In Absentia
How time flies! I intended to be offline for just a week during my trip to Houston, and here it is over 2 weeks later.
The International Quilt Festival in Houston was spectacular. (I expected nothing less!) The quilts were works of art and there were so many to look at! I took a ton of pictures, but haven't worked on them yet. There was an amazing variety of vendors at the show. I didn't even try to look at every one of them; I marked the booths I wanted to visit on my program and was able to do the shopping I had planned. I always go to the YLI thread booth and purchase grab-bags of mis-wound spools (they are usually less than the full spool yardage). I've gotten lots of pretty embroidery and quilting threads from them. I did buy fabric - more than I intended to - but they were things my local quilt shop doesn't carry. Among these were some new Kaffe Fassett fabrics and a kit, some black-on-black fat quarters, and some dark civil war reproductions to complete a folk-style American Flag quilt. I also purchased books, including Kaffe Fassett's Caravan of Quilts, Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts, and Karen Stone's book published by EQ5. To be truthful, I did not see anything "new" to the market except the Minkee Blankee fabric, which doesn't interest me.
My classes in Houston were all very rewarding. Wednesday, I had a class with Bobbie Aug about antique quilt study. She is an amazing source of knowledge; I could listen to her talk about old fabrics and quilt history for hours. Most of the quilts we saw were 1860-1920, based on her recognition of certain fabric colors and print styles. It was a terrific class. The next day I had a class with Robbie Joy Eklow on Unmarked Free-Motion Machine Quilting. Wow! Robbie is a quilt artist who uses geometrical designs to fill each piece of patchwork on her quilts. (Except its not really patchwork, most of hers are fusible applique) The most important thing I learned from her was to use felt for practicing your quilting. She said that many people get hung up about "wasting" fabric to make and quilt a practice quilt sandwich. Two squares of felt are approximately the same density as a quilt sandwich, they don't need to be pin-basted, and you can play with different types of thread as well as work on your stitching. Felt is cheap, and I instantly recognized this as a technique that would give me the freedom to play with my quilting. *Light Bulb Moment* !! I was able to do some amazing things with my quilting that day, and I'm not afraid to machine quilt anymore. On Friday night, I took a class on Wired Ribbon Rosettes and Pansies and our project was a needlebook. It was just gorgeous. I almost finished - just lacking the accent beadwork on the flowers. It was so much fun to make these pretty things! Saturday was my EQ5 class day. I took two classes from Fran Iverson Gonzalez and learned a wealth of information about the program. I am very excited now about working on quilts with EQ5. This class was liberating for me also! On Sunday morning I had a class with Jan Mullen from Australia. She teaches wacky piecing, actually a type of flip, sew, cut, rotate, flip and sew some more..... Her techniques were interesting, and she taught toward the students that have problems reading her patterns because they are very visual. (this isn't a problem for me) Our class learned Orangez and Lemonz. We watched all the steps to make a lemon slice - now if these people can't complete her quilts after watching the construction of one block, they have problems! I love the style of her work, and purchased several of her "Stargazey" patterns since I have lots of her fabrics. I can't wait to get my backlog of sewing cleared so I can work on some new projects!
I returned from Houston on Sunday, November 7th and had a doctor's appointment the following morning. I had the stitches removed from my left wrist and hand from the carpal tunnel surgery I'd had two weeks earlier. Its looking good, and I have surprised the doctor with my rapid healing. I could see an improvement from the second or third day after surgery because I no longer had numbness and tingling in that hand. So I asked about setting a surgery date for the right hand, thinking the 18th might be a good day, and was told I had to do it that same week because the doctor was having surgery on the 18th and would not be doing surgeries till after the first of the year. Wow - that was a surprise. Fortunately they could do my surgery on Nov. 11th, so I spent the rest of that day at the surgical center doing the pre-admit blood tests and briefing. I didn't need another chest x-ray since my other one was only 3 weeks ago. Finally Joe and I were able to get a bite to eat and go home. I figured I better get my stuff unpacked from the Houston trip and get it laundered before I was once again "handicapped".
The surgery on the 11th went very well. I had a good-natured discussion with the anesthesiologist about being more gentle with the endotracheal tube this time. The first carpal tunnel surgery, my throat was swollen and very sore for over a week; I assume they were a bit too vigorous about intubating me for that surgery... hmmm. He promised it would not be that bad this time, and evidently he did something different because I didn't have any problems afterwards. I had been warned not to expect the remarkable results I had on the left wrist, and that this one could very well be different.... but ya know, it hasn't been. I had the dressing changed on Tuesday the 16th and its healing every bit as well as the left one did. I have a surprising range of motion, and no numbness or tingling in the right hand now. I'll have the stitches removed next week, on the 24th, and will also start physical therapy on the left hand that week. I should have had these surgeries several years ago - it has been a huge success for me.
Going to visit doctors has become a big part of my life. I don't know how old people can stand to do this all the time, because it makes me crazy. Sure, you know what day it is, but it is exhausting to do all this running around. Getting older just isn't easy or fun. The day after my stitches came out of the left hand/wrist, I had a checkup with the orthopedic doctor. That office was stacked full of people, and I was glad Joe didn't come with me for that appointment. It took over 1.5 hours total - I got my knee drained again and a different medication injected into it which is supposed to be a better anti-inflammatory treatment. Since I was still having problems walking well, we discussed braces, drugs, and other longer-term treatments. He wasn't keen on a knee brace, but told me I could try it, and by golly it is working quite well. It doesn't cut off circulation like the first stretch brace I had, and so far I haven't had any swelling of the knee itself. I also got a pair of the Z-Coil shoes like Joe has been wearing and I noticed a HUGE improvement after just one afternoon. If only these shoes weren't so damn ugly... they have a huge coil spring under the heel which provides cushioning from the impact of walking. They are marketed for relief from heel, leg, and back pain. They aren't cheap but they sure seem to be worth the cost.
After the orthopedic appointment, I hung around for awhile at the Walgreen's and at the quilt shop. I was really just killing time until 6:30, when my stitch group was meeting at Emily's house to ride out to Judi's house for our monthly meeting. I absolutely love this group and look forward to our "Tuesday Nite Therapy"; we call our group TNT for short. :) We've been working on a color study all this year, and will finish it in December. Each month had an assigned color from the color wheel, and we made simple 12" square-in-a-square blocks using the monthly color plus any other color. These blocks are traded each month according to a formula one of the girls developed, so we have an equal share of everyone else's blocks and none of our own. We are using tone-on-tone, fossil fern, batik, and/or hand-dyed fabrics for these blocks. The goal is a quilt made from the bright clear colors and their complementary colors on the color-wheel. It has been a lot of fun, partly because it is such a simple block, but I'm ready to set this one together and finish it. The logical setting is edge to edge blocks with no sashing, but I'm having a yearning to set mine on point, and make some 6" blocks (4 for a 12" block) to accent the bigger blocks. I wonder if anyone will use black or white to set their blocks since we specifically excluded those from the blocks themselves? I will have to work through this in EQ5 to get some ideas of how my quilt will look. (goodie, goodie!!!)
At our meeting, we traded our blocks and discussed plans for our next meeting on December 11, as well as what we want to do next year. On the 11th, we will have an all-day sewing day to work on a snowman wallhanging. Its really cute and will be so fast because its fusible applique. We'll also exchange small gifts and trade our last color blocks. As far as next year, we are considering moving the meeting day back to Thursday to accomodate some other schedules, and we're thinking of ways to jump-start each of us individually to accomplish more of the "fun" quilting projects we want to do - not just the "obligation" quilts we are making for someone's birth/birthday/graduation/wedding/etc. The whole reason for this group is to feed each other's creativity. I love this group of ladies, and am adaptable -I will do anything they dream up. We do need to crack the whip a little bit so that there will be more show and tell each month! We love show and tell, except we aren't showing much these days. :) We've had some discussion about doing another border round-robin project next year, with a twist... only adding 2 borders at each rotation. They could be on opposing sides of the piece, or adjacent sides. We would rotate them to each person to work on twice, so we will still end up adding 4 borders to everyone else's quilts, just not 4 at the same time.... I think this would be a fun project! I'm not so sure a couple of the girls are really on board with this idea - it might be a little bit outside their comfort zone. There is really nothing to fear - there is no way we would do something outrageous to anyone's quilts. We will still provide the starter blocks for our quilts, which can be square or rectangular, and should lend a theme to the project itself. Like I said, I think it would be fun! I should probably start thinking about center-block ideas...
I hope I've caught up with myself, at least hitting the highlights of what's been going on the past 3 weeks. Its been busier than I thought. Anyone who thinks I'm sitting around on my butt using up sick-leave is sadly mistaken. I still can't do much sewing, no rotary cutting, no lifting, and can't stand very long, so I'm not getting anywhere with my UFOs or friendship blocks. I'm able to type for a short while, but have to rest my hands frequently. Can't wait to start physical therapy! I miss working on quilting projects.
posted by Jeri @ 1:56 PM
