700 and counting

 Here is how I've been spending my sewing time: basting little rectangles of fabric onto little rectangles of card stock. Do you remember the post about the quilt Faithful Circle? For a bit of a refresher, I will need 2,094 of these. Onward!

Hugs and Kisses

. . . is a completed top!

It is on the design wall because I soaked it to remove the glue, plus I thought it would be a good time to block it so it is 'square'.

Whaddya think? Pretty, no?

Wordless Wednesday - Marina

Knitting Mistake

I just returned from a 3.5 day camping trip up in the mountains. I had a wonderful time, thank you for asking. My handwork of choice for this trip was sock knitting. I was trying a new-to-me technique of an afterthought heel where you knit two row of stitches on the sole side of the sock using waste yarn and then keep knitting like it is a tube sock. I didn't think of how the stitches for the toe would need to be moved and just started to knit the toe. Well....

the sock looked like it was knit for a person whose toes were twisted 90 degrees from her heel. Not good. Not good at all. I put the knitting away and once home I had to fix it. First I used dental floss to weave through a row of stitches for the lifeline. Then I removed the stitches from the needles and ripped the sock back to the lifeline. (The lifeline stops the stitches from unraveling any further.) I then picked up the live stitches  moved them around the needles so the toe was where it should be and started to knit the toe again.

Just a bit of a bump in the road, but all fixed now.

Get Out and VOTE on Friday

I've entered a postcard in the Weekly Themed Contest on the Quilting Gallery. Voting starts on Friday. You can vote by clicking the button:

If nothing else, I got the scale correct for the size of the quilt.

Please vote for me.

Is There Enough Thread?

See the spool of thread in the corner? As of this photo, there were still six more groups of three leaves. Will there be enough thread?

Tree of Life

Want to buy this quilt? You can! Click on the photo and it will take you to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (www.AlzQuilts.org) is a national, grassroots charity whose mission is to raise awareness and fund research. The AAQI auctions and sells donated quilts, and sponsors a national touring exhibit of quilts about Alzheimer's. The AAQI has raised more than $552,000 since January 2006.

Materials/techniques.:
• Vintage "Tree of Life" Jacobean wool crewel work on linen
• Polyester felt for batting
• clear nylon thread
• nylon tulle
• 100% cotton slub muslin
• 100% cotton candlewick thread

This piece of needlework was originally done by my Aunt back in the resurgence of crewel work in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Even though the linen is disintegrating it was never thrown away but moved from her sewing room into mine until it found new life in this Alzheimer's Priority Quilt. Alzheimer's disease causes gaps and holes in our memories and minds, eating away at the very fabric of our lives, not unlike the ravages of time upon this piece of linen.

The Tree of Life was a favorite motif of the Jacobean era and also during the resurgence in the last century. The clear nylon thread was used to machine free motion stitch around the motifs to anchor them on the quilt. Other than that, this little 9"x10" Priority Quilt is done totally by hand.