Ouch

I can't believe I broke my finger while quilting. How crazy does that sound.

Much like a school girl jumping rope and getting smacked in the head when she misjudges the rotation, I got smacked by my long arm while picking threads off of a quilt top. See the marks on my finger? That is the shape of the hopper foot. It must have hit my hand as it came up.

Two days later my finger looked like this. As of that point it really didn't hurt much. The swelling was deadening the nerves. All of that has changed now.

After I got up off of the floor and eventually finished the customer quilt I was working on, I turned my attention back to this pretty little thing. I made it from two charm packs of Robin Pandolph's Things Desired and about two yards of back ground fabric. Thinking about a new baby coming into the world seemed to make my finger less twitchy.

I finished binding it today. I cant believe how awkward it is to sew without using my middle finger, nor how much stress that actually put on my middle finger.

All I have left to do is add a label. Did I mention that am left handed....hmmmm.

On the up side I've lost 3 more pounds since the incident. That brings me to a grand total of 45 pounds since I started dieting in June. It doesn't seem real. I wonder how many calories mending bones takes...

See the large woman to the right of the handsome lad in black? The one in a blue shirt whose arms look all puffy and pale? She doesn't live here any more.

I can put my arms down!

What to do with an empty spool...

I've been collecting them for years. Each time I empty a spool of thread I toss the spool into this bag and say, "Gee, there ought to be something useful I could do with these." I keep thinking that someday I will string them together with some colorful wool beads and make a garland for my Christmas tree.

Some of the spools come apart. For these, I've finally found a practical use.

Don't they look adorable?! Here is how you do it...

Take the spool apart by twisting then end. It doesn't screw, but the motion will ease the pieces apart. Hook a small paper clip through a medium sized the rubber band.

Thread the rubber band through the small end of the little piece of the spool with the paper clip to the inside.

Pull the rubber band through, catching the paper clip on the spool.

Put the spool back together and stick the rubber band around the other end.

Thread your binding under the rubber band and wind it up. (I cut my binding 2.5" and then fold it in half. The binding in these pictures is 1.25". You could have wider binding and it would still work.)

As you wind it up let the binding wrap over the rubber band.

When you get to the end of your strip, pull the rubber band up and over the knob at the other end of the spool.

Ta-da! Cool, huh.

Seam ripper?

I was reading one of your wonderful blogs the other day and you mentioned the device you use to unstitch your sewing. You didn't call it a seam ripper. What did you call it?

And, because it seems wrong to just ask a question and not give you any thing in return....have you seen the adds for an ergonomic ripper? Really?! If a project is so messed up that I need to worry about getting carpal tunnel I'm going to consider a new hobby....like wine tasting.

Color palette

Wouldn't this make a beautiful quilt....this is perfectly New Mexico....perfectly Santa Fe.

Leftovers and a fantastic weekend.

Two years ago I started this quilt. It was a mystery quilt project sponsored by my local quilt guild.

Did you see those borders? They were fussy cut from an awesome stripe. It was one of the fabrics in
Dena's Leanika line. Fussy cutting those long pieces left some strange, large print, scraps.

This weekend I straightened out my scrap drawer. (That is my excuse for a stash...which I technically don't have.). As I was playing in the fabrics I thought...why the heck don't you just sew those bits together. So I did. The bits in this picture were all leftover from the same mystery quilt.

This is the beginnings of our new "rug". My dear spouse is making it for the living room. There was a lot of fabric left over. I pieced it with some more of my fussy cut scraps to make a back.

Then I zigzagged some bits of batting together. You do this by holding the smooth edges side by side and feeding them gently through the sewing machine. I've done it with all sorts of batting. This time I had scraps of Dream Orient. It is a delicious batt made of silk, bamboo, eucalyptus, and cotton.   I quilted the whole thing with a new pattern that I've been dying to try. (Anne Bright's Fandangle b2b)

And bound it with more fussy cut scraps.

Add to that a beautiful break in the insanely hot summer weather and I had a fantastic weekend.
Thank you God!