Anne and the Lightbulb

So it's one of those ideas where we all went, "Well of course!" Okay, to be honest I did stop and think about it for a minute or two because, well, I can be a control freak sometimes. My family can stop laughing now.

Anne discovered that if she programmed her Bernina 1260 just right, she could add a space between the asterisk stitches, and they would look like the individual beads and french knots we have putting in our blocks! Thanks Anne!

On a 1260, the stitch is number 27. Hit number 27, memory, and then straight stitch, memory, and you should be good to go. The stitch is a little bigger than the beads and knots have been, and I am guessing that a spiral is going to be the best design to get all 212 stitches on the block.

Don't have a Bernina 1260? As long as you are able to program a stitch in between an asterisk stitch * * * , so they maintain their individuality, I say go for it. I don't want a running together of stitches ***** that don't have any distinction. This is after all, about remembering the individuals who have died.

If you have other sewing machine makes that have a similar tight stitch on them and you think you want to try it, let me know. St Cloud has dealers for every major brand of sewing machine and I can go test drive it to make sure it clears my inner control freak.

I like how there will be a nice mix of beads and hand stitching and machine stitching in the project. A bit of everything. And we may actually get it done! Now if Anne can figure something out for the soldiers and our government leaders we'll be set to finish the damn war too.

Lost Mo Jo Found

So sorry for the long lapse. I have been under the weather in a pretty big way. Finally have energy to do more than just survive.

Now that I' m out from under the rock, I've got some catching up to do.

Thanks to everyone who has come on board and been working on the project!

Go check out Nellie's blog, Nellie's Needles http://nelliedurand.blogspot.com . She displays her beatiful art quilts and, has been such a support in getting the word out, and getting folks to help. Thanks Nellie! Nellie is a big fan of the grommets, so it looks like at least portions of this project will be going metal!

Here is how I think we can make this work on a bunch of levels all at once. The troops are divided into sqauds, divisions, platoons, battalions, brigades, etc... this project can be divided into similar sections.

Bead chain and grommets are going to be spendy, so, maybe we can work in smaller squads and platoons as money is raised for this particular type of armor. When there isn't yet funding for the grommets, we can hang them from the safety pins.

Timeline - I would love to see this hang somewhere publicly for the anniversary of 9/11. That seems a little ambitious right now, but we could definitely have some sort of platoon, brigade, division amount done. We could even hang the smaller numbers in more than one location at the same time.

As soon as I get 100 or so blocks, and can get some good photographs taken, I can put some more concerted effort into finding venues. If any one has ideas, for places to display this, let me
know.

I've had a couple questons about variations. Along with french knots, black seed beads are a fine alternative, and couching bead chain would be fine too. Someone has made made square spirals, someone else, stars and snowflakes. If we all stick with mostly black or metallic for the color I think some variety here and there is ok.

Thanks,
Caron