Piecework

The latest Piecework is out to subscribers, but has not yet hit the bookstores. I've had a chance to leaf through it, but not to read everything. It's all about textiles for the historical reenactor.

Years ago, the doyennes of Civil War knitting declared that there was "no such thing" as i-cord during the Civil War. Fortunately, more research has revealed that such a thing did exist. I was glad to see that this myth, while not exactly debunked, was not perpetuated in the article on Civil War sontags.

I look forward to reading the issue when it hits the stands.

As far as piece-work goes, I've finally finished a quilt block for a quilt raffle in Jacksonville, IL. Nothing fancy, it's just a basic applique block. I loosely based it on a Baltimore Album Quilt block from an 1847 wedding quilt. If you know how to "read" an applique quilt, it's based on block D3 in the photograph. We were given three fabrics to work with and allowed to add more. Since we were given only fat-eighths, I had to add a fabric for the background.

Somehow, in spite of a light box, one of my branches ended up slightly askew. I washed the block, let it dry, and tried to sleep on it for two nights. When the time came to mail it, I just couldn't. All I could see was the error. I ripped out all those teeny-tiny stitches done with silk thread, erased my pencil marks, reset the branch, and celebrated with some lambic.