I am interested in making a crazy quilt, but I have never done it before.  I'm wondering if this would work...?

My idea is to take the double-sided sticky fabric that you iron on, and iron my random pieces to a base fabric, before stitching around each piece by hand.   I would stitch decoratively.  I then want to piece designs on top of the crazy quilt base - in shapes of people, etc. to tell a story, and I would use the same method (I would do this before stitching, I think.).  The idea is to have a crazy quilt base (probably 3 color tones), with identifiable figures on top.

In other words, there would be a base fabric, and layers on top of the base - as many as 2 layers.  The stitching would go through the base fabric and attach the pieces to it permanently.  I would then add a filler layer, edging and a backing, and quilt the entire thing.

Any reason why this might not work?  What sorts of fabrics are likely to work using this method?

By double sided sticky fabric, do you mean that you will be using fusible webbing to attach the top fabric to your base fabric? It certainly can be done in this way, but the drawback that I see is that when you use fusible, the piece tends to be stiff. There are varying degrees of stiffness, but even the lightest weight fusible adds some stiffness to the fabric.  Secondly since you would be hand stitching, you would actually be going through three layers, two of which would have fusible on them. It is difficult to get a needle to pierce one layer of fusible, let alone two. I'm making a wallhanging right now with some fusible pieces and I have the bloody fingertips to prove my point. lol.

IMO you would be further ahead to foundation piece your fabrics to muslin and then do your embroidery. There are a lot of good crazy quilting web sites that can guide you through the foundation piecing. It's really easy once you get the hang of it.

Wendy

By double sided sticky fabric, do you mean that you will be using fusible webbing to attach the top fabric to your base fabric?

Yes!  I couldn't remember what it was called!

Thanks, Wendy - I will look up foundation piecing!

If I can be of any help, please let me know. I've done a lot of foundation piecing and a little crazy quilting. One of my online quilting groups does a crazy quilt round robin and it's really a lot of fun.

Wendy