New Project

Feeling just a little out of it this morning. Ran into some mothball fumes yesterday afternoon when I unpacked family textiles that had been in storage for years. I have a tiny headache, but I'm very pleased that it's not any worse than it is.

One of the benefits of having the garage cleared out and better organized was being able to finally access that stuff! The mothballs were long gone but you know how that fragrance lingers. {phew!}

My original plan was to combine the various textiles into a family history crazy quilt someday. Now I'm thinking of doing a series of smaller quilts instead of one large quilt. This idea was inspired in part by Robin Atkins' beaded "Decade Dolls," which can be found in her new book, and partly by the journal quilts I've been doing in conjunction with the Bead Journal Project. The family history quilts will be bigger than the journal quilts (which were 8.5" x 11") just because I expect to need more room for what I want to accomplish with each quilt. But a set of smaller quilts will be easier to divide between my three children when the time comes than one large quilt would be!

I'm making a mental note to myself right now to photograph some of the textiles as I find and/or launder them. I have a couple of quilt tops, but I also have things like slips and napkins and a row of buttons still on the original shirt fabric. Those buttons were from a shirt worn by a great uncle or great-great uncle. It's hard to know which since they had the same name :- )

I have begun a new journal/sketchbook in which to keep track of my thoughts and develop the plans for the quilts. Right now I'm making notes about what I've found so far and what remains to be unearthed. (As in, "Where is that piece Aunt Daisy stitched?!") I'm sure there will be surprises along the way. Good surprises I hope!

The whole reason I even got started on this new project is because I'm having to wait for beads to be delivered. My local bead shop didn't have the seed beads I wanted for the background of my May journal quilt. Since I had to order beads online I also ordered some I might be able to use on April's journal quilt. I expect the family history quilts to be something I work on inbetween other projects for some time to come.

The face in this post and the last are pins I made 10 years ago. They're roughly 3" x 4".