Back in the Saddle

I’m officially 6 weeks out.  Finger is doing amazingly better.  Nerve pain has let up a lot in just these last few days.  I am still typing with 9 fingers, and playing the piano at church with 9 fingers.  But I think that might be out of habit now…. not sure.  I’ll figure that out later.  But finally I feel like I have jumped the sewing hurdle and landed back in the saddle. (Do you like how I mixed it up there.)  Except for her Easter dress, I haven’t made a single thing for 6 weeks.  And I’m not counting that because I cut it all out with scissors, not a rotary cutter.  And that makes a huge difference (apparently).  I’m still a little hesitant to use my rotary cutter, which honestly kind of makes me feel ridiculous.  But yesterday that officially ended.  I think.  I hope so anyway.

I made this today.  I am in an online quilting bee and this is our first month.  This is for Sherri.  This is the first bee I’ve been in, and I am a little intimidated by all the “real” quilters in it.  I have made a lot of quilts, but I still don’t really consider myself a quilter.  Not really.  I am good at sewing squares together, and I have a lot of quilting fabric, but if it’s not a square?  Well…. it makes me nervous.  But this one was all half square triangles, so kind of a square.  Kind of.  Anyway I gave it a shot.  And I love it!

Truth be told, I actually made TWO of these blocks today.  Only, the first one didn’t turn out quite right.  Actually, if we are starting at the beginning I have made three of these.  One last night as a practice/trial run/can I really do this test before I cut into the pretty fabric that Sherri sent me.  And it turned out perfectly.  And I guess I got cocky, because the first one I made today? Well, not perfect.  It’s destined to be a doll quilt for Creamie’s babies now.  She’s already claimed it.  I better hurry up and get that project finished before she shreds the unfinished edges!  Thankfully there was plenty of fabric to make a second block this afternoon.  I cut more carefully, sewed more precisely and pressed the thing within an inch of it’s life.  And I didn’t lose any of my triangle points to the demon seam monster. Victory!

This block is a free pattern from quilterscache.com called the Double Aster Block.  It is 12.5″ square (if you can trim edges straight, which I still need to do before I mail it back to Sherri) so 12″ finished size.  I hope she likes it! (I found this picture on Pinterest that led me to the free pattern).

In other news.  We’ve been battling spring sickies here for almost two weeks.  Scott stayed home from work yesterday, we are all drugged up all the time, and we’ve gone through a TON of tissue over here.  We are thankfully down from the box per day per person we started at.  That makes for very sore noses, even though I only buy expensive “plus lotion and aloe” super soft tissue.  Poor Creamie went through a whole box herself one day.  That’s 125 tissues on her little face in 10 hours.  So so sad.  We are getting better, slowly. Creamie is back at school.  Scott is back at work.  I’ve been craving food but I can’t taste anything.  I don’t want to cook anything.  The only thing that sounds good is warm.  I’m not too picky, if it’s warm I’ll eat it.  I made a heck of a dent in the fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookies the other day…. I’m sick.  It’s all fair game.