Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative

A few posts ago I showed you the focal patch I was planning to use for my contribution to Tonya's Priority Hope Challenge. Yesterday I was finally able to take up needle and thread (or sewing machine in this case) and get some work done. Hurray!

In case you hadn't noticed, I don't enjoy not being productive in one way or another. If I'm not working on something, somehow, I am not a happy camper. And when my body or the changing seasons or other factors out of my control interfere with my ability to make things... well, it's not pretty, as evidenced by the last week.

Anywhoo, I got out some additional prints and free-pieced a 3 inch heart that I subsequently turned into a flower head. Two sizes of rick rack became the stem for the flower, and sequin hearts became leaves.


I embellished the centers of the flowers in the focal print with some tee-tiny ribbon yo-yos and added a few button flowers as well. Used up a skein of black embroidery floss quilting the background (which you may or may not be able to see in the picture). I think I may have one more embellishment to put on before I back and bind it.


Nearly all of the other quilts that have been made as part of this challenge have featured Tonya's free-pieced word 'Hope.' What can I say? I just had to do my own thing. I hope someone out there appreciates my folk art style and will bid on and buy the quilt. It does have the bird image Tonya asked for, even if you don't notice it at first. (Although it shows up really well in these pictures!) I'm playing with titles that incorporate the word hope too.

This quilt will be dedicated to my mother-in-law. She loved music and gardening along with a host of other activities. Alzheimer's has taken away nearly everything except her love of music at this point. I'm told she sits in her chair and directs music only she can hear. The irony of her condition is that she and my father-in-law nursed two of their parents through Alzheimer's as well. {sigh}

On a technical note: Sharon of Indigo Threads discovered that there's a bug in Blogger that eliminates your ability to enlarge the pictures once the photo has been moved on the page. Apparently you can move text without affecting the photos, but not the pictures themselves. If that is the case, you guys are probably out of luck here. I tend to upload my photos first because they are the inspiration for my posts. Once I have the words written I rearrange the pictures as seems appropriate. I will, however, try to be more mindful when I have big quilts that you might want to get a closer look at.