Category: Retreat

I could have waited a year…but I didn’t

Sometimes, life gets in the way of life. That is the only thing I can say. It has been nearly a year since I have written a blog post. There are a host of reasons. I haven’t stopped quilting. I don’t think I would ever stop doing that. It is likely the only thing that keeps me sane.

This quilt top was made during the guild retreat. It was a lovely retreat back in March. Much fun was had by all. It is a lovely design by GE Quilt designs named KIRA. Looks complex but super simple.

This was a wintery table runner I did. I liked this, except for the end where there are 2 od the same snowflakes together. Poor planning on my part there. I did the sections separately. Did not work out as planned. Oops. Still pretty though.

This is my Kite quilt. It came out cute. It has some shirt 3d kite tales. The back has grey fleece, so super soft. This was just me entertaining myself. Nothing special and I did not have anyone in mind when I make it.

I finished this quilt that I started so long ago and gave it to my sister for her 70th birthday. I had actually hand sewn a few of these blocks together

My quilting Godmother, Nanette sent me a few orphan blocks (purple and white) along with a half yard of the purple and I made as many additional as I could. This will be a donation quilt to one of the Guilds charities. I hope to get it on the long arm this week. On the list, but we will see.

There are many other things that I have done. As I find picture I will share.

The Non-Quilting stuff

It’s been a year. If you don’t want to read this nonsense, feel free to stop and move on. A very wise person tells me to write stuff down. So, I am. Not sure if I am supposed to share it or not, but some I will, some I won’t.

So many changes this year. I spent a long time recovering from spinal surgery only to learn there are quite a few things I will never recover from. I added another auto immune disease to my list of stuff that totally sucks. I turned sixty. Not a whole lot different from 59, honestly. I said goodbye to a 10 year relationship that I should have said goodbye to 9 years and 10 months ago, but I didn’t. More on that later.

I am a widow, twice and honestly it totally sucks. Once was bad enough, but come on, twice. The second time, he was my person. the one you read about in the romance novels. The one you think only exists in fairy tales. It can’t be real. That kind of thing. He was someone that looked at me, not the outside, but me. To him I was the most beautiful woman on the planet. Well, that is how he made me feel anyway. He did not see what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

So now what? I read dark mafia romance novels and dream of him. No, he was not in the mafia, but all these books talk of tall, chiseled men with tattoos, which he was. Funny, I never found tattoos even remotely attractive and used to get mad at him every time he got another one and now, I find it extremely attractive. Odd. It is all very confusing to me. I want him back. I miss him. It makes for sad days and nights for sure. More quilting is needed.

Happy sewing

Happy Quilting

Ho hum.

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

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.

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

Retreating :)

What Fun!

Lynn and I headed off to Ohio Country for a mini-retreat. We stayed at the historic Millersburg hotel! It has such a history. It also has quilts hanging everywhere.

What did I do?

I made the ghost Blocks. There was a lot of swearing involved. I don’t really care for stitch and flip, and that was necessary. Since there were only 5 blocks in this runner, I suffered through it and swore a lot. It is cute.I also worked on my holiday placemats. I am hopeful that I can get them done.

Not perfect, but tolerable.

Guild Retreat

We are planning a retreat for our guild and hope to have it here. They have a large room that we can use free of charge. It is a beautiful room with high ceilings and exposed brick walls. We are hoping for the first weekend in March. We are hoping we will have 15-20 ladies from our guild join. Something to look forward to in early Spring. I am sure I will need it by then.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

What the Heck am I doing?

Good question. I sometimes wonder what I am doing. I quilted, on my domestic, my scrabble dog wall hanging. I needed something to do that would take me a bit of uninterupted time. Sometimes when I have a lot on my mind (or just anxiety in general), I want to work on something that requires my undivided attention. This has been basted and staring at me for quite a few weeks. I figured it would take me 1-1.5 hours after I got set up to complete the quilting. I was not far off the mark.

I did find, that since I don’t really quilt much on my domestic machine, except straight line, that I now suck at free motion quilting on it. It is possible that it is because iut requires strenght (shoulders, I think) that I don’t have and may never have. I used my dog boine ruler. Not sure why they are called rulers, they don’t actually measure anything. I did take a photo of one of the better-looking areas (LOL).

Anxiety, who me?

Haha. Crazy anxiety. That’s me. I am a worrier by nature., I think I got that from my mother. She was a worrier. So anxiety is just an added bonus.

What causes me to be insane? Well, last week on Wednesday, I woke up unable to walk. Awesome. The absolute most severe pain I have ever felt, everytime I put my right leg down. Words can not describe this pain. Thinking my post (artificail knee) had finally come loose after 25 years, I had my daughter drive me to the ER. Nope, knee not loose. Not much we can help you with, go to your ortho. Six weeks wait. Try someone local. Eww, not what I usually want to do, living outside the city. The local doctors in the rural world have always scared me. But, they agreed to see me that day. I was pleasantly surprised. Young Doc, who told me that my pain was likely coming from my hip (even though it did not hurt). Told me the answer was to shoot up the aggravated knee with medication and then come back on Friday and have the same thing done to my hip. It worked! However, now, I can add hip arthritits and all the goodies that come with that to my crappy resume. I also now keep crutches by the door of the bedroom in case it happens again. This is one of the many reasons I am half crazy. What lovely thing will I wake up with tomorrow? If this is getting old, I have a strong understanding of why people fight it.

Fun Coming!

Fun is needed. Going on a mini-retreat in Amish country in Ohio, with my quilting partner in crime Lynn and maybe one other person (hopefully Sharon comes because she seems like she would be fun). We are staying at a historic hotel. Not only is it a retreat center, but they have ghost hunts. LOL. It is has Victorian Era Decor and past presidents have stayed there (Grover Cleveland). Hotel Millersburg is in the heart of Ohio Amish Country (AKA lots of quilt shops). Photos to come….

So, I am collecting up my projects that I will work on and looking forward to the great escape.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Wurtle has led me astray from my quilting

So, Wurtle has kept me away from my quilting, a family watermark_2018-02-07-19-25-21.jpgfriend that attends school with my daughter informed her that he wanted a turtle pillow with his turtles name on it for his birthday.  Since his sister got a quilt form me on her last birthday, I could not deny his wish.  Wurtle was pretty easy to make.  He has a pocket under his belly, that is meant for pajamas, but I will likely put candy in it.  All in all, I think Wurtle came out pretty good for a turtle.  Only took me about 2 hours to complete, including cutting.

Happy Quilting

Happy Sewing

Mystery Quilt – What will it be???

20161101_204316Well, I got everything cut as instructed.  I had most of this fabric in my stash, likely for years….  Had to buy a couple of accent pieces, that’s it.  I like lime green and teal together.  Hoping it turns out to be something awesome!  We shall see.

I managed to get all the sewing stuff packed, now just need my personal items.  Hope to get that done later, but the 7th game of the World Series is on, and I am from the Cleveland area.  Hoping Mom is watching from above.  She was a big Indians fan.  My sister Kellie better have that gold Wahoo that mom always wore, on tonight.

Next Post from the retreat.

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

Treasure your Family