with coordinating fabrics around it like the old medallion quilts.

You could quilt very delicately in the largest spaces between the embroidery. Even do little tacks in the places with a lot of embroidery. I am going to do the same thing if I ever finish the wool applique top that I have been working on for 2 years. It has quite a bit of embroidery too.

I remember doing Crewel embroidery years and years ago, when I was in jr high school, in the girl scouts. It was really fun and I love how it looks. I have a large framed Crewel embroidery picture on my wall that my mother made. Do people still do a lot of Crewel?

ghostrider

I, too, did a lot of crewel, as did my mother. It's not as delicate as one might think. In colonial times it was used to decorate footstools, chair pads, clothing, bed linens and all sorts of 'functional' items. I have several pieces on footstools, pillows, and chair pads that are holding up just fine. Many were done in the 70's. Today I use crewel yarns for embroidery on crazy quilts and art quilts all the time.

Warm and Natural batting can be quilted as far apart as 8 inches and is perfect for wall pieces. And you can always fuse the top to the batting if you want to quilt further apart than that. Personally, I wouldn't use your pieces for anything that will get frequent machine washing, but such pieces can be gently hand washed with no real problems at all.

I like the idea of the embroidery as a central focus with borders of different widths around it. You could also add an open embroidery stitch, like a feather stitch, on the seam lines of the borders, and it would unite the outer portions to the center.

renee765

Somewhere in the back empty spaces of my mind, I remember reading something about somebody using a layer of gauzy fabric that you can see through (it's so far back in my mind that I can't even think of the type of fabric) over a hand-worked piece to both protect it and give it a dreamy feeling. Or maybe I dreamed it.