Silent Sunday

Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece By Piece Auction

Nevilyn - Linda J. Huff

Confusion - Elsie Campbell

As you know, the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative auctions small quilts during the first 10 days of each month, but the August online quilt auction is going to be extra special! Beginning Monday, August 1st the AAQI will be auctioning off twenty quilts from the first traveling exhibit, "Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece." The selection includes quilts by Diane Gaudynski, Sue Nickels, Mary Stori, Marsha McCloskey, Nancy Brenan Daniel, Melody Crust, Elsie Campbell, Debbie Bowles and others.  This is an amazing chance to purchase a quilt made by internationally known quilters who rarely sell their work and help fund Alzheimer's research at the same time.  It's a win win situation for everyone, but only if you bid!

For more details please visit: www.alzquilts.org

Therapy

It's been a horrible week on the Alzheimer's front here. My mother-in-law's nursing home has decided that her nighttime wandering has become a problem and we need to "do something with her".  I can't even express how frustrated I am with her current nursing home and their lack of understanding, compassion and knowledge towards dementia and Alzheimer's patients!  As you all know, quilting is my therapy and what better therapy for a bad Alzheimer's week than making Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts?  I dumped out a box of batik strips and just started sewing.  I have three tops completed and lots more strips to go...I just hope that things get better before I run out of strips!

The Forgetting

Silent Sunday

Selvage Coins

Another wall hanging is finally off the design wall and completely finished!  I started this quilt in May 2010.  Yes, that's 2010! This 19"x15" selvage coins quilt has been pinned to my little design wall all that time waiting to be finished.  Shameful, isn't it?  I love everything about this little quilt.  I wonder what took me so long to finish it?

Too Good To Be True

I was wandering through one of our local thrift shops the other day and stuck back in a dark corner I noticed this Rowenta iron...for only $5.00!  I grabbed it up, handed the clerk a five dollar bill and ran for my car like a thief in the night!  I half expected the clerk to chase after me yelling that there had been a mistake...this deal was too good to be true!  However, once I got home and plugged the iron in, I realized that it was too good to be true...the iron only heated if the cord was held "just right".  Darn!  But wait, I'm married to a pretty handy guy...I wonder if he could fix an iron?  As hubby is unscrewing the base of my treasure he is telling me that he's never taken apart an iron before and I'm slowly losing hope that my "new" iron will ever press fabric again, but the news was good...simply a broken wire in the cord!  He shortened the cord a bit, wired it back together, screwed the base back on and success!  It works just like a brand new $100 iron!

Raffle Quilt

A few of my quilty friends and I have spent our last few chairty quilting days working on this raffle quilt for the Northern Tier Children's Home.  We used flannel scraps that were donated to our group and as you can see by the photo of the back...it took nearly every scrap to finish this double sized quilt!  I think it turned out beautifully though and I hope that this cozy quilt will bring NTCH a lot of money!

My quilty friend, Anya, gets credit for the quilting on this quilt and she also gets photography credits because someone forgot to bring her camera with her to charity quilting!

Silent Sunday

Quilty Friends And Vintage Sheets

One of the best parts about blogging is the quilty friends that I have made along the way.  This week I was fortunate enough to meet one of my quilty blogging friends in person!  Marlene from Under The Rose lives in Kansas, a far piece from Pennsylvania, but when we realized that her mother lived just a little over an hour from my home we decided that we would have to meet during one of her visits and this week it worked out that we could do just that!  Marlene, her mother and I had a lovely afternoon shopping at Needles Quilt Shop, lunching at the famous Wellsboro Diner and chatting about just about every topic imaginable!  We found that we have much more than just quilting in common, but one thing that we both love is vintage sheets, so we took the opportunity to swap a few fat quarters.  I think my next project may have to be a quilt made with vintage sheets from my quilty friends!

Watercolor Fabric

The grandgirls and I tried a little fabric dyeing experiment last week.  We mixed a bit of regular fabric paint into a cup of water and then painted it onto wet fabric with sponge brushes.  As you can see, we ended up with some very pretty pink and purple pastel fabrics!

Bear Pause

I had a few requests to elaborate on yesterday's Silent Sunday post, so as long as I didn't do much stitching over the weekend, I thought now would be a good time to explain the picture and show a new bear photo too.  Our favorite summer pastime is riding on the back roads of Pennsylvania and upstate New York in our Jeep.  We often see various kinds of wildlife while on these road trips and it's always a highlight for me when we see a bear.  Bears usually disappear into the brush before I can get my hand on the camera, but I've been lucky this summer and have been able to get a few photos.  On occasion, a black bear will wander through our yard or visit our bird feeders, but these were all seen on our travels.  The two bears in yesterday's photo were seen near Cedar Run, PA on July 4th.  We saw the bear in the above photo along Rt. 6 just outside of Galeton, PA one evening last week.  Don't worry, I photographed these bears from the safety of our canvas topped Jeep and I don't chase after them into the woods, so no worries about me being mauled by a camera shy black bear!

Silent Sunday

Confusion Acknowledged

I'm not quite sure what happened with July's Priority: Alzheimer's donation quilt.  One thing led to another and it finished quite differently than what I had originally planned.  It's more of a confused mess of color than the pretty little quilt that I originally envisioned. At one point during its construction I was so unhappy with it that I was going to throw it away.  It was then that it occurred to me that it was the perfect Priority: Alzheimer's quilt.  We don't cast aside our loved ones just because of an Alzheimer's diagnosis...we acknowledge the confusion and forge ahead the best we can.  Which is exactly what I did with this quilt.

Finished!

A while ago I hung a 4'x4' design wall above my sewing table.  At the time, my plan was to put a project that needed to be finished on that wall, so it would be in plain view and not forgotten.  That plan worked for a few projects and then I made a couple little wall hangings and those tops looked so pretty hanging over my sewing machine that I just left them there...unfinished!  This weekend I decided that it was time to finish some of those projects.  First on the list was this 17"x22" tumbler wall hanging that I started last November.  It does feel good to finally finish this small quilt, but now there's a big empty spot on my design wall!

Independence Day

Silent Sunday

And The Winner Is...

And the winner of the Beam N Read LED6 Hands Free Light  is...

#31
Kathy MacKie said...
Yes, this would light up my life and my needlework project. I am doing a cross stitch project right now by Lizzie Kate.

Congratulations, Kathy! 

Thanks to everyone who visited Hanging On by a Needle and Thread and took the time to comment during the Beam N Read Blog Hop!  I truly enjoyed reading about each of your hand projects!  If you didn't win and had your heart set on having a Beam N Read Light of your very own, you can purchase one from I Have A Notion at a great low price!