Today is the feast day of St. Ann, the patron saint of seamstresses.
For the past few weeks, I've been sharing some postcards featuring vintage sewing machines and the women who are inspired by them <g>. The common theme of the cards is the celebration of St. Ann.
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| Vive Ste Anne! |
I thought it would be fun to host a celebration of sewing in honor of St. Ann's feast day. Please join me in sharing a sewing project as part of the celebration. Use the InLinkz gadget below to link up a celebratory blog post observing St. Ann's feast day. Share any current sewing or quilting project: the idea is to celebrate sewing!
For my St. Ann project I wanted to share something that tied into my interest in vintage sewing machines. I dug way back into the UFO drawer and pulled out a project from the early days of the Treadle On mail list. Treadle On is an email forum for folks who collect and use antique and vintage sewing machines. From the inception of the mail list in 1998, a favorite activity has been quilt block exchanges - with the blocks being made on non-electric or "people powered" sewing machines.
This particular block exchange occurred in 1999. The object was to make quilt blocks based on the "bug jar" block pattern. The completed block resembles a glass jar filled with...something.
The block exchange instructions allowed for the jars to be filled with whatever the maker chose. Unlike most Treadle On block exchanges, there was also a great deal of leeway allowed in pattern and size choice.
One member even used vintage buttons to created a button jar!
It has been great fun reminiscing about the early days of Treadle On as I worked on assembling the blocks this week. It's a good thing there is a lot of nostalgia associated with these blocks, because the multiple sizes and styles make for a very fiddly assembly process. I received about 40 blocks in the exchange; I plan to assemble them in rows and add woodgrain fabric to make shelves for the jars to rest on. It will be a happy quilt when it's finished!
Today is also my 200th blog post - another good reason to celebrate!
OK, I'll admit I'm not the most prolific blogger, but I've stuck with it for almost 2 years - more than I ever imagined when I first started out. Blogging has been an amazingly fun experience, full of inspiration and friendship.
To mark this momentous occasion, two Celebration of Sewing participants will be chosen to receive one (each) of the two Moda charm packs pictured above. I'll place all the participants' names in a hat and have my DH draw the winners on Sunday, July 28th. I'll post the winning names on Monday so the winners can send me their mailing information.
And now - on with the celebration!
