Confined?

Yesterday I was pretty much confined to bed. Not so good because I have things to do places to go, but as long as I was there I made it a play day. I'm appliquéing and stuffing basket handles as part of my current project so all I had to do was grab my bags of bits and my appliqué tray and I was set to go.

This is the handiest item whether you are at a table, sitting in a chair, or like me yesterday, in bed. All you need to make your own is a mid-sized luncheon tray, 2 layers of cotton batting like Warm & Natural cut to the size of the bottom of the tray. Plus a roll of batt the length of the tray covered in a nice plain fabric. Plain fabric so you can easily see the pins and needles, cotton batt because it lasts a long time and you can use the lint roller on it occasionally. Baste the needle roll to the edge of the batting and use a few dots of glue to hold the batting to the tray. My needle roll is probably about the circumference of a quarter coin. I marked sections with a Pigma pen for quilt needles and appliqué needles. The only other thing you need is your project, thread and scissors. I've been using this about 4 years and wouldn't know what to do without it. (1 week later..I made another one on a 9X13 inch tray to keep in our RV. This time I just covered the needle roll with some bridal netting. Warm and Natural is hard to write on!)

The quilt top below the tray was made by my husband's great grandmother and passed to me by his mom about 25 years ago as a gift for saving her life! Sounds grand, all I did was find her bee sting kit and give her a shot, but it changed our relationship so I'll always be grateful for having been given the opportunity to be of service. I used very thin batt and it was so easy to quilt because most of the fabrics had been pre-softened by wear prior to their insertion into the quilt.

I have two other of Great Grandma Alloway's tops. I'll share the story of how I came to have those another day.