Where Have You Been, Juffie Girl???

Hi all! Just back from two weeks in this spectacular scenery ... down the back behind Moab, Utah, in a canyon by the Colorado River. This is the view from the front porch of our cottage. And the quilt photos were taken on the back porch, which is about 10 feet from the Colorado River, with a giant red rock canyon rearing up just past the river into the sky. We're 17 miles into the canyon ... and 17 miles from a cell phone signal because of that ... so blogging was out of the question.

While there I finished my eldest grand-daughter's quilt. She is an animal fanatic, particularly wild animals, and I had found this fabric full of wonderful African animal faces. These were "fussy cut" individually, and set in fabrics with the green of the Serengeti plain grasses in spring, a gentle spotted fabric rather like leopard but much smaller and more delicate, some wonderful big grass stripy fabric, and some weathered gray wrinkly elephant skin-like fabric.

Two pillows made just of the faces went with the quilt, but I moved while photographing them, so they're too blurry for public view.

Now I'm back and the book sales have begun again with a vengeance (shipped 18 today, already have 8 orders for tomorrow) - my quilting bee has got me going on the baby quilt for the next expected grand-child, not to mention several others - church is getting going again (I do need to let this go - I'm finding the energy level can't sustain it along with the rest of my daily life) - and so on and so forth.

My desk is piled with blog materials, so you can expect to hear from me regularly for quite a while from now on! Like it or not!

Quilting Tips for the Disabled...

It's been a good four days for quilting lately, despite not being able to get to my Quilting Guild tonight because I couldn't park near enough for my lame self to get there. I've got my mammoth Serengeti Plain quilt, with faces of jungle animals, African plains grasses, very fine leopard print, pale elephant skin grey etc. etc. off to get "stuffed" (quilted). I've nearly finished Chapter Five of our quilting bees mystery quilt, in the colors of our bedroom drapes. I've made progress on my daughter-in-laws, television watching lap quilt, in antique fabrics. And made a good beginning on another grand-daughter's "stack the deck" quilt. Love designing and piecing. But still, quilting can be tough on those with disabilities.

I suppose there's already a book of hints on quilting for the disabled, if anyone knows of it, let me know! Just in case there's not -- here's what I've discovered.

You can cut anything sitting down. Even if you have to cut clear across whole widths of fabric. You just have to fold the fabric differently. Depending on the length this can be pretty easy to do. Just fold from side to selvage (usually it comes like this), but then, do it again. Now you've got four-fold (easy for rotary cutters) and not a long distance to traverse. I've found the simple dining room table makes a great surface (with mat, of course), and the dining room chair height is just fine for this.

Ironing, another bugbear if you've got disabilities. I've tried a little ironing board and mini-iron right by my side at the machine. That's just about OK for little seam pressing, but the better the fabric, the less successful it is. Missing the steam, don't you know. Luckily most ironing boards can be set to a seated height, and man, I can go all day that way.

But my main complaint is the dratted pedal. There is no way my knee wants to go up into the air in order to get enough pressure on my toes to push the pedal down. What works? Having the pedal backwards!! So all I have to do is lower my toes and off we go, no knee involvement at all. Now if the machine manufacturers would just take this to heart, and make a pedal where the cord can be inserted either side, what a treat that would be!

If you know any other good tips, please leave them here in the comments section!

Hell, much relieved by good friends who care, and a fit of the giggles

Hell, well yes it is a bit like hell ... those handicapped signs look so anodyne, so, oh I don't know, gentle, comfortable.

Well, it's not like that for me. Not now, anyway. It's hell. It all began a week or two ago, with increasing weakness in my right leg, but working out as I do, with quads to die for, I soldiered on and all was really pretty OK.

Until yesterday. When the pain suddenly hit, mainly behind the knee (I've got a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament back there, ACL to you sportsters, has it gone completely??) and the leg became virtually unusable.

Out came the serious walking stick, for the first time in three years, and even then I can't get to the loo in my own bathroom, just the one in the hall. Pain excruciating, walking slow if at all, nooo bending of the knee or I get repaid with complete agony and apoplecty.

Made it to quilting bee this morning, just, sitting and listening and chatting and looking at patterns was worth the pain, just. Being the right leg, driving, let alone getting in and out of the van, well, Satan was somewhere giggling.

But he wasn't the only one laughing. Because there at the bee, as one woman was idly looking through a quilting catalogue she came upon the ironing board cover pictured above. A bit of a hottie, not least because when you are ironing, the heat of the iron makes the towel disappear and things are, well, apparent, apparently.

The half of the quilters who had been nurses growled and grumbled they'd seen enough of that thank you very much. Some others quietly took down the address. But whichever camp they fell into, and camp is probably the right word, they, we, all giggled. Quite a bit.

That, and friends who actually cared that it hurt, well, it doesn't get any better than that. Back in your hovel, Satan, you lost this round.

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly

Well, so there I was sitting in my quilting bee this morning, cutting away.

It was Community Quilt morning, so we were all working on quilts to give away -- to battered wives and children, to families whose homes have burned down, to the homeless, there are all sorts of people whose lives can be brightened not only by a quilt, but by knowing others are thinking of them enough to actually spend time and effort making them something nice.

Actually, at the moment, every week I work at community quilts. There are two bags of "squares" donated by someone who must have been, to put it kindly, happily sozzled when she cut them. There is much less use for irregular rhomboids and trapezoids in quilting than she must have thought. My job is to recut them into perfect squares so they can easily be assembled into quilts.

As a total novice quilter, just about to finish my only second quilt, I cannot tell you how intimidating I find all these wonderful women and their incredible skills. And they are wonderful. Quilters have an ethic, a code, a morality, a custom, of always being helpful to one another. Don't know how to do something? They will line up to kindly show you how. Make a mistake? They will line up and show you sixteen ways to get out of trouble with it.

And yet, and yet ... damn they know so much, and I know so little. Those who have always thought I was an arrogant sod would be amazed to see this shy intimidatee!

But as we went along today, first one, then another of these elegant gifted creative skilled women cried out, "Drat, how long have I been sewing without a bobbin thread?!" (A sewing machine needs two threads to stitch one line, the needle and the bobbin. Without a bobbin thread, you get a nice line along the top that looks as if you've sewn something, but it's a sham. You've got no connection.)

Now a few times at home I've been sewing along and when I take the piece out, flop, it falls apart, I've run out of bobbin thread. Dumb rube, I've thought.

Can I tell you how reassuring it was that these prize-winning show quilters did the same thing, and laughed with and at each other. I thought, "I might make at least a beginning quilter yet!"

Just reminded me how much we all struggle to look perfect, good, in control ... when so often what helps and inspires others is how our mistakes helps them realize maybe they could do this too.