Wahoo Wednesday

Well, something like that. :)  It's two "W"s so it sounds good, right?

Quilt-y stuff:  The MOST Wahoo! part of today, was that my learning-to-quilt student and I were finally able to resume our lessons.  She is such a dear, sweet young woman, and eager to learn.  She homeschools three young ones, so there are some interruptions, and I have to say "Better her than me."  The kids are good, and she's very good with them, and I'm sitting there trying to stifle laughs because of the dialog at times.  

She is starting with a very simple structure of just 5" squares pieced end to end in rows, with no specific pattern - scrappy.  She got pre-cuts for most of the blocks, but also cut some of her own because she found a fabric she really liked.  (Isn't that how a stash is born?) And I was amused as she showed me the tools she used with which to cut them.  She had a cutting mat and a rotary cutter - all good though the blade seemed a bit dull.  However, she didn't have an acrylic ruler, so she laid her fabric along the marked lines on the mat and using those and a metal ruler (like an engineer? might have) was able to cut her fabric.  I think she will be purchasing an acrylic ruler in the near future!  I suppose she could have gone completely retro and used scissors :)

I also showed her a few gizmos that I personally like to use, and a few tips to sew an accurate 1/4" seam.  She has a basic machine but doesn't yet have the 1/4" foot, nor does her machine allow her to change needle position and the feed dogs extend well beyond 1/4" to the right of the needle.  It does have a small indented mark that reads 1/4" about an inch or two in front of the needle.  I placed blue painters tape in a line along the front of her machine as a guide - the machine also has the top loading, visible bobbin, so the tape couldn't be placed over that unless she wanted to remove it every time she needed to change the bobbin. 

Health stuff :  I'm praising God that my health is returning, though there's still just a little yuckiness feeling in my chest.  The back pain is back to 'normal' - note, I did not say gone for it is never gone, just better than the days (weeks) it flares up.  The yuckiest part of today, is I think I'm going through medication withdrawals.  Over the last few weeks/couple of months, I've had rounds of antibiotics, Vicodin, codeine cough syrup, and six consecutive days of a Prednisone (steroid) treatment.  The steroid has been the most recent having finished up the night before last, and this morning I woke up feeling very much equivalent of 'medicine head' or jittery and shaky, very weird and not something I'm acquainted with.  It didn't dawn on me that that was what it could be until I was on my way to my PT appointment and confirmed as likely after talking with a friend who was on steroids awhile back for an even longer period of time who had experienced the exact same feelings.   I am feeling much better now.

I'm having PT 3x / week, and was assigned stretching exercises today to do before I get out of bed and after I go to bed...and anytime during the day I feel I want to lay down and do them, hehe.  The part I enjoy about PT the most is having the electrodes attached to my lower back and then I get to lay on this giganto moist heat pad with my knees bent for 15 minutes.  Today, she didn't hear the timer go off and left me there for about 30 minutes...aaahhhhh :)

Time Escapes Me

When all routines, minimal as they were, have been scattered to the winds (see how I got that fall effect thrown in there), it seems gathering them back together requires more than a rake.  I got really comfy just sitting around waiting for others to do what I normally did, because I couldn't do them, well, at least not without a great deal of effort mixed with equal parts pain and creativity.  Help has come to a screeching halt as the foot gets better. I now have only a minimal limp, and the shoe is on, as well as a sock, though not yet laced up.  My next doc appointment isn't until the 25th - think the doc will be happy with my progress?  I think he'll be quite surprised, as I am very surprised at the progress in just this past week - I truly was expecting weeks and maybe months to get this far - maybe I'm not really as old as I thought.  My pre-injury chores and activities are all back on me except Nick is responsibly still getting his own lunch prepared and getting his own breakfast.

Remember this little quilt?   I can't tell you how long I've had it here, but it's been way too long.  Is this a deja-vu moment or did I post about it recently? Anyway, our guild meeting was Thursday night, so I was determined to get it out of my house!  It was a community service project pieced by someone else and I did the layering, quilting & binding with the provided fabric.  All along I kept thinking to myself that I just didn't like the backing/binding fabric and after I got the binding on and started hand-stitching it down on the backside I knew why.  I snipped a small piece and burned it, yep, polyester content! Ugh.  Running that needle through by hand was a pure pain, and I tried several different needles. But it is DONE, and I took returned it to guild.  I think it'll be awhile before I bring another community service project home. It had been laying around here for so long, with all the dust from the bathroom remodels, the cats getting on it, and something from who knows where getting spilled on one corner, it had to be washed & dried first. Can I count this a FINISH? even though not something on my UFO list.

The first lesson with my friend was more of a time of chatting and catching up as her hubby was home too and learning where she is as far as her sewing skills/knowledge and what she was considering for a quilt.  She'd like to begin with a crib-size, and had a black and white picture of a scrappy, very simple little number without any directions from a pamphlet from 1979.  She also had a couple others picked out in more recent magazines and only slightly more complicated.  She also likes the looks of the rag quilts.  The only sewing she has done is a very small wall-hanging from a pre-printed patchwork design where she used a running stitch to highlight the 'squares' and to attach some Sunbonnet Sue pieces, with layers & binding.  She's had no experience even with clothing, so it'll be all new, but she's eager to learn, and is a quick study I think.  Next week, we will meet and look at some fabric.  She has only a cutting mat, a rotary cutter, some pins, seam ripper & a sewing machine....still in the box.