Making up for lost time and the Zebra incident

Three blog posts in one month.  Wow.   I am honestly shocked at myself.  Trying to keep positive and attempt to do the things I love.  I have been told by my Significant other that I need to make an effort to go over to my happy place.  He tells me it makes a difference in me (or my level of grouchiness).  I am making efforts to try and do that.  Sometimes it is hard.

It seems like every day there is a new surprise.  For the last few days I have been having sleeping issues.  I wake up around 4 or so and off in the distance I can see light peeking over the horizon and I can not get back to sleep.  It gets lighter and lighter outside and I lie awake trying to shield myself from daylight.  Then I am tired later and want to do nothing.  Kev’s Suggestion:  “Cover the Window”.  Me,  “This might be only temporary.   I am, not sure I should do that”.  Kev,” OK, continue not sleeping.  Your choice”.  I hate when he makes sense.

The Whimsical Quilt – So, I finished this quilt recently.  It has cute whimsical animals.  I did not want to cut up some of these fabrics and lose the costumed animals.  It came out OK. 

It has fleece on the back.  I love fleece and minky on the back of baby/toddler quilts.  It makes them so soft.  I have no plans for this quilt, it was just something to do.  Mind you I have loads of projects half done or sort of started, but still pick up new things.  At least I finished this one!  Hurray for me.

What else am I working on – Of course, I have started new things.  I am working on a happy Baby quilt.  Nanette sent me the pattern and she is also working on one.  Hers will be perfect of course.  Everything she does is perfect.  Pictures to come later.  I am also making a Yellowstone Quilt.  For those of you that watch the Yellowstone series, it is the one that Beth is wrapped up in sitting on the front porch.  Simple nine-patch set on point.  Pictures to come later.

The Zebra Incident – I live on a state route.  Driving down the road one day, I travel a lot,  in the pasture with some horses, I see a zebra.  Like a real Zebra.  I do a Double take and laugh to myself.   I call my daughter at school and tell her about the zebra.  She has that tone.  That, you have lost your mind tone.  So, later, when I get home, I tell Kev about the Zebra on Route 245.  He rolls his eyes at me and gives me that “You are insane” look.  He says to me,” There is not a Zebra on 245.”  I argue, of course, but eventually, let it go and start to wonder if I have lost my mind.

A couple of days ago, I’m driving down the road with my daughter in the car and there he is.  I stop the car, backed up, while my daughter is yelling at me and made her photograph the said zebra, that no one believes exists.  I then proceeded to text everyone.  I win.  There is a zebra on 245 and I have not lost my mind. 

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

How Now Brown Cow

The I am Mad Quilt LOL

This was the quilt I worked on when I was mad and frustrated. I found it was easy to machine applique without thinking. While I am not always a fan of Scrappy, I find this quilt interesting. It was from Missouri Star Quilt, but they used two colors throughout, which I clearly did not. There are 80 blocks that measure 9.75 x 10 inches each unfinished. This quilt makes great use of layer cakes!

I am not sure what I will be using for the back of this quilt yet.

I have no idea how I will quilt it. Always looking for suggestions…..

The brown Cow – So, I was returning home from the local high school and there was a whole group of cows convening at one corner of the fence. For some reason, I decided to pull over and talk with the cows. LOL. Sometimes they make more sense than people. Anyway. every time I said something, this brown cow kept sticiking her head up as if she was extremely interested in what I had to say. Cracked me up.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Life

Where to start?

I often feel I am nearly a shell of my former self.

I have heard these words come out of my mouth at a doctor’s office “You ruined my life”

I know there are people that are suffering far worse than I am.

I was just served a big old piece of not what I expected and not what you told me.

I agreed to have the second spine surgery because I still had some spinal issues. The main one was that I have no feeling in my bowels. Use your Imagination on that one. It was my main reason for doing it. My only reason for doing it. I could manage the pain. As a woman, I feel we are predisposed to managing pain in general. I didn’t care about the pain. I cared about that one thing that often kept me confined to my home and sometimes kept me confined to a room in my home.

Besides not solving my main issue, this last spinal surgery gave me a few additional bonus issues. I have ridiculous shoulder pain. I cannot lift either arm over my head. My entire spine hurts with the exception of my neck. Pretty sure they cut all the nerves in my neck so I couldn’t complain about that. I have constant debilitating headaches. I have random whole-body weakness, I never know what I am going to wake up to. My body is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.

So, I got some medication to help with the headaches. Took away 80% of them, which is good. The bad part is, it makes all carbonated stuff taste bad. I love my coke zero and now I can’t have that either.

Poor Poor Me……

Life goes on. I truly do understand why some people give up though. It would certainly be easy to do.

I am not the give-up type. Too many people depend on me.

Quilting and Sewing – Yes I do manage to do some. I am not super fast these days. I made all the blocks in the quilt in the photo on a retreat I went to in March. I am glad I went. Got them all put together a few weeks ago. This was in a jelly roll book that Nanette gave me. I find it an interesting-looking quilt.

Working on a few other items.Some new and some old. I will try to keep up better, even though I am super grouchy most of the time. I will do better.

Happy sewing

Happy Quitling

Started this one at least 20 years ago

And just like that another quilt top is completed.

I am trying to complete some of those half-finished projects. Pretty sure this one was started 20+ years ago.

While I remember that it was BOM, I have no memory of hand-sewing these blocks together. None whatsoever. It was during a rather dark time in my life, when I have fairly large missing time blocks for various reasons.

Pretty sure this BOM was from Jo Ann fabrics. I believe dead husband #1 bought me them as gifts (Don’t be shocked, I deal with my “situation” with humor). I didn’t have them all and remember buying the rest of them on clearance, including the setting kit. Odd that I can remember all those details, but not hand sewing them.

While it does not look bad, I would say that it is not really my style. It is very traditional, which is not my usual path. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, I just can’t imagine wanting to make that quilt now. I tend to be unable to follow directions, and always veer off the intended path in some way.

I am preparing for a retreat later in March and starting to look for projects to take along and this was starting at me, begging to be completed.

Every box I opened revealed some other “Chinese Spy Balloon”, oh wait I mean UFO.

At this point, I would imagine 20+ half-done projects. One of them I will take to the retreat with me. It was one of those “Cake Mix” patterns by Moda. It is scrappy so we will see how it turns out. I do not have the original photo of what it is supposed to look like, so I will be winging that.

Yep, I have a dog batting box, just for them. Ruger seems to enjoy spending quality time with Mom.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

What’s Going on here?

So, I have been working on this baby quilt. I love the cute whimsical fabric. I have the top finished. I hope to get it on the longarm this weekend. That is the plan anyway. It is set on point and a decent size for a baby quilt.

So, I have been working on a couple of other things. I am dredging up some half-done projects to try and get them completed. I am an ADQ – attention deficit quilter. Meaning I have to go from project to project. Some of them I am not sure why I did not finish them, others I know why. Hated them. There are a couple unfinished tops that I need to finish but refuse because I don’t like the method. Stitch and flip. ARGH. Not sure why this one bothers me so much. I am going to try and make a plan to get one block a month completed on that one. It would be easy to not finish it all, but I set out to make it for someone and I have bought all kinds of special fabric, so I need to get over it and get it done.

I drug one out a couple of days ago that was circs late 1990’s. Not sure why I did not finish it. Maybe it just got lost in the shuffle. Surprisingly, it appears that I had all the pieces. I now have all the blocks done and will get them together and put on the borders. Hoping to knock that out tonight. We’ll see.

I have had the orange nightmare quilt on my design wall for quite some time 1.5 years. Going to take it down, finish some other half-done projects and maybe get back to it. But, I need the design wall. I know I have at least one more where all the blocks are done. They are just sitting in a box.

I was photobombed by Ruger. He is our little tiny (8lb) Jack Russel. I often refer to him as “Tiny Dog”. He rules the roost here. Pushes the other dogs around (even my 80 lb lab). He is the only boy, so all the girls are his, including me and my daughter. He is very needy these days because Haley is away at school. He was my late husband’s dog. Haley is now his person. He feels it necessary to sit on me a lot. He does not take up much space, so not a problem.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Experimentation…sort of

So, I bought this QCR Mini curve ruler from Sew Kind of Wonderful” a long time ago. They, of course, had a really cute dog pattern that I liked. That is how you get Lori to buy an expensive ruler. Put it with a dog pattern. Works every time.

So, this was my experimental piece to determine how crappy I could sew curves. I’m gonna go with medium crappiness.

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First, cutting. I hate cutting. You cut out your squares and then use the ruler to line them up and cut the curves. It said to use a 45mm rotary cutter. I found this very difficult. I was actually cutting the template and shaving pieces of plastic off. So I sat for a while with a nail file filing off where I “nicked” the template. Mostly because then it would hang up in the same place. Once my friend Lynn told me to slow down when I cut them things went a little better. Did I tell you I hate cutting?

So, once I had them all cut I began sewing. You leave ears and then square them up. So overall once they were squared up and trimmed they did not look bad. But, I need to try something else before I decide if this ruler is a success. I used some valentines fabric so I could give this to my next-door neighbor. She needed something Valentines for her table. It’s not the worst thing I have ever made, but certainly far from my favorite.

Yep. this is how my dog sleeps. Crazy girl. Right in the middle, paws in the air. Loudly snoring.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

a 3D Quilt? No Way…

How cute is that? Nanette sent me this pattern a while ago to hopefully get me inspired to get quilting. I think it may have worked! If you aren’t familiar with Nanette’s blog, please take a look. I can only aspire/dream to do things as beautiful as she does. She is truly an amazing quilter.

I love this quilt, but I am a crazy dog lady. I had cut it out quite a while ago, so it was just a matter of sewing it together and getting it quilted. I think I may need to do another one in more girly colors. You never know when you might need one for a gift!.

This quilt was so easy to make. The hardest part was making sure that I did not quilt over the ears!

I put this really cute fleece backing on the back so it is super soft. I love putting fleece on the back of baby quilts. It can also be economical because it is usually 60 inches wide.

I quilted this with a plain old meander, but it seemed to be the right thing. It does not take away from the floppy dog ears.

The Recovery – So the surgery recovery is going. There are ups and downs. It is super frustrating for me because I feel it should be over. But that is just me. Good days and bad days. Some days I feel normal other days I feel like a bowl full of jello. SUper frustrating for me. And then there are the headaches. Ugh. I will get there, eventually.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Happy Holidays!

I am still alive, recovering from my spinal surgery. I did manage to sew a few small things until I could barely move my shoulders. Not sure why, But I ended up getting multiple steroid shots in each shoulder. They are better now, not perfect but leaps and bounds better.

Gnomie GNomes – I did finish this, but neighbor Carol needed something holiday for her table, so she went home with it. I think she liked the back better than my gnomes. The back had snowman fabric on it. I failed to get a photo of it. Pretty sure I had it for like 20 years. Lol. She was happy and that is all that matters. It was a super easy pattern that went together quickly.

My daughter is home from college for the holidays. Makes me so happy. She has been baking and wrapping for me. My desire to do either is at an all-time low.

I made a few of these towels as gifts. I wanted to make more but only managed to do a few. Our guild does “Tiny Tutorials” and this was the one from October, I think. Basically used scraps of fabric and batting. I purchased bar mop towels from Amazon which were about $14/per dozen.

I have made a few other things, but not many. I failed to get photos. Not thinking like usual. I will get there. My surgery takes 1+ years to recover from, but I am of course hoping that time is shorter. I feel like I have not been myself for 2 years now. The positive is releasing the pressure on my spinal cord has resolved a few other issues I have had. I have quickly learned that your spinal cord controls everything, literally everything.

My plans are to get back in my sewing room quickly. I also have some organizational goals for 2023. My sewing area is a hot mess.

I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Yep, I look like Frankenstein

So, I had the chance last month to donate some dog beds to one of my favorite Dog Charities, Hospets. They make having a pet as a Senior much easier. I think I may have had 11 this time. All are totally washable and have zippered covers. I also sent some bandana collar covers. I hope they can sell them for some additional funds.

Why do I look like Frankenstein? Well, on October 10th I had to have neck (spinal) surgery again. It was sort of a sudden thing. At the end of September, I received date of late October, and then then they decided to do it sooner rather than later. I had some fairly severe spinal compression and it appeared that I may be losing spinal fluid (turns out I wasn’t, phew). Good thing I did not have much time to think about it. I might have chickened out. I spent a few days at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Good times. I am home recovering. So far so good. It seems that a few things (problems) may have been resolved. Fingers crossed. Tomorrow I go to have my staples removed. This has been the longest I have been out of work since the birth f my daughter. It feels weird. So they shaved some of my hair off and I have a line of staples down the back f my neck. Hair grows back. I am itchy now, so looking forward to the removal of those staples.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Boo!

I really like Halloween things. However, you can only use them a few weeks of the years. That, however, does not stop me.

I made this table runner almost a year ago at a mini-retreat with my quilting partner in crime, Lynn. I thought it was cute. However, this involved a lot of stitch and flip which I find annoying and wasteful. But I finished it. I had the blocks done last November, but finally sewed them together and put the finishing touches on. I feel like the only thing I make lately are table runners. It is sort of true. Made tons of them after my neck surgery. Smaller projects were easier to focus on.

I decided to quilt this on my long arm. Was initially disastrous. Somehow, not paying attention, I loaded it incorrectly and managed to sew it together. Had to take the pole off to get it off and take out the stitching. Don’t even bother to try and imagine what dumb a$$ thing I did. I am not sure myself. Almost threw it in the trash and then I remembered how much I hated stitch and flip so thought better of it. All that to quilt a lazy meander.

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I am adjusting to life with my daughter away at college. It is quite different for me. I call her most nights before I go to bed and she usually calls and texts randomly throughout the day. It helps. Family weekend is at the end of the month, so I will likely go visit then and take her some college necessities.

Now that she is not here, it makes me feel old. I try not to feel that way, but I do. Such is life,

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting