Pink & Green Crazy Quilt Block

I've returned to the pink and green CQ block that I began embellishing during Sharon's encrusted crazy quilting class earlier this year. It's always interesting to see a block develop. I can nudge it in one direction or another, but each one seems to take on a life of its own.This one has strong angular lines. I may be able to soften them up a bit with further seam embellishment. We'll see what happens.

Here are a couple of details still in progress:

The first shows last week's TAST stitch, Zig Zag Spanish Knotted stitch. It took a while to get into the rhythm of this stitch. I later realized that I left out a step, but it isn't terribly obvious. I'll get it right next time. I used Caron Wildflowers thread for this stitch and couched down some fluffy knitting fibers with it. Along one side, I've added cast on stitches. I've used cast on stitches before and never managed to make them neat. The light bulb finally went off as I was doing the last stitch. By passing the thread through the fabric on the other side of the starting point, the stitch is anchored all neat and tidy. I probably won't rip these out and redo them, but now I know the trick for next time.

This week's TAST includes variants of the Pekinese stitch. Here, I've done two rows of double Pekinese stitch with different lengths of back stitch. I plan to lace the rows also, but haven't chosen a thread yet. Look for that in the next update. I'm not sure I like how much space the bottom row takes out of the brocade patch. I'll be keeping an eye on that space more as this block develops. I'm starting to see fine golden spider webs around the edges of this patch, open in the center.