Here in FunkyTown...

I've been in a bit of a funk for a while now. Can't decide what the problem is. I keep showing up here sporadically to bemoan the fact that I am in a funk.

I'm still sewing a bit, finishing old projects and trying to decide what I'm going to do about getting the quilt tops quilted. One does not make deals with God but I've jokingly told my parents I hope to live long enough to be able to use up all my fabric. And that I'm hedging my bets for a long life by buying more fabric here and there! I've found some bargains at a couple of local estate sales. I'm not really buying up too much fabric. Mostly I'm only buying what can be considered too good of a deal to pass up. I do not want a big pile of fabric to have to figure out where to put and how to use.

Mostly I'm sewing at our little place in the country, on the weekends. Here at home I'm trying to get back into a pattern of writing in my journal and doing artsy type projects. I'd like to begin to meditate again. Sometimes I'm lazy and undisciplined, and I allow myself to be distracted by time suckers like Facebook.

The funks, they come and they go. I guess that's the good news. The feeling is not permanent and will eventually pass.

This is not an old project. It's new. My aunt gave me the fabric that was already cut in strips. The pattern is a rail fence pattern. When I got it all put together, she found the border fabric and the black in her stash and gave them to me. I can't remember if I have a backing fabric ready for this one or not. I hope to quilt this one myself on my regular sewing machine.

I'm kind of already thinking about next year. 2017 feels like it has flown by and I can't remember half of what has happened in the past year. I keep having really good ideas about how I want to do a better job of living in 2018. One thing for sure, I'd like to live more mindfully. And not to wile away so many of my hours poking around the internet. In the meantime, I'd like to ground myself in what remains of 2017 and to savor the days I have now.

Two-fer

It may just be a baseless superstition but another thing that seems to happen when you don't show up on your blog for a while is that you get spammy comments. I had one and deleted it. Hopefully that will be the end of that.

Today's post will be a two-fer and then I might be done for a while with posting older projects that I've finished.

First up is one that is called "Endless Wells" (or maybe "Hidden Wells," I never can remember). Many years ago, our Kroger's had fabric and other WalMart type things that were not typical of grocery stores. When they decided to quit carrying fabric, they had a huge clearance sale. I can remember my mother and I went more than once to gather the bargains. I still have fabric from those excursions!

This one was a pain in the "uh-huh" because of the bias cuts. I had to sew four strips together, then cut squares out of the strips, then cut the squares into four pieces (cutting diagonally, which caused the fabric to stretch) and then put them back together again. I'm afraid my piecing skills are definitely not exemplary in this quilt. But it is done, and I'm happy! You can't see it very well, but the backing fabric is a rust and blue fabric with paisleys.

This quilt was also made with Kroger sale fabric. I started it sometime in the middle seventies. It was a quilt I was making for my husband. About three fourths of it is hand quilted. I got impatient and wanted the project to be completed so I practiced my free motion quilting on the remaining squares. Again, this is not an exemplary representative of my quilting skills! But it is done, and I am happy!

This is another one of those areas where some of my treatment for some of my cancer extracts an ongoing price from me. Because of chemo induced neuropathy and stiffness in my finger joints caused by the medicine that is supposed to be an extra protection against the breast cancer coming back, I don't think I could ever really do the kind of fine motor movement needed to hand quilt. Acceptance is good. Gratitude is also good. It's really a small price to pay for survival. So, cut my losses and move on (one of the few areas in my life where I can actually do that!).

I've still got a few tops to go that were the result of block swaps done when we were living in Houston and I was a member of a quilting guild. I think I counted eight or nine more tops that are ready and waiting to be quilted. I need to get batting and backing fabric for most of them. And maybe money to pay someone to long arm quilt them if my own free motion quilting skills do not improve. But they will improve. I need to practice.

And I need to not be afraid of messing them up. Or of them not being perfect. I need to not let my fear paralyze me. That's true in quilting and in life, right?

Back Again

When I don't show up regularly for my blog, I forget what I've told and shown. I know I haven't told that I went to the Houston Quilt Show this past weekend. I'd been wanting to go, maybe almost since the first time they ever did the show. But then I went through a phase where I wasn't quilting/sewing and I lost interest in going, even though it was on my unofficial bucket list I keep inside my head.

I wanted mostly to go this year to try out different kinds of quilting machines because maybe one day owning a quilting machine is another item on my unofficial bucket list I keep inside my head. I got to try out several different kinds and brands. I was able to determine a couple of choices I did not want. I wasn't ready to buy but maybe eventually I will get one. I remain ever hopeful. And I can hope for years!

I thought, as we left the quilt show on Saturday afternoon that I'd seen it once and that was enough. Sunday morning, I thought how I'd like to go back next year. We shall see what I do.

Today at work I saw a student who reminded me a lot of my son. He had the same build my son had and the angularity of his face was similar. That brought on a deep yearning for my son. Yearning is a difficult and terrible feeling. I do miss him.

I found these blocks in my cedar chest. I could not remember sewing them together, much less buying the fabric. All that white, and the delicate look of the quilt is not my typical style. And yellow and pink combined? That's not me either. I do love paisleys so there is that. Maybe that what's drew me to this fabric choice.

My son was still alive when I started this quilt. I still had a disease free colon. I hadn't yet tasted cancer. Maybe this quilt was me back in the day, before these things, but I'm no longer anywhere near being this delicate in my present life. Frankly, sometimes I think of this as "soft me" and I think of my current self as my "not so soft me." Maybe I'll add a touch of gray to the borders of this quilt, maybe as a private symbol for me, to remind myself that I've been through some things and I've come out from those things a stronger person. There is still work to be done on this quilt, just as there is still work to be done on me, or growth to be had.

Finishing Projects

I haven't been around much lately. I've been trying to figure out why I started blogging in the first place, and whether or not I want to continue. Just blogging for the sake of blogging isn't so much "The Thing" anymore. Most of my bloggy friends don't blog regularly anymore.

I think I want to continue to blog, and to use this as one way for me to say, "I was here," and this are the things I see from my perspective. It doesn't have to be great writing, it's mostly for me. Maybe I'm leaving a trail for older me to know younger me.

So, I've been sewing quilt tops and trying to learn to do free motion quilting on my regular sewing machine. Right now I have several tops done but I need to get batting and backing fabric to finish them.

Here's one of the first ones I tried to do free motion quilting on. There's a pretty big learning curve and I think it's going to take a lot of practice but I think maybe I can learn to do it well enough to satisfy myself. These are blocks I had left over from a block exchange I did over 20 years ago! If you could look closely enough you would see the spots where I just totally missed the mark with my quilting. But there are also hopeful spots that look fairly good.

I was able to use fabric I already had for the borders and backing on this one. The backing is left over from projects I did in my first child's nursery.

I have more to show but I'll spread them out a bit. I'm planning to go to the Houston Quilt Show this weekend. to look at sit down quilting machines. I'm not ready to buy but they will have a lot of representatives from different brands there and I can try them out and hone in on what I want.

Arty Projects Soothe Worried Minds

Sometimes arty projects soothe worried minds. 

I've been working on a few arty things over this long weekend. The second pic is more like the original watercolor and lettering looked. I added the blur in one of the apps on my phone. I'm not the greatest with lettering. Today I penciled in the letters and went over them with a black marker pen, then went back and erased the pencil marks.

Again, the second pic looks more like the original page I worked on. But I liked the way the black and white looked when I tried it in my phone app. I notice I still have a slant on my lines. I'm clearly not all about perfection!

When I was looking at the pic in the photo editor, I noticed I had not crossed the "t" in "wait" so it looked like "the world can wail." I corrected the error.  

Harvey is gone but he left an unprecedented amount of damage in his wake. There are so many who are hurting right now. I know of four families whose houses have flooded completely. My nephew and his wife are one of those families. They were rescued out by boat last week and they still have not gotten back in to see their house and start working on rebuilding. The water is still too high. We were holding out hope that the water would not get in their house. Our hopes were severely dashed when my nephew saw drone footage of his neighborhood. The water was up to the eaves on all the houses in that area. They had just paid the first note on their house. The check was probably literally in the mail. It's heartbreaking and the damage is so much and so widespread. They didn't buy flood insurance because their home is not in the 500 year floodplain. The neighbors told them the neighborhood had not flooded in the 35 years they'd lived there.

My daughter has been working with a group rescuing dogs that have been displaced by the storm. That too is hard and heartbreaking work.  I worry about her being burned out. Tomorrow she will go back to her full time job but the rescuing and collecting of much needed items will continue for a long time.

It's not a great photo, but this is the one that sucked the air right out of our lungs. They hadn't even been in the house long enough for me to go visit them, so I can't tell you which roof is theirs. Doesn't much matter, really. They are all obviously flooded to the max.

We can go back to our jobs. We have water to drink and flush our toilets. We can cook a meal, or go out to eat. We can sleep in our own beds. The people in Southeast Texas have such a hard road ahead of them. And so many are in the same boat, with water damaged homes and businesses. But by the grace of God they will all make it through. Prayers would be appreciated.

Sewing Machines and Hurricanes, An Odd Couple For Sure

I'm just reporting in (maybe mostly for myself). It is my suspicion that if you don't blog for a while it somehow attracts spam commenters. That suspicion may or may not be logical!

I've kept up with the progress made on my house and even made a little more progress.

I've been sewing again on the weekends and now have 6 or 7 quilt tops that need to be quilted. I'll have some of them done and will try to quilt some of the smaller ones on my machine. My machine was out for a bit because my foot control sort of exploded on me (not a real explosion, it just popped apart and couldn't be put back together because some of the plastic parts had broken). After a period of angst and indecision over what to do, I ordered a foot control. It came in, I excitedly plugged it up. And my machine started "sewing" 90 miles an hour! I wasn't even pressing on the foot control! I discovered there were two different foot controls for this model. I returned the wrong one and ordered the correct one. It seems to be working perfectly well now. I'm happy. And grateful.

I've also been trying to figure out how I could get an old Singer (high school graduation gift from my parents) running again. I brought it to a shop but they said it was the gears that were out and it would cost more than the machine is worth to fix it. I thought that was the end of the line for that machine. Except I googled for information on how to fix the gears. I watched a YouTube video and thought it didn't look that hard. That false certainty led me to try taking my machine apart to see if I thought I could fix it on my own. There were parts I needed to come off that were not coming off. The machine has been setting up for quite a few years. The wheel turned and the needle part went up and down. I almost thought maybe the lady at the shop was wrong. But I can't make it pick up the bobbin thread. I imagine that's where the gear is broken. I also managed to put a needle into the tip of my pointer finger. It didn't go all the way through. That's the first time in all the years I've been sewing that I sewed my finger!

With that failed experience in my head, I remembered another small shop that sells vacuum cleaners and sewing machine. I knew they had a guy there who worked on vacuum cleaners and sewing machines. I called them up and the man on the other end of the line was so enthusiastic about what a great job he could do on fixing my machine and how it most certainly was worth fixing. I'm going to bring it to him when I can. But the skeptic in me wonders if he will really be able to fix it!

People don't fix things anymore. They just throw them out and get new ones, expecting that they will have to buy another replacement in a few years. That's why this machine is worth fixing. It was made to last (in spite of its little plastic gears breaking).

I've been off for three days because of Hurricane Harvey. We had a lot of rain and some uncertainty about the damage he would do here. Our ground was so saturated from all the rain. They were worried about trees falling over in the high winds. All in all, our part of the state dodged a bullet this time around (but I hear there is another storm forming in the Gulf).

However, Harvey did unprecedented damage in the state of Texas. This was one erratic storm. Seeing all the damage and all the displaced people is heartbreaking. We've been driving I-10 back and forth to Houston for many years. I've never seen it as flooded as it was this time around.

Not Sure What Bit Me

For a long time now, I've sorely neglected my house keeping tasks. There are some legitimate reasons for this, and some not so legitimate reasons. But during the month of June several things transpired and I cleaned house (or I began to work on cleaning house). I don't fully understand what happened.

I'd started doing Morning Pages (a la Julia Cameron) again and the condition of the house was one of the themes that kept coming up. Also, a while back, one of my grad student friends asked me when I cleaned house. I had to admit to myself (and to her) that I didn't, which made me feel decidedly not adult.

A couple of weeks ago, we had Tropical Storm Cindy come through. She was supposed to be very bad. We got two days off due to the wind and the rain that was coming through. Cindy was not as bad here as was predicted. But I was home alone (hubby was not given the day off due to weather) and what else was I going to do do? Being home alone on a rainy day provides a prime cleaning opportunity.

So I worked in my den and in my foyer. I threw stuff away. I put stuff away. I dusted. I vacuumed. I rearranged the furniture. I rearranged the pictures on the wall. I decorated. I cannot tell you how long it has been since I even cared about decorating. I was so very pleased with myself. I looked forward to my next weekend off so I could continue to get things done that had not been done in far too long. It made me happy. It made me wonder what the heck had gotten into me. I even cut my long weekend short to be home and clean some more.

Things are still far from perfect. There is still much to be done. But I've made a start and I hope to keep on moving forward.

Also, another odd thing. Today I pulled out a quilt I'd been working on. I was disappointed with the way it looked because I'd gotten somehow mixed up with my pattern. I sewed the two patchwork pieces back together and added a border at the top and at the bottom. I'm planning on adding another border around all four sides. It didn't turn out exactly like I'd hoped but it's a pretty good "save" if I do say so myself.

Perfection is overrated. Good enough is good enough. And practice makes progress. That's the biggest thing I need to remember, whether I am cleaning house or sewing a quilt top: don't get overwhelmed by what is left to do. Savor the progress you have made. And keep moving forward.

I'll show you a picture of my quilt top but I'm not yet ready to share house photos. Just believe me when I say it was bad and now it is better.

I"m not a big John Maxwell fan, but I've had this quote in my art room for several months now. It resonated with me when I saw it. I've not been too good at staying consistent with many small disciplines. I'll have to do better if I want not to lose ground and to keep moving forward.