Dèjá vu in the Quilting World

The "just make it" bug has chomped me into getting back to the birthday quilt for a friend.  This is the finished top (finally!) of the "Arboretum" quilt, the directions for which were generously provided in a the following SpringLeaf Studios blog post: 

http://www.springleafstudios.com/2019/11/arboretum.html

Finished "Arboretum" quilt top

 Now comes the hard part, trying to make a pieced back that I designed myself.  I'm almost embarrassed to say "designed" because I really have no idea what I'm doing.  The back is supposed to be larger than the front by at least 4" all the way around.  I can do that.  There's no guarantee that it will have straight sides or that the rows meant to be horizontal actually end up horizontal. 

Mock-up of quilt back

 

I swear this post echos another from about three years ago.  Have I learned nothing?!?  The blocks looked simple enough, but I am having one heck of a time getting it right.  I do believe the problem is entirely user error.  I have been very careful to make precise cuts and measure carefully, yet both blocks have the same problem.  The tail feather does not touch the bird butt.  

Another failed attempt at this bird's tail

 

Argh!  I took this photo after I started to remove the seam to see if there was any adjusting of the entire section up or down that would work.  If I shifted it up the little bit to have tail meet butt, the half square triangles above do not align properly while they DO align beautifully if the tail is left in (the wrong) place.  This makes no sense!  Today I made a third sparrow block using scrap fabric carefully measure and cut, stitched with precise 1/4" seams throughout.

 The tail feather did not line up with the butt.  Again.  By exactly the same measure as the two previous sparrow blocks.

 Searching for tips online only resulted in several videos of  quilters zipping along with perfectly starched fabric and perfect seams, every block stacking perfectly with no hiccups as if they could do this in their sleep.  Clearly the problem is me.  Ugh.  Even after I measure everything a million times and switched to a 1/4" foot for my Bernina (and measure the stitched seam to verify it really was a perfect 1/4"), make sure that I guide the fabric without pushing it, the exact same result occurred.  I wanted use all of my bad words in a steady stream of frustration.  I even took my quilting rulers to verify every piece was the size it should have been, actually hoping it was just me having cut a block the wrong size, but everything checked out accurate.  I WILL make this work, darn it!

This experience confirms that it's a good idea to get to know other more experienced quilters and take a class or twelve.  While at the local quilt shop for the 3rd time in a week for this project, I struck up a conversation with a woman after we bumped into each other on three aisles.  She is involved in a local quilt guild (wasn't quite sure what that meant) and invited me to attend an event the following Monday.  I went, met a lot of really nice ladies who are incredibly experienced, and will join with the hope of learning and one day sharing my (better) finished projects.

Over the years, I have started a lot of projects that involved skills new to me.  I took a class in soldering, but didn't work at it long enough to see any improvement in my end results.  Then there were all of the online classes I paid for, the work for which I did briefly only to be distracted by something shiny, the doorbell or a barfing cat.  I do enjoy a number of creative hobbies and want "making" time a greater priority.  I've said that before, but I've really been cranking away in my studio space for a few weeks now and am set to keep at it.  Now the internal debate.  Do I practice making more sparrows until I figure out what I'm doing wrong, or curse the directions booklet and move on?  I think I'll drag out some old fabric and make a couple more sparrows.

  

Creative Life After Cataract Surgery

 I realized a couple of years ago that my vision seemed off.  Looking out of my right eye only, everything had an amber hue.  My optometrist actually told me it was normal to see color differently out of each eye.  Hmmm.  I didn't buy it. Then a couple of years ago, I was told I had the signs of a developing cataract in that right eye, but that surgery wasn't covered by insurance until DMV determined my vision was a problem.  I'm an excellent driver and have never had a ticket.  My license was automatically renewed by mail for 20 years.  I don't think DMV would ever know my vision was whonky!  To cut to the chase, I was diagnosed with the start of a cataract in the 2nd eye and, as the family unicorn, was informed it was the more unusual type that started around the outer part of the lens and spread like bicycle spokes toward the center.  I had given up working on my quilt project, embroidery and any soldering  because I couldn't see properly and began having problems with tasks as simple as threading my machine or hand needle.  

My first surgery was in December 2023, the second eye done just a few weeks later in January.  Color seems so much bolder and I felt confident enough to tackle my first artsy project - painting a few calling cards used for sharing my contact information with a flair so they aren't tossed out!  My near vision is still a little blurry and will certainly require reading glasses.  The pairs I snagged at the pharmacy make me feel like Mr. Magoo.  Ugh.  My eyeballs are also super dry and, of course, the million dollar eye drops aren't covered by my costly PPO insurance.  Thanks again, Cigna. 

It has taken until May to leave the house and not panic that I don't have eyedrops on me.  My vision is pretty darn good, although I do need reading glasses even with the bazillion dollar tri-focal implants.  Fibbers!

Our home is now officially an empty nest.  No longer do I have to work at a rickety Ikea desk that was in my young daughter's room back in 1995.   Nor do I have to work surround by litterboxes.  Blech.  I have invested in my first actual (and adjustable) sewing table MEANT for sewing, plus a new chair.  My new work area is in a large guest room with great windows providing a beautiful view and terrific light.  OK, I did keep the Ikea desk to make a larger work space, but the new table in the centerpiece of my new little world.

To help me with creative inspiration, I signed up for several classes on the site Domestika.  One is about learning the ins and outs of a DSLR camera.  I've owned a great Nikon for a few years and am the worst photographer ever because I have no idea what I'm doing.   Artist Suzanne Allard also has some fun and encouraging online courses, one of which I've begun.  Lastly, there was a Facebook post by the "America Connects" folks that (for a fee) provides a theme, color pallet and instructions to create a small painting, the image of which is included in a large public mural project.  I was nauseous with nerves, but signed up and submitted a photo of my little painting of my granddaughter in the color required.  I think it came out ok!

 

  I used the cheater method given my lack of skill and experience, creating a posterized version of a photo and tracing the outline of the various shades as a starter.  All I cared about is that she saw it and exclaimed, "That's me!"  I'll be framing the original and putting in her room here at Grandma's house.  As my vision improves and my confidence grows, I'll try something else.

The Quilt Project

There is nothing to put on the pressure to create like a bestie, "D," saying that she'd like me to make a quilt for her to get me going again in my studio again.  Finally.  She reminded me that she had nothing made by me.  I'm not good about treating what I make as worthy of serving as a gift for anyone.  Yet she asked me many times to make something and donate it for a charity auction, and every time whatever I made from an funky art doll to a quilt or painted children's furniture sold at the fixed price and didn't even make it to auction.  I need to stop messing around and work on that confidence.  Will it ever come?

Sewing is generally easy for me (at least I know how to operate the machine), but it had been a while since I worked on piecing a quilt.  The quilt D selected required a lot of different fabrics.  Over the course of a year I added to my  Kaffe Fassett stash, and buying more (some of which had been discontinued and out of print) so I had enough to make 94 unique blocks with no repeat of the main fabric, an almost as many unique fabric for the "branches" of the tree blocks.  I sewed with what I had while waiting for the next delivery.  Thank goodness for Etsy!  Most days I tried to spend at least two hours cutting and sewing with great music blasting.  There were times when things went smoothly, and times when everything went wrong and I made good use of my four letter word vocabulary.  

My inspiration is the Arboretum quilt from Anne of springleafstudios.com who generously provided her instructions for making this divine quilt. These are just a tiny sample of my untrimmed blocks.  The finished quilt photo is that of Spring Leaf Studios and what I hope mine will resemble.

 

 

Image from springleafstudios.com and made by Anne, owner of that blog and business

The day before we gathered to celebrate D's birthday, I finished the last block and wrapped the stack, including a photo of the inspiration photo (she picked 3 and let me choose, so didn't know which one made the cut).  It was almost a let down to no longer have a deadline.  Now I can start trimming and piecing whenever I want.  Ooh, the danger of not getting back to it.  

  Of course there is always real life - hosting the 1st birthday party for our one and only granddaughter, cat with bad medical news that means learning how to give a cat IV fluids every week, grand-baby gets REALLY sick which means I mask up and help, demolition begins for a remodel going on over my head, move out of our room, one adult kid moves back home for a few months and this was all in one week.  

In the midst of chaos, I am going to try to keep creating.  I was a much happier person when I was buzzing away at the machine or struggling to make fabric combination choices.  

Time to make a mess!

The Grinding Halt, aka Spine Surgery

Back pain has been a part of my life for almost twenty years now.  It started off as just "achy" and then turned full steam ahead into wicked and incapacitating pain with no warning.  I remember sitting on the living room floor with my legs in a jackknife position, one stretched out, the other bent with the sole of my right foot on my inner left thigh, happily wrapping Christmas gifts for a couple of hours.  My back felt sore, a couple of hours later it really hurt, and by dinner time I could not stand up straight.  Ugh.  I struggled to get to the doctor in the following days, prescribed strong pain killers and muscle relaxers to help with the abominable muscle spasms and sciatica that made me nauseous and kept me hunkered over the trash can in my office (just in case).  Oh, and I worked (in a non-clinical role) for spine surgeons and pain management physicians.  I got a lot of good advice about body mechanics and modifying how I moved, proper lifting, got stretched and massaged in exam rooms when free if patients, and eventually recovered.  This kind of nightmare occurred with varying degrees of severity about every five years.  Most recently, the pain was more than I could tolerate.  I also began experiencing additional new and unnerving symptoms - my right leg felt as if it were wrapped with a heavy lead blanket, my right knee went "flamingo" on me, and I took two terrible falls in one week that left me black and blue on my legs and concerned that I had broken my foot (I had "only" hyper-extended all of my toes under my foot) which put me on crutches for a couple of weeks.  One fall from a stool resulted in a vertebral fracture.  Good grief.

I saw an orthopedist that specialized in knees.  The films suggested that the knee that gave out was NOT the worse of my two osteoarthritic knees, and he suspected that the weakness might be related to my ongoing and worsening spine condition.   My lowest spinal disc appeared on film like a thin black line.  The vertebrae above it was slipping out of line and nerves were being pinched to the point of causing all of those symptoms of neurologic claudication in my right leg, now including neuropathy - a constant pain on the surface of my skin that feels like someone taking sandpaper to a sunburn, and that "buzzing" feeling like my feet are falling asleep and hurt.  After meeting with a spine surgeon and, thankfully, having a lot of work-related knowledge of the procedure and risks, I opted to go ahead with a two-level spine fusion to relieve pressure on nerves, reduce the risk of permanent damage, and stabilize my spine.

 Recovery has been much harder than I ever expected.  I spent nearly a decade with daily interaction with spine surgery patients.   I saw some have a much harder time than others (usually much older patients who also lived alone), and I saw a lot who did really well faster than I would have expected.  I have always been healthy in the sense that I recovered very quickly from "cooties" like a cold, and recovered well from my only other surgery 20 years ago.  This one has kicked my butt.

When I came home from the hospital, I could barely walk even using my walker.  I had a vertical incision on both my abdomen and back larger than the average cesarean incision (I asked friends who had gone that route).  My husband rented the first medical bed he could find.  It felt like an awful sleeper sofa, but it was what we had available.  There were nights I just sobbed, miserable and unable to roll one direction or the other on my own to get more comfortable, and NOTHING was comfortable.  I felt gross, unable to shower until more than a week after surgery when someone finally put a waterproof bandage over my back incision.  My hair was greasy, my pain was worse than anything I had ever experienced and meds weren't helping much, I was stuck in a dreary office downstairs...life just sucked.  And it sucked like this for a couple of weeks before I started to feel like I was improving.  

It has been nine weeks since my surgery.  I have made good progress recovering, but it has been slow.  I was telling a friend that this has been like a hard diet.  You starve yourself and give up everything you love to eat and drink.  The struggle is on the mind all of the time.  Weight loss is in very small increments and you don't see it looking at yourself in the mirror every day, but someone who hasn't seen you for a while notices right away.  Or you find that suddenly your jeans are loose right out of the dryer.  This recovery has been that kind of agonizingly slow.  Then one day I realized I got up from a particular chair by myself.  Then I feel the setback of still not being able to get up from a toilet without a walker or cane (yeah, that one's real fun).  Then I waddle around the kitchen without falling, making scrambled eggs and ham by myself, or a cup of tea.  Woohoo!

There isn't much to distract me while I recover.  Home PT has run its course, so says my insurance company.  I am too unstable to walk alone outdoors since we have windy roads with no sidewalks and there is no one to pick me up if I take a splat.  My husband has been working at home since March 2019, so Zoom meetings are going about ten hours a day.  He doesn't complain, but I know it has been exhausting - taking care of me, taking care of a huge house, working - all of which adds up to more hours in a week than exist.  I feel guilty and useless, as if all I do is watch TV and do my PT throughout the day.  Brain cells are falling out in chunks.  I read at night to help me doze off.  If I read during the day, it makes me doze off too and nighttime sleep is too hard to come by, so no napping!  I have GOT to get in a better state of mind. 

My goal this week is to find something creative to do that doesn't strain my back and that is not coloring!  I keep hoping that I  can find a way to cut quilt bits, or even play with watercolor, anything to save my sanity.  

Time for more PT.  I need to move more, fuss less.

I'm back with fresh approach

During this period of Covid-induced isolation and seclusion, I half expected to get back to trying to be creative.  The promises I made to myself to do so were empty.  The easel sat forever with a dusty canvas on it.  I never finished the project I started at the retreat I attended more than a year ago.  The list of personal disappointments is long, but I'm not going to document all of the failures.  Time to move ahead and DO something.

Last week I stumbled on the web site Domestika which offers very affordable art classes, the kind where you pay a single fee and have access to the videos forever (we'll see about that).  I started poking around and found two that really interested me, one offering instruction in watercolor, the other a combination of portrait painting using a photo as a guide and Photoshop layers.  The format allows for independent trudging along, but the opportunity to ask questions of the artists or participate in the forum for the class.  The lessons are not in English but subtitled, so each will take a couple of viewings (the first to read, next to watch), but I don't mind.  This will offer an opportunity for me to improve my Spanish which I clearly need after the game of charades with my landscaper today.  Two lessons for the price of one!

The first "lesson" was simply to view the artist's introduction to herself and the course, then provide a personal introduction and thoughts behind choosing the course.  I made the mistake of reading the introductions of others taking the class before submitting my own and just about stopped in my tracks - graphic artists, doctors, illustrators, interior designers...but the description clearly stated that no experience was required.  While I sat frozen for a good ten minutes before attaching photos of my own work and my bio brief, I reread what I typed a couple of times.  My goal is to have fun learning something new.  That's it.  Not to compete with others in the class, not to compare my work to theirs and then feel sorry for sucking at painting, but to focus on having fun.  So I hit "submit."  It was the most challenging keystroke ever, but I did it.  As soon as I did, I wondered if it were possible to go back later and delete the photos.  Then I stopped myself, having decided that I need to do things differently.  I always told my kids, "If at first you don't succeed, stop doing the same thing that didn't work over and over again!"  Time for me to listen to my own good advice and shut down the negative thoughts. 

Time to look at lesson #2.

Just give me chardonnay and a bendy straw

For a while, I wrestled with trying to find time to be creative when I was juggling a full-time job and parenting.  Then I gave up the job so that I could pursue my creativity drive, and it took a nap.  Then I became an almost-empty-nester when my older child married, and the younger of the two in college and only home for summers and the holidays.

Not any more.  The newlywed was recruited to her dream job close to our home that came with an impossible commute from her own, so she moved back home Sunday through Friday.  Now her husband is also job hunting in this area, so they are now both here full time.  Then the one that graduated from college is still in Asia (sending the most terrifying photos of spiders bigger than his hand that were on the roof of their "room" for a night or two), scheduled to return in a few weeks in time to start the hunt for his first full-time job post college.  His significant other was displaced and is working full-time and living with us, also saving toward their getting their own place post college.  It's nice to have company other than the cats, and I've actually been good about forcing myself to stop with chores to get into the studio most days.

To make sure that things remain interesting and never boring around here,  we are about to embark on a full kitchen gut and remodel, so my studio/laundry room will become a temporary kitchen for the next 3-4 months, and a lot of my art supplies are getting packed away and moved into the garage.  The library will become the family room, part of our upstairs will become the office and the family room & kitchen will become a war zone for a while.  The project is starting sooner than I was initially advised, so I am NOT prepared to cook in the temporary space unless we are having microwaved popcorn for dinner.  And chardonnay.  That doesn't need any heat ;-)  Just a straw.

It is hard enough to be creative when everything is going smoothly, so these next few months are really going to be a test of my commitment to keep at it.  I won't have an oven for working with polymer clay, so maybe this is the time to experiment with paper clay again.  I can always solder (and heaven knows, based on my recent results, that I really, really need to practice), sew and work out ideas for new projects.  Even in the midst of construction, I want to push myself to do something creative, make something, every day.  And then celebrate my accomplishment with chardonnay :-)

Art and math do not mix

I have to start this off by stressing I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom whose kids are now grown (though one is home after college graduation and trip meant to kill ME to Asia for a month, but that's another panic attack story), so I do the old fashioned job of keeping the house Monday through Friday.  Unsolicited, my husband, who works an executive job about 11 hours a day, often two weeks straight if traveling, kicks in before I even get up on the weekends AND he cooks on the weekends.  Seriously cooks.  So my "chores versus creative time" is a mess of my own doing.  Some things never change.  The cats keep using the litter boxes that I have to scoop.  Dinner doesn't take long to cook, but it always means making a mess that I have to clean up.  Repairs around the house need to be managed, and it's my responsibility since I'm home.  The problem is that with a big house and constant chores, it's really, really easy to get out of the habit of doing anything creative.  What a shock to see how long it had been since I posted to my blog.  It isn't that I expect anyone to read it - it's all about catharsis for me - but still!  The lack of activity here is a testament to the lack of activity in my litter-boxy studio.  Time for a new plan of action!

Today I put "studio" time on my calendar, actually treating it as if I were having a meeting (like in the oooold days when I wore a suit and had an office and business cards).  If I put more of what I need to do on the calendar, it will give me more direction for the day, plotting chores time, errands time, and make a mess time.  Today was more about making a mess.

Husband Harold has always liked my quilts and actually looks forward to attending events like the Road to California show every year with real enthusiasm.  He also really loves the same modern prints and bright colours that I do, so he was very happy when I handed him my copy of Kaffe Fasset's "Country Garden Quilts" and ask him which one (that didn't have any curves!) he would like me to make for him.  I should have torn out pages 28 & 29 first.  O.M.G.

This quilt is made up of a million pinwheels, which means a zillion triangles have to be cut from dozens of fabrics, then reassembled in as close to perfect stupid little squares as possible.  Four of those stupid little squares made of two triangles get assembled into one larger square and you have to hope and pray every stitch is straight and the squares are actually square.  Curse pages 28 & 29!  The instructions are NOT for the faint of heart, for the person who needed a tutor for math in 7th grade when we had to do math using dreaded fractions.  I can do it now, but trying to do it with questionable instructions to begin with, boggling my mind, resulted in a lot of mistakes and the usage of all of the bad words that I know.  And I have used them all with gusto.

This is what the stupid quilt is supposed to look like.

 

The instructions are a little confusing.  I can build furniture from Ikea in the blink of an eye, so you KNOW these instructions had to be a little wonky.  The directions for cutting fabric didn't make a lot of sense and are contradictory to most of what is taught in quilting class that I could find on my beloved YouTube or other web sites.  All I wanted to know to begin was what the heck size fabric square do I need to start with to end up with a pinwheel of a specific size.  This is what I had to do to get an answer to that question (and then I add extra to compensate for waggles in cutting).

I drew pictures.  I cut out practice pieces using scrap fabric and assembled them to experiment with size.  Then I found the Missouri Quilt Company website and video that explained how to do the math you see on this notebook page.  None of that helps with simple counting, though, as is demonstrated by this pile of useless pieces that are the extras because I'm soooooo good at counting.  

My charming husband asked, "Can't you just use these for another quilt?"  And I asked, "Do you think I'm insane enough to make TWO quilts made up of a zillion triangles put back together to make one big piece of fabric?!?"

I think tomorrow I'll paint something.  Maybe I'll make some more of my calling cards.  I don't use as many bad words.  Then I'm going to send all of my extra triangles to my sister as a surprise gift to add to her stash.  Good luck, Lisa!  xox