Lisa Jenni sent this photo of her quilt, made from a Piece O’ Cake pattern, Garden Blooms.
She says:
Many years ago, you taught an appliqué class at Block Party Quilters in Issaquah. I was one of your students, and still to this day, I’m one of only two persons who finished their appliqué and the resulting quilt. In the attachment you see my quilt “Botanica”.
I hope you like my version of your flowers (I do!), in a totally unusual setting. The background fabric is a hand-dyed from Judy Robertson. All orange veins and leaves are pieced varieties of silks. My quilting is split into hawaiian-style hand-quilting at the yellow flower’s background, and lots of machine quilting for everything else.
The quilt has traveled to two quilt shows. It placed 1st in “Quilts from a Pattern” and an Award of Excellence in “Domestic Machine Quilting” at the La Conner Quilt & Textile Festival (2014). In January 2015, the quilt was awarded 3rd place in “Innovative Wall Appliqué” at Road to California.
(I also shared this information in the Piece O’ Cake newsletter.)
They both weigh around 8 lbs. Your head may actually weigh more.
Now, stop and think about your sewing posture. When you sit at the sewing machine, is your head balanced over your body or is it thrown forward, facing down? What about when you applique? Are you hunched over your lap, or are you sitting upright?
Now, imagine that your head is a gallon of milk that your poor neck is trying to support. Just the idea makes the back of my neck hurt and my shoulders sore.
The article is eye-opening, reporting on a studypublished in the journal, Surgical Technology International. In short, the farther you bend your head over, the more pressure is put on your neck. The same texting posture shown is often a quilter’s posture. Is it any wonder that your upper body feels so bad after you’ve been sewing?
So, hold your head high—or at least, hold it in a more balanced position over your body. Fix the height of your sewing machine chair and/or table. Find a good chair to applique in. Put your light in position so that you are not bending sideways toward it. Put your feet up if that helps you to maintain good posture as you applique.
I’m going to post this same information on my blog, so that you’ll be able to find it again if you ever need to. Did you know that there is a search option on my blog? Look in the menu bar for the area with the spyglass. Type in a search topic and you can find all sorts of things.
I just read that cats love boxes. How did I miss this important fact!
We have 3 cats: Emma (gray, female, sort of delicate) has been with us 12 years or more. Dave (male, black, kind of aggressive) joined us a few years later. Last winter, Belle (female, small) showed up between ice storms. She was bony, obviously homeless.
For a while the cats co-existed in the house. This is the one and only picture I have of them together…
And then all hell broke loose. Belle decided that she was the boss and she started fighting with the other two cats. I tried putting different cats in cat carriers. I tried closing them off from each other. No dice.
Emma fled first, to the back yard. We finally put a cat door in the shed. I got her a kitty kabin and a heat lamp for winter. She seems happy in her new home. Every now and then she flirts with the idea of coming inside the house, but then she turns tail and runs.
Dave (big, tough Dave!) is back to being a mostly outside cat. I set up a warm spot (with a heat lamp) in the garage for cold nights. He actually snuck into the house the other night to sleep in front of the fire, but he skedaddled first thing in the morning, before Belle saw him.
Belle is now the queen of all she surveys. The house is hers. We are her people. Steve is not crazy about Belle. He doesn’t appreciate the fact that she has run the other 2 cats outside. The funny thing is, though, that he was not crazy about the other 2 cats either. He (says he) would be happy if they all went to heaven.
I wish the 3 cats were happy together; instead I have 3 happy cats who thrive in their own separate spaces. Keeping them separately fed and watered is a small hassle but other than that, it’s not that bad. I’m not unhappy that Belle is our inside cat because I like her personality. She’s perky! She is also sometimes pointy—but not usually. Sort of like me :-).
I am, however, going to remember about the cardboard boxes. Maybe, if I could somehow get them all in the house at the same time—with boxes aplenty—they could each go to a box and think about getting along.
Carolyn says that she started this quilt in 1998, finished it that day. She has made a lovely version of the Simply Delicious pattern. Very nicely done, indeed!
I ran across a link to this advertisement by John Lewis (click here if it doesn’t open below).
Here’s the thing… I watched it not know who the heck John Lewis is. Turns out that it is a department store in the UK—one that apparently makes really wonderful, emotional, ads. We in the US are missing out! I would happily shop for Monty the Penguin things… surely they ship to the US!
We only broke one ornament. It was pretty, but not special…
We have a great place to store the Christmas ornaments in an area that used to be a built-in desk but now houses our rolling entertainment center…
And the space where the tree was is back to normal!
I’ve been de-cluttering—so much so that I need to find something to put on the table next the sofa. I’m going to look around to see what I already own. I really need to stop shopping :-).
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