It's about time . . .

As with a lot of people, one of the best parts of my day is to read posts from Bonnie Hunter's blog or in recent weeks, to watch her on Quilt Cam! (Her blog is at quiltville.blogspot.com.) This month is National Sewing Month and to mark it she asked if people were interested in doing hand sewing.  She got a great response.  So the quiltalong is called Simply Needle and Thread.  I thought about that.  I don't do a lot of hand sewing.

Then I remembered the oldest UFO in my collection of UFOs.  Some might call it another name, but since it's not done, it's a UFO in my book.  It is the first quilt I ever worked on.  It is from a kit I ordered from a popular stitchery catalog from the 1970's.  The fabric came pre-cut!  Woohoo!  I machine pieced it.  And I was intimidated about the prospect of quilting it.  One of my neighbor friends had a mother who owned a quilt shop in the area.  Dorothy consulted her mom and got back to me with the concept of quilting the blocks before they were put together into the quilt.

There are 25 blocks in this quilt.  It took many many years but they all got pieced.  And there are now eleven blocks hand quilted.  But I hadn't touched it or looked at it in years, perhaps decades.  So tonight I dug it out of the closet.  And the frame.  And somewhere I believe there is a little covered basket with hand quilting tools inside.  But I haven't located it.  I opened up the cardboard box and took out the blocks and backing squares.  And the batting that's been cut so far.  One of the finished blocks provided a small meal for a mouse.  But I think that'll be salvageable.

Damage by mouse.

I brought one of the blocks and the frame and thread, needle and snips downstairs to quilt on tonight.  Then I discovered that the frame is missing a wing nut.  So it's useless right now.  My sewing room defines CHAOS!  And I don't know if the wing nut disappeared this evening or twenty years ago!  Tomorrow I will make it to a hardware store with pieces of the from the frame in hand to get a replacement wing nut.

I really appreciate the encouragement that I've gotten from Bonnie.  She is such a dynamo.  Now if I only had her energy! And I am not giving up on this quilt either!  

If you are interested in seeing her blog about this event go here.