Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[koshergrl]

So naturally, I did.

 

[freedombecki]

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." ~ Poor Richard's Almanac, Benjamin Franklin.

Edit: Oops! This was regarding the post where you get up way early & the kids were glad to get home where you were up when they got up! That was part of our family life too, and I remember spending the night with friends whose parents were not up with the sun, whereas, my mother was up long before the roosters crow.

 

[Sunshine]

My mom was different though...she wasn't gracious or loving about it. She did it because she had to, and she let us know. Most of my adult life started mornings with my mom at the door saying "For God's sakes, are you going to lay around all day?"

LOL. When it all got dumped on me through no fault of my own, I am sure after that time, my own will remember me 'having' to do a lot of things. Man, now, though I can't look back and see anything much I would change. We all enjoy different things, and some of us are better at those menial things than others. There were many days I sat and read before my husband died. I don't remember my mother EVER not being up at 6 a.m. at least. She cooked EVERY day. The beds were made EVERY day. She read. But other things came first.

 

[freedombecki]

It made my shop an assistant to those of an artistic demand to have the correct color available immediately.

Welcome to USMB and the Quilter's thread, Mc7donald. Hope you enjoy the boards. Tell us about your shop!

 

[koshergrl]

Whoops I meant most of my YOUNG life, not adult life, lol.

 

[freedombecki]

Today was a good-bad-good day. Started off going to the charity bees club, where I just decided to try my hand at quilting a small quilt I had donated earlier in the year. I worked from around 10 to 1 o'clock, and during a lunch break noticed bad foot pain. By the time I got most of the work done on the quilt, I had to leave. At home, I just fell asleep and recuperated as well as possible. If I quilt, it needs to be in a quiet corner of home. I haven't had severe fibro pain issues for some time, but when your quiet routine gets jilted and you throw in the lot of physical activity that machine quilting is, along with sitting next to a compulsive talker who if ignored, speaks louder, louder and LOUDER!

It's nobody's fault that fibromyalgia is a thief of all that's good about your life, but sometimes I'd like to be free of its stranglehold. It's like all your wires are picking up and amplifying everything. I was better off in the winter when I stayed home. Cabin fever is better than pain. You can kick pain, and you can put a pretty good dent in cabin fever, too, with a Spartan approach to defeating your anathema, if you have one. I'm tired and going to bed. Every muscle in my back and neck are threatening pain. I can back them off if I just fall asleep and don't have to look at them in the eye for a few hours. Have a lovely evening, everyone. Don't worry about me. I just need to go climb on my therapy mattress and rest for the night. I don't see the supermoon in the eastern sky tonight. Maybe it's cloudy or something... so different from the last couple of nights.

May God watch over everyone who drops by.

 

[Sunshine]

Hope this find you feeling better Bekcums. I looked at the work from last night, and I believe it looks better than I thought when I put it down. I had considered ripping every stitch out and starting again. But don't think I'll do that.

 

[Sunshine]

You told me the quilt would be a walk in the park compared to the quilt. I believe you are right. It is going well. I don't get in a hurry because the stitching is my zen meditation thingy. But there are six major areas of design which will take the longest. A gazillion little snowflakes which are FUN to do, and a border all around the bottom not unlike the one around each quilt block! It won't take a year. I always worked on the quilt about 2 hours a day. I haven't worked on the table cloth even an hour a day yet and it is going fairly well. I learned from the quilt. I'm sure I'll learn from this. And I have another quilt waiting in the wings.

Herrschner's has so many pretty things on sale. But I'm waiting to get my credit card that gives air miles before I buy anything else.

 

[Sunshine]

Here is what I got done last night. More done today. When I finish one of the major areas of pattern, I will post again. I'm thinking I may work on that border as I go along so it won't be there to annoy me at the end.

 

[freedombecki]

Here is what I got done last night. More done today. When I finish one of the major areas of pattern, I will post again. I'm thinking I may work on that border as I go along so it won't be there to annoy me at the end.

You have a beautiful hand, Sunshine. I so owe you a rep for sharing and hope we see progress picturess often! If only we didn't stumble into the "out for 24" popup too often!

/pouting

 

[Sunshine]

Here is what I got done last night. More done today. When I finish one of the major areas of pattern, I will post again. I'm thinking I may work on that border as I go along so it won't be there to annoy me at the end.

You have a beautiful hand, Sunshine. I so owe you a rep for sharing and hope we see progress picturess often! If only we didn't stumble into the "out for 24" popup too often!

/pouting

Got some of the church done tonight. Not sure how long it will take to have the first scene done, but it's not hard stitching.

 

[freedombecki]

I'm glad to hear the tablecloth is going well.

I should have been sewing my quilt all day today. I got the outer white and red borders done, but got interrupted at noon and never got back to it. If mornings were only a little longer. *sigh*

 

[koshergrl]

I love cross stitch embroidery! It's my favorite of all the stitches, I think..

 

[koshergrl]

I'm glad to see you posting Becki...I was worried!

 

[freedombecki]

I'm glad to see you posting Becki...I was worried!

I'm okay, koshergrl. The other night it was like my first 5 years of fibromyalgia, except not nearly as awful. And it went away because I learned to take melatonin at night to get a full night's sleep, which reduces pain when rest is procured. It took 9 or 10 years to run across other people who use melatonin to get sleep who were reporting full nights' sleep and a 10% reduction in pain. I wonder if people with related diseases such as adult-onset diabetes and arthritis suffer from insomnia some nights or every night. The melatonin takes 2 weeks to kick in. I started sleeping a little more in 3 days and by 2 weeks, was sleeping 7 hours a night, which I was getting before fibro set in. Coupled with CoQ10 supplements, womens +50 multivitamins and Vital Factors (TM) I can get through the pain pretty well by ignoring the pain around my ribcage. One press on the ribcage or in a bundle area where muscles meet nerves, and it all comes back requiring a 3-hour nap to make it go away. 20 minutes helps, but is a temporary fix.

Sleep is an important component of fighting pain. Ignore it, and the pain multiplies. Take Neurontin, buh-bye whatever reasoning you had in your frazzled brain, particularly noted in number sense. I probably at one time couldn't have reasoned my way out of a paper bag. It was horrible. I still lack confidence in math, even though I don't make as many mistakes. I went from making an average of 70 quilts and window-decorations a year to quilting one quilt in 3 years in severe pain. The year I started Vital Factors, I was able to organize the Purple Heart Quilt Club to make, quilt and bind over 30 full quilts for wounded soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. I quilted all but two, who were anonymously sent through various members by friends in their circle of loved ones and likely quilted and bound by them. When I had a dozen finished quilts, I'd take them to church prior to distribution to have them blessed. One time, a lady who attended church the day of one of the blessings said she had bought a cute quilt, but when she brought it home, it didn't match her house, so she asked me to wait after church for 15 minutes while she went home and got it. She brought back the cutest bird quilt I ever saw that someone had made, and she claimed she found it in brand new condition at a garage sale or something, and the owner said the quilt had never been used or washed (and that was true.) It had been stored in a clean poly bag, and the sizing was still in the fabrics, which had beautiful colors due to its being stored properly at high altitude. (good for quilts). Some wounded soldier got that quilt for himself (or herself) and family. What a sorrowful pleasure it was to send it to Walter Reid hospital. I remember waving goodbye to the package at the post office.

 

[freedombecki]

This morning, 5am - finished ladder border Oh, what a difference it makes!

This morning, sometime later - 9:40, completed outside border to quilt, making it measure a total of 48x58", give or take an inch.

Tuesday morning, I learned something: When you affix them to the top of batting with a backing, they may draw in after sitting in a pile from February-June and need to be repressed. I cut the top I thought 4 inches longer, but accidentally pulled the top in a little, so it was only 2 inches longer. By the time the top was smoothed out, it was half an inch short on the back. I should have done 2 things: (1) Cut the quilt out 6 inches all the way around like I did when I did professional quilting. That way, no matter what else, the quilt would have had a backing that was large enough. (2) I should have pressed the top of the quilt I was working on, because it had a gap of about 3/4 of an inch on the front at a seamline, which had to be lapped on the 4th border quilted, in order to quilt straight stitches after the first row of quilting was laid down on the 4th border near the center.

With pressing just before pinning, plus proper pinning AFTER pressing, few gaps if any ever show up. It's been about 2 or 3 years since I even attempted to quilt a small top, and not only was I exhausted when done, that gap followed me home and made me sorry I forgot to do the basics of doing a little more professional job like I used to do when my quilting paid the utilities for our business, which always was a little marginal.

Oh, yes, 'scuse the sideways shots on the first two scans, but the quilt's bulk under the scanner didn't help keep it straight! I'm always trying to devise a new way to make them straight, and that always brings another fly into the ointment of my crazymaker copier and photography results. Really, folks, there's no hope for my situation.

But on the happier side, I'm done with quilt number 40!!!!

 

[Sunshine]

I'm glad to see you posting Becki...I was worried!

I was too!

 

[koshergrl]

Becki, you need a camera!

 

[Sunshine]

OK, I have officially ripped out a row of stitching. There are two rows together that I am considering. On those two rows the stitches aren't going the same way as all the others. But they aren't right next to them, and every work needs some imperfection because only God is perfect. Doing a bit of stitching while I watch the big trial.

 

[koshergrl]

I have done quite a bit of that. And even then, when I got to the end of my little pillow, I saw huge glaring differences in colors that I didn't catch when I was working it....where I mismatched the threads.