Claudia's lovely surface embroidery...

One of the treasures I've been following are the CQJP blocks of Claudia W. in Austria.. They have come to my attention because of the extraordinary surface embroidery that adds such texture and depth to her blocks... Obviously she is doing an sea theme but it's this surface texture that captures the movement of currents in the sea beautifully...

My favorite patches on this block are the two on the left...each treated differently but contribute greatly to the overall efect of the block. Notice the creatures lower left echo the seam treatment upper left...

  Also notice on the 3 patches on the right she has used a simple running stitch to create texture.. The central focal point has another treatment altogether and all patches work in harmony...

Claudia is also doing the TAST stitches so you will find them in all her CQJP blocks.  Along with all the surface work on this block you'll notice she made extravagant use of beads and I love the way she used stitches to create patterns on her sea creature.  The variation of a  blanket stitch on the   upper right seam is echoed in the seam treatment lower left.

She has used a very limited color palette of two complementary colors....blue and orange.

Even though the center patch is delightful, do not miss the cleverly stitched fish upper left... The way she has used stitches to create patterns could be used in many ways...

If you keep a file of great blocks then you should definitely keep these in it... So many times when there is an empty spot on a block, we rush to plop a motif on it... there are a wealth of alternatives here in Claudia's work to add interest to a patch...

Do take the time to visit Claudia's blog and see her other work as well.  And I thank her for giving me permission to use her work here on Block Talk with Gerry.