Crazy for Quilts

The National Alliance for the American Quilt is sponsoring a crazy quilt related competition and I have decided to join in on the fun.

The entry deadline is June 1,2009 and the finished size must be 16"x16". Entrants are encouraged to draw inspiration from crazy quilt design, color, fabric, embellishment or any aspect of a crazy quilt. All quilts will be donated to the National Alliance for the American Quilt and will be auctioned on eBay.

So what do I have planned... here are a few of my sketches and ideas.

I know I want to do an all bead embellished quilt and my first thought was to go with a similar design to my Bead Crazy quilt.

Not wanting to just recreate a quilt I already make, I moved on to the idea of using a traditional crazy quilt motif: the fan. And use my embellisher to create the crazy quilt block rather than using the traditional turned edge technique of a pieced crazy quilt. I have done a few post cards using my embellisher and this makes the seams much easier to embellish over with beads. I also like the contrast of using light colors for the base cq and the darker colors for the fans. I have a great scrap bag of silks from Laura Murray that will be perfect to create the block.
I really did not like any of the fans I sketched out so I moved on from that layout idea to basing the block on an antique crazy quilt that is in my family and has a fan and floral motif. I used this design in some of the first crazy quilt blocks I made.

So now with the idea set, time to get started.