Weekend Update

Seems like time has flown by as well as drug on since my surgery on Monday....how can that be?  The first few days I spent mostly either in my bed with my leg elevated or laying on the couch with my leg elevated.  I did keep taking my pain pills during the first few days and that got me through and I did a lot of sleeping those days as well. 

Wednesday I decided I could get along without constant pain pills so just took regular Tylenol during the day but did take the pain pill before bedtime to ensure pain free sleep.  So far this program of pain management is working and am more alert because I am taking less and less of the pain medication. 

Today I got out a a miniature that I had started quilting on a long time ago but had put it away - probably from lack of interest or I got busy with something else.  I did do a little quilting on it this morning and think it will be a good way to spend some of the many hours I have to fill every day.

The pieces on this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt are about 1/2" across.  This is a quilt that I have been working on - sporadically for many, many years.  This quilt holds many memories for me of sitting in hospital waiting rooms when my Dad had his many heart surgeries and other times he was hospitalized before his death.   It went to the hospital for the stays with my mother several times too.  A friend gave me the perfect name for it "Lady In Waiting" because of all the times it helped me through those times that were sometimes very difficult. 

I have about 1/3 of the hand quilting done in the center section and now will try to keep at it and get it finished.  It is probably one of my most favorite quilts I have ever made so it deserves to be finished.  There are a lot of things that I can not do now and that can be frustrating but this is something I can do and it will help fill the time with something productive.

Lynn

Old and New Projects

Started quilting on this miniature auction wall hanging for our guild the other day and this is all the farther I have gotten. Need to come up with a design for the navy blue borders yet. Can't think of what design to use so it will just sit for a while until I get an inspiration.

I have been wondering for sometime how small I could go to do fusible applique with buttonholed edges. Yesterday I started experimenting with a pattern called Fragrant Memories from this book by Cynthia Tomaszewski.

The pretty tulip block in the book is 9" and I reduced it on the copy machine to 3". It wasn't as good a copy or the exact size I wanted so I decided to scan a 9" copy into my computer and traced it into EQ6 as an applique pattern. I now can print this pattern any size I want. I printed the block as a 2" block and it was really cute. Traced the pattern onto fusible, ironed it to my background square and started stitching.

You can get an idea of how small the tulip is by the bobbin sitting beside it. Chose to use silk thread on both the top and bottom of the buttonhole stitch. The next photo shows the front of my machine and shows that the buttonhole stitch is #1329 on my Bernina 730 and width is 1.2 and the stitch length is 1.2. This is the size I stitched around all the pieces.

It is such a small stitch I put the strongest magnifying lens on the machine to be able to see where I was working. Worked like a charm but I do have to make sure I keep the straight stitching right beside the edge of the applique so it doesn't show.

I didn't know for sure what to do with the tail starts and ends of each line of stitching. My solution was to pull both threads to the back and tie a couple square knots and clip the tails. Thought with silk thread the stitching might come undone more easily than cotton thread.

Here is the finished mini tulip block. I had some red silk thread but didn't have any of the blue green shade so used a med. grey. The grey thread looks better in person than on the photos.

The one part that I thought really didn't work was the very thin stem. The buttonhole stitches overlapped each other. Went back into my EQ6 file and changed the width of the stem and printed a pattern to try. Just did the stem and played with the buttonhole stitch on part of it and do like the wider width better. You can tell that there is a buttonhole stitch on either side on the second example but the first one just looks like I zig-zagged over the stem.

Am thinking of making at least 4 of the tiny blocks and make another small wall hanging for our guild's auction in April.

After Christmas I was looking at projects I had started or never finished and the Grandmother's Flower Garden miniature kept calling my name. I had started hand quilting it quite a while ago then it got put aside for other projects and never worked on since. I have been working on it for a little while each night now and don't have it half quilted yet but am making progress.

I am hand quilting it and it just takes a while as the hexagons are only about 1/2" across and I am doing quite a bit of quilting on it. Quilting through those seams is sure not fun! Most of the time I can only take one stitch at a time. I figure every stitch I put in is one less stitch to go - right?

My fingers are gradually getting the callouses back and are not getting so sore. I had not hand quilted for so long my fingers were pretty tender at first.

Happy Quilting,

Lynn

Roses and Grandmothers Flower Garden

Just looked at my blog and realized it has been a long time since I have posted anything. I thought when I started "blogging" I would be adding something everyday or so. Think I was waiting for something profound to happen or needed to wait and post only quilty things. Maybe I will just post a note about what ever is going on that day instead of waiting to post quilt news as it seems right now during the summer I don't get much quilting done.

My flower beds are looking pretty good now with flowers blooming here and there. I do love flowers and have planted quite a few. I planted some bushes a couple of years ago when I got the beds going but they are very small. I didn't want to spend a lot on larger bushes so went cheap and got the tiny ones at Wallmart.

I try to plant a few perennials each year and plant annuals between the little bushes, which are growing slowly. I figure by the time I don't want to have to take care of such a large area of flowers the bushes will be large enough there will not be space for flowers. Either that or I will have to hire a gardener to plant and pull weeds for me.

I had only one rose survive a year ago, it is a full peach rose with a wonderful scent - don't remember the name. This year it leafed out early and had multitudes of buds on it and I was so excited. A week ago it started blooming - Red and Peach roses. The buds were mostly red and two peach ones and am figuring part of the grafted rose died back to the hardy root stock which was an old fashioned red rose. There are two stems that have the larger peach roses on it. I hate to cut all the red ones back as it is really covered with red blooms and looks so nice - almost like a Knock Out rose.

Aren't they both pretty?

I did start quilting on my Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt named "Lady in Waiting" but it is slow going. Hand quilting takes me a long time and I am doing a lot of quilting on it. I do a lot of quilting on my miniatures as I want them to look like large quilts. I am quilting in the center of each 1/2" hexagon and think there are over 800 hexagons in the quilt besides the applique around the edge. I am hoping to get it finished to take with me to the Nebraska State Quilt Convention in Chadron the end of July to hang in the teachers display. I told them this is the quilt I would be bringing so need to get moving to get it done in time. Don't know why I do things like that to myself. Should have just planned to take a quilt already finished. Below are a couple of photos of what the quilting on this piece looks like so far.

All for now and I will try to do better from now on.

Lynn