Dog quilt

I am afraid my quilting days are coming to an end.  My Inclusion Body Myositis is making it increasingly difficult to sew, particularly hand-sewing,   My right (non-dominant) had is getting weak and I find it a bit difficult to thread needles and tie knots, mainly because my index finger has no power and cannot grip things.  So I am trying to finish off various UFOs before I have to give up completely!

I began this quilt last year and it has sat in the top of my wardrobe waiting for a binding.  I was making it at the same time as I made the patchwork dogs for my great-nephew and great nieces.  In fact, I have a second top in the same design and hope to do something with it next.  Over the last few days I have managed to get the binding on to this one although I am uncertain what will happen to it.  It should have black felt eyes in each dog but that means fine hand-stitching and I am not sure if I can do that any more so in the meantime it is an 'eyeless dog' quilt.

The second dog quilt is more of a problem.  As I am determined not to buy any more fabric I need to piece the backing from my stash.  Then this morning I suddenly realised that I no longer have any safety pins!  This is because I offered my 'wet work' supplies to a local craft group several months ago.  Unfortunately at the time I was not well enough to stand over them and the next thing I knew they had walked off with vast quantities of stuff I did not want them to have including all my rotary cutting equipment, a box of batik fabric that I was using, all my bobbins and goodness knows what else.  I got some of the things back but after this length of time, I cannot ask for anything more.  The moral of this story is only ever to allow people into your studio when  you are there to supervise!  And also to make lists of what is 'for sale' and what not.

Today I have sent a friend off to buy me some 505 adhesive spray (being an aerosol shops are not generally happy to sell it on-line).  I generally use this for smaller items and these are only laptop size.  And I am also asking myself how difficult I would find it to do up the safety pins, even with a grapefruit spoon!  So watch this space.  If I find I cannot put the sandwich together I can always pass the top and backing to my sister but she has rather given up textiles in favour of painting over the last couple of years.  I would normally quilt this by machine, outline quilting the dogs and then free machine quilting the background.  I have been able to piece simple shapes on the machine this year but have no idea if I can still do more difficult work.

I know I am not the only one in this situation.  So many of we quilters are getting older and lots of people are beginning to find the techniques difficult because of 'old age' complaints!  For that reason I thought it was worth doing a post.  Just think about what is involved in the various techniques we use.  I have decided that for machine work you need two good hands and a good right foot!  Do comment if you have any advice on this somewhat depressing subject.  Now you know why I have turned to blogs about textiles I have worn and other elements of my family history.  Typing is a much simpler skill and if you make mistakes they are easy to correct,.