Archive for August, 2016

Finished Facing/ Cataract Surgery

Saturday, August 20th, 2016

Except for the sleeve and documentation tag, the Kansas Flinthills landscape is finished.

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I’ve only done one faced edging before when I followed someone else’s instructions and it was a pain in the butt. This time I followed my intuition and did what felt right. It was easier and came out great.

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I really like how it looks – the simplicity of it.

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I don’t like how much hand work is involved with sewing the hanging sleeve on by hand. When I do a bound edge, I sew one side of the hanging sleeve into the binding seam, eliminating quite a bit of hand sewing.

Since I had my cataract surgery last week on my right eye, my vision is pretty lopsided right now. I am looking at the world through one corrected and one uncorrected eye, so things are a bit wonky. My new interocular lense is for long distance sight so my close up vision is not so good. Next week I will get the left eye done so I expect the long distance will get better and the close up, perhaps worse. If needed I will be able to get reading glasses for that eventually, for now I find a magnifying glass helpful.

The effects of color have been interesting and so obvious right now when alternating eyes makes it easy to see the difference in the before and after surgery colors. One does not realize how yellow everything is with cataracts because the change is so gradual. I thought I was seeing perfectly fine, but in reality that was not the case. I had been thinking that we were having an especially lovely spring this year and I gave credit to the generous rainfall. Everything was such a saturated green this year with golden highlights, just beautiful! It was just the yellow cataracts. Yellow being always a part of green sort of intensified it. And the washed out areas of sunlight turned yellow. The surgeon related a similar story. A lady came in for her first checkup. She said “Look at my shirt!” “What about it?” he asked. “It’s PURPLE!”, she exclaimed, “It was brown when I bought it.”
Makes sense, purple and yellow make brown.

Just last evening, I noticed that the shower curtain and towels didn’t go together any more. I thought they had nice peachy colors, but in fact, the yellow in the cataracts made the pink in the shower curtain peachy and the beige towel took on a nice glow and they looked so good. But in reality the pink and the beige that they really are looks pretty bad!

Time to go shopping; I wonder what I will discover next! It is an interesting journey!

Focus Friday

Friday, August 19th, 2016

School started this week, so today’s choice for Focus Friday is “Little Old One Room Schoolhouse”.  I actually attended a one room schoolhouse one year and this always brings back memories – mostly good!

The traditional maple leaf block has been good to me! It’s a favorite, and I have included it in several of my patterns. This little pieced wall hanging, approximately 23 x 27″, is so quick and easy to do, even for a beginner – makes a great gift!

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“Little Old One Room Schoolhouse” Innovations #00322 $8.00
Click on PATTERNS in the side bar to order.

The 23 x 27″ machine pieced and machine quilted pattern sample quilt is also for sale, only $200.00, email if interested.

I have been so bad this summer, at posting to this blog, including Focus Fridays. Those of you who are on FaceBook have probably seen postings already for “Coneflowers”,

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“Dragonfly Dream”,

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“Frog Frolics”,

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“Udderly Preposterous”,

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“Peace”,

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and “Tall Sunflowers”

 

450TallSunfCheck them out in the PATTERN section, and remember, the samples are for sale as well!

I’ll try to do better at keeping up!

Oak and Acorn

Saturday, August 13th, 2016

Wow, nearly a month since my last post – I really intended to do better!

Many years ago, I started a quilt for an antique bed that we inherited. I wanted it to enhance the bed which had carved acorn shapes on the posts, so I chose the Oakleaf and Acorn block. I hand appliqued the leaves and acorns in varying shades of burgundy reproduction prints on many shades of cream traditional background fabrics. The backgrounds of the blocks alternate between one solid fabric or pieced four patches of four different fabrics, so the resulting quilt top is quite scrappy while still remaining basically a two color quilt.

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The blocks are 15″ square and there are 20 of them set 4 x 5 and surrounded by a border of a burgundy oak and acorn print with a narrow gold accent. Because It is a special quilt and I hand appliqued all of the blocks I had to hand quilt it as well. I decided to put excessive amounts of quilting so everything is outlined in a double row of stitches, a quarter inch (eyeballed), then another double row of stitches. The background fabrics are quilted in a grid of 1/2″ spaced lines. I considered adding more lines to end with a 1/4″ grid, but even I think that is excessive! When I started, I did all of the outlining on all 20 blocks. then started on the leaves and acorns and did a few backgrounds to get the feel of how it would look. I am using a taupe quilting thread and a size 12 needle.

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Eventually, I put it away and was only getting it out whenever I had a hand quilting class to teach. At that rate, especially since I retired from teaching, it was never going to be finished. So, a month or so ago, I decided to get it out and start quilting a little every day; I’ve only missed a few days. I thought it would be more rewarding to completely finish each block rather than continue to do a certain element throughout and today I have 8 blocks, the first two rows, totally finished. That is gratifying and it keeps me from falling asleep while watching TV!

Click on the Hand quilting tag to see a photo of another of the blocks in progress from seven years ago!!

This past week I had my first cataract surgery so that will slow me down some. Things are a little blurry now. I will have the other eye done in 2 weeks. The lenses that I’m getting implanted are for distance, so I will eventually need glasses for reading and quilting. In the meantime I will still try to quilt every day as long as I can!