Reruns

First, thank you to everyone for your kind messages.  I will survive.  I always do!  Things will definitely get better once I can buy a house and have some space and access to my things.

So, until then, I'll post photos of my stitching and things I made prior to all the chaos.  I'll call them "reruns"!

I know you've seen some of the blocks for my McHenry quilt.  I started this a few years ago when my former husband was going through cancer treatment as a way to keep my mind busy.

The photos on the blocks are some of the historic buildings here in McHenry, Illinois where I live.  I did work on this since I've been here at mom's but finally got fed up trying to stitch in such a small  space so I put it away for the time being.

Anyway, the photos are printed on Inkjet Fabric Sheets which I run through my printer.  Once they're heat set with an iron, the images are permanent.  Not that this will ever need to be washed!

Each block is 9 inches square and worked in the traditional Victorian style.  It's pieced by hand on a cotton foundation.  All lace is either vintage or antique.  A nice lady here in McHenry gave me a box of velvet fabrics along with some old lace.  I can't access my antique lace at the moment.  And I can't access most of my fancy crazy quilt fabrics so there's a lot of velvets on here but that's okay.  Like I said, I'll get back to it.

There are no sequins on this quilt and no embellishments.  (Hard to believe for me huh?  Me who loves glittery things?  LOL!!)  The only buttons are tiny vintage mother-of-pearl buttons used to make a spider on each block.  I did make some fabric yo-yo's to use as flowers.  Everything else is hand embroidered.

I've included the names of the buildings along with the dates that they were built.  I do my own research as I'm a McHenry historian.  I'm also on the board of the McHenry Area Historical Society which is just such an honor for me!!

For the names and dates, I chart them out in my cross stitch pattern software and then I use waste canvas to stitch them onto the blocks.  Once the stitching is complete, I just pull the waste canvas threads out from underneath the stitches.  One by one but it goes pretty fast and it's a great way to do cross stitch on crazy quilting!

Anyway, when I can get back to this, I still have a lot of buildings to document so it'll  be quite large. Most of the buildings that I'm documenting are still standing.  A few have burned down or were taken down due to deterioration but most are still here.

 Once it's complete I plan to use it for promotional purposes for the historical society.