This Tumbler quilt has a bit of a story behind it. I made it while I still lived in Rockhampton, and quilted it on my friend Kaye's Statler on one of my visits to Sydney. It never got bound because I lent it to a newly opened patchwork shop for display.
I'm almost ashamed to admit how many quilts were laying around, just waiting for their binding. I rarely follow my quilts through from piecing to binding. Once it's a top I forget about it; if I quilt it then I act as if it's all finished. Sometimes I trim it ready to bind, make the binding and then it just gets packed away. I'm always ready to abandon it to something more interesting, so my stack of completely finished quilts rarely gets any bigger.
I haven't once sat at my machine in my sewing room this trip, which has to be some sort of a record.
While I'm in a finishing mood I thought I'd tackle the Tiny Album blocks. I started them in 2017, and I've been casually working on them ever since.
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| 64" x 75" |
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| 77" x 88" |
One whole night was devoted to getting the borders on my Ohio Stars top.
I was on a mission to fill up my box of 2.5" x 4.5"bricks so that I'd have lots to choose from for my leader-enders. I didn't want to pull out the scrap drawers and cut strips, so I weeded all these charm squares out of the charms drawer.
I was making good progress on my Beloved blocks, but I kept thinking,
"Why am I making an 80"square quilt. I don't like square quilts. I could leave off 2 rows, have a 68 x 80" quilt and that would suit me better."
So that's what I did.
I've been busy with EQ8, working out plans for the projects I have on the go. I always feel more in control when I know exactly what I need to complete a project, so it's worth the time away from the sewing room.
This is how my leader-ender of Stacked Bricks will look. I haven't got the pink triangles around the edge drawn properly, but this is good enough to be going on with.
My time in the sewing room over the last few months has been spent jumping from one thing to another and getting sidetracked by new projects, then trying to dig myself out of the resulting chaos. That hasn't been very productive, but I've had fun with it, so that's what counts. But last time I was home, 2 weeks ago, I got a bee in my bonnet about my Beloved project. I had kitted all the blocks I would need and packed away all the fabric, but then I decided that I just needed to get it done.
It's not easy to sew the blocks together; the seam allowances make a big bump no matter how they're pressed, and I wasn't looking forward to that. It seemed that the only way to deal with that was to just get on and do it, so I sewed like a maniac and got half the quilt in one piece.
Life keeps changing, and because I'm committed to helping out DD Seonaid and her family, my life changes with theirs. 2 weeks ago Hayden started another Fly In Fly Out job, this time at Olympic Dam, a mine in the north of South Australia. At least he's in the same time zone this time, so he can easily stay in touch with the kids. He's working away 2 weeks, and home for 1, which is a lot kinder than his last job where he was gone 4 weeks at a time. I'm still working out how long I will stay with Shonny each fortnight to help out.
The first 2 weeks were a blur as we worked on getting the kid's routines established without Dad there to help. Finn is the hard one to work around; when he's hungry or tired there's no reasoning with him, and there have been some epic screaming bouts from him. Now that he's nearly 6 months old we've introduced some solid food to his diet, and he's certainly calmed down. His hunger pangs are savage, so a bowl of rice porridge is helping overcome that. He gets so excited when he sees his bowl and spoon, it's hard to get around his clutching hands, he wants it so bad. Mealtimes are so easy when they like food and are willing to try anything.
It will be hard work for Shonny to do it all on her own, especially bath and bed time, but if I use my time down there to make freezer meals and make sure the washing is up to date then I'm sure she can cope without me when I come home for weekends. It will all evolve into a workable routine over time I'm sure, and I'm still enjoying spending such a lot of time with the grandkids. Not everyone has that privilege.
Thank you for all the well-wishers on my last post. If I haven't replied to you privately its because the comment came up as no-reply when I tried to email you. But I'm grateful for your concern.
My many projects are in a terrible mess, littering every surface and tipping my sewing room into utter chaos. I'm cutting so many different size pieces, for so many projects, and I'm just making a bigger and bigger mess all the time. For some reason I focused on my Beloved blocks mentioned in a previous post, and resolved to find out exactly what I needed to kit up and how many blocks I already had.
This post has nothing to do with quilting, but it's an important part of what's been happening in my life over the last 2 months, and it may inspire other people to take care of themselves.
Here in Australia we have a Breast Screening program that provides free mammograms every 2 years. There are screening buses that travel all through rural South Australia, so there's no excuse not to attend. Mereth and I have always kept those appointments, because we lost our Mum to breast cancer in 2006. However, at the time of my last appointment I was in Adelaide, and then I didn't make a new appointment, and then Finn, and Covid and.....
At a doctor's appointment for something entirely different I mentioned that I hadn't had my last mammogram, and also that on occasion I'd noticed spots of blood in my bra. Well that's not good, she said, and arranged an appointment for a mammogram at an Adelaide hospital. I had the mammogram, and an ultrasound, and both showed nothing, but the doctor said We really need to investigate this blood discharge, because it's not normal. I was scheduled for a biopsy a week later, under general anaesthetic, and that wasn't fun,but it wasn't too awful either. I did think that there was an awful lot of bruising for a biopsy and it was a large incision
When I went back two weeks later I was a bit astonished to be told that the pathology came back as cancerous; up until then I'd sort of felt I was wasting their time and there was nothing wrong. The doctor said I wasn't to worry because they had removed all the tissue they deemed to be abnormal, and it was good that they'd caught it so early. I was glad that they didn't go on with the biopsy, wait for the results, and then schedule another surgery; it was much better to just have the one operation. I will have an MRI in three months time to make sure that there is no recurrence, and regular checkups to make sure I'm OK.
I am most grateful for our Medicare system here; the four consultations, the mammogram and ultrasound, the surgery and a night in a care facility cost me nothing. I paid $16 to leave my car in the hospital carpark overnight. While I'm still a bit shocked at the speed of it all, and the "You had cancer and now you don't" statement, at least I don't have medical bills to take care of.
If I had been wearing my black bra I would never have noticed the little spots of blood, which was the only symptom; nothing showed up in the mammogram or the ultrasound. When it was large enough to show up on a mammogram it would have meant more invasive surgery to remove it. From now on I'll wear a light coloured bra, I'll have a mammogram every year, and I won't ignore even the slightest thing out of the ordinary. Fingers crossed that the MRI in 3 months time is clear.
I am currently obsessed with this block, made from 2" strips. It's easy to put together, and it seems the perfect block for all those odd strips of repro fabrics littering the scrap drawers. In fact, I like it so much I have used most of my precious scraps to kit up another 30 blocks, and I can't wait till I have time to sew them all.
Life has settled down to a routine of 3 days in Adelaide, and 4 days at home, unless there's a need for me to help out longer with the grandkids. I'm loving the time spent with them, and because I'm there to babysit it means that Shonny doesn't have to take the kids with her when she does the shopping and runs errands. Thomas is not a fan of grocery shopping, and Finn hates his baby capsule with a passion; he's big enough to graduate to a car seat now, so that will help his attitude. It's much nicer not to have to deal with screaming kids on every outing though.
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