Friday Inspiration - Hearts and Hands for Sendai

It's difficult to keep inspired when the news from Japan keeps getting worse each day ... my heart and prayers are with you.  When I read of Crazy Quilt International's Hearts and Hands for Sendai project for the quilting community, I felt inspiration stirring again - this is something I can do to help beyond simply helping monetarily.  Not to say that's not needed (we've seen enough disasters recently to know how important monetary donations are and I've just read that the Red Cross' funds are dwindling), but it feels so good to be able to work on something concrete and beautiful.

The details are on Leslie's Erlich's site, Pinyon Creek Stitching,  CQI's website, or Facebook.  There is a $10 donation being collected with each quilt square sent, the squares can be traditional or crazy quilting (there are specific requirements for crazy quilt squares), 8 inches, and in jewel tones - think gems like sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, garnets.  Janet Towbin has a good photo of jewel toned embroidery thread on her Flickr site here.  Contact Leslie by email at pinyoncreekq@q.com for the address to send the squares to  - she'll need them by June 30th.  Plans are to have the squares made into quilts that will tour Japan and then be auctioned off.

Hideko Ishida is a CQI member from Sendai - she and her family survived.  I spent most of a morning looking over the beautiful stitchery and quilting her blog, Wind from the East.  

I've always wanted to learn ribbon embroidery, so I was especially drawn to her gorgeous ribbon work.

I love the way this one looks like Spring finally arriving after a long winter!

Happy Creating!  Deborah