I had my (hopefully ) last pancreatic procedure yesterday! This one was to remove the stint and the stone fragments. I am very tired today and have a sore throat from the scope and airway going down the throat, but the good news is the abdominal pain is essentially gone. So now I can try to start eating right again and get some strength and energy back (months of eating putting you in great pain makes it hard to eat properly).
Next up I want to get control of the arthritis in my hands….seeing the Dr. on Tuesday to start looking into what we can do on that front.
I worked on another bag the last few days…this one in purple plush upholstery fabric.
I have a few big quilts planned and a whole lot of other plans but I am going to take it easy for a few days and be sure I am fully recovered….then it is off to the races 🙂
Happy New Year! And I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season!
I posted this on Facebook but want to share it here as well.
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” ― Neil Gaiman
It has been COLD here in Michigan….and quite a bit of snow, in fact there was a winter weather advisory on Christmas day so I stayed home rather than making the drive to visit the family.
It has been below zero for days …..
I made a new snowflake quilt. A wall hanging size.
I also made a video of how I did it
I have been feeling like I needed to finish a full-sized quilt….so I looked through all my many (hundreds) of vintage quilt tops and picked one to work on
I believe it was made in the 30’s but it is hard to say for sure. The applique is done with buttonhole or blanket stitch and the main fabric is a heavy weight muslin. Teddy and I spent some time thinking about how to quilt it.
I felt that this one really needed to be somewhat simple and traditional …. I am doing the quilting by machine (my hands just aren’t up to a lot of hand quilting yet) but wanted something that would also be appropriate to do by hand and look like it fits the quilt.
Here is what I came up with.
Once I had that worked out it started to go pretty fast.
Teddy sits in his chair next to the machine and supervises.
I also made a video of stitching this one
I am just a bit over half-finished with it, I need to fins some fabric for binding that will match the green or the pink.
I have next/final procedure on the 11th ….. after that I hope to get back to blogging more frequently !
Happy New Year and Happy Quilting
It has been a while since I posted, I have been busy, and still not quite up to par. But the good news is that next procedure (to break up the pancreatic stones) is Monday morning. I should be able to fee the benefits of that fairly quickly 🙂 .
it sews beautifully! It is basically a Wheeler and Wilson D9 with a few changes (they changed the bed length to fit singer cabinets and changed to a 221 bobbin) Singer bought out the company in 1905 but continued to make this model for a few years. They mainly bought the company to get their commercial machine technology but the D9 was a popular machine in the home machine line so they kept it. The paint and decals are pretty bad so I might do a full repaint and new decals on this one.
and A singer 188K1
Sometimes called a commercial machine but I consider it a sort of in between. It is bigger than my home versions but smaller than my 31-15 commercial. It had been used with some oddball needles…they were shorter than the 16×231 needles that were called for in manuals so I had to figure out why….turns out that I had to re-set the needle bar so that the correct needles worked. It is working fine now and it in a treadle base….I need to make a new table top for it since it really doesn’t fit properly in a commercial top or a home machine top.
Snow has been falling
I must say I could do without it 🙂 but it is pretty to look at
First a health update. I have my next procedure on the 18th….this one is to break up the pancreatic stones ( Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy) and then one more in January to take out any remaining fragments. I am feeling a lot better the last few weeks 🙂
So I have been working on some quilting
I started my large tree
I have been working on bags.
I plan to get these all made into bags this week so I can get them listed for sale in time for Christmas.
Teddy gets tired watching
I did a new video of some feather drawing and quilting.
I also have some new machines!
This one was a gift…..it is a Singer 66 and it has its original cabinet!
It is in great working order….I just need to polish up the cabinet, (most always I just have the machine head and then they go into a mismatched treadle base) and I will do a post to show how I do that soon.
And 2 more gifts
They do need some work!
The singer 15 is from 1900 and the gold pheasant decals are much less common than some. they are in bad shape so they wont ever look perfect again……but I have started to clean it up.
so I can see how it sews
Works really well. More cleaning needed, and some repairs (the bobbin winding mechanism needs a new spring) and it is good to go….
so here is the update on my medical journey. I have stones in my pancreas. I went in for a procedure on Thursday to see if they could be removed, the procedure was Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, it is done with a scope inserted through the mouth and down through the stomach into the intestines and then into the pancreas. . The Doctor was unable to get them out but was able to place some stints in the pancreatic duct. (the procedure triggered a bout of pancreatitis, but it was short and I was over it quickly ) the next step will be extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy. which will break up the stones. stage 3 willl be for another Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography to remove the stints and clear out any of the stone fragments. I am home and feeling good today, just waiting on scheduling the next step (the medical world seems to come to a complete stop on the weekends 🙂 ) It might be wishful thinking but I think just having the stints in is making it better, and reducing the constant pain I had.
So it looks like it will be all done by sometime this winter.
Meanwhile the cold crisp November mornings are reminding me of my favorite Christmas Story
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!
Will be posting some quilting right after the holiday
Tim
I have been working away on a Teddy Bear quilt. I started it quite a while ago.
I stopped working on it because I was not feeling well, but I decided I need to finish it while the baby is still a baby ( I hope to get it in the mail tomorrow)
I was very careful to get all the steps on video and just finished downloading the video to find out that there is no sound! So here are a few still pictures.
I just have to finish the binding.
I have my procedure on Thursday and hopefully I will be back t o work on Friday! I have so many things I want to do.
And Teddy won 2 ribbons! best machine quilting and best original design
I am so excited to get an award for machine quilting because I did the quilting on an antique treadle machine.
I am still not feeling up to par (I could only take a few hours at the quilt show) but I rally when I get to talk quilts…..I will be doing a presentation for the Tri-County Quilt Guild in Warren MI on Thursday, November 2nd at 10:00 am (First United Methodist Church of Warren 5005 Chicago Road Warren, MI. 48092.
I will be bringing the Teddy quilt to show at that meeting. (as well as about 25 others)
It took most of the day for installation so while that was happening I worked on a new bag. It will hopefully be up for sale at the Etsy store soon https://www.etsy.com/shop/timquilts
I used the Wheeler and Wilson for one side and Singer VS for the other. The furnace guy appreciated my old machines (and I counted them today and there are 50)
I started the fall cleanup in the garden today. Here are the bags of what I did today.
I imagine this is about 1/10 of the total I need to do but good to make a start.
I also got some of my bulbs planted (100 today). I need to clean up the beds so I can find the spaces where I want to plant them. Here is a cleaned out bed.
Today I planted Tulips and anemone. I still have 100 daffodil and 100 crocus to plant.
There are still some things that look good in the garden. The grasses look great .
Here are a few more pictures (click on the pics to enlarge)
I picked the gourds today as well.
I also bought a few MI grown apples (ran out of steam today but maybe a pie tomorrow)
Teddy is glad I am done because he was tired of supervising.
He is sleeping now……his favorite activity is napping
I am about 1/2 way to my sales goal for the new furnace (thankfully it is still working but on its last legs)
More items added to the 25% off sale in the Etsy store here https://www.etsy.com/shop/timquilts
I think I will try to get some more yard work done tomorrow and get the rest of the bulbs planted.
Tim Latimer - Quilts etc 