This is one of the new quilt panels, with the quilting done. It's got two kinds of quilting (all the panels do), the chaotic quilting in navy thread and a more sedate, straight-line quilting done in pink thread.
Yes, I am low on batting, so I got online (Missouri Star Quilt Company's website) and ordered two kinds of batting, one the kind that I always use--Warm & Natural--and another kind that has a glue layer that allows you to iron the batting to the quilt top and backing so that you don't have to pin it. I rarely pin anyway, but it does cause me to get a lot of tucks in the quilting, which makes other quilters gasp. (I don't care about any of that. And I really hate pinning.) I also ordered more of the black fabric because I plan on making the bindings for each panel out of it. (I'm putting this quilt together in a new way, using something called the "potholder method" which is like making a bunch of large potholders, each separately bound, and then sewing them all together at the end. We'll see, right?)
I also ordered a bunch of green fabric, in the acid and lime green side of the green family because I'm thinking that a green and pink quilt is just the thing that needs to be made and I am always running low on green fabric (because green and especially lime green is my favorite color, and orange, which is a color I don't like and also find myself using a lot of when I sew for some reason only really understood by The Brain).
In a somewhat related note, I had a therapy session by Facetime yesterday and I showed my therapist these shadow quilt panels. She really liked them and said that she'd like to see them in person. (Ha. I'm happy with therapy by Facetime.) She said she thought I had made, like, a hundred quilts, but no. I had to tell her that I've finished five quilts. I have one more almost finished and four or five more in the works.
After therapy, I was thinking: Have I really only completed five quilts in the three years I've been sewing? Yikes. I mean, what have I been spending all my time and money on? This morning, I sat down and tried to figure out what else I've been sewing all this time and I came up with a huge list of things, everything from quilted pillow covers to pillowcases to pencil and cosmetic bags, wall hangings, totes, purses, curtains, potholders, and on and on. After I wrote out the list, I felt a little better.
Crisis averted.
Now let's step into the past--this past work week, I mean:
Thursday:
If this is Thursday, this must be a work-related blog entry. And it is!
It's just before 3 a.m. on Friday morning and I am eight hours into my twelve-and-a-half hour shift. I'm tired. I did not sleep well yesterday and I may be a little over-caffeinated (which means exhausted but jittery).
My unit is full. (There was one open bed when I arrived and that was filled by midnight.) Being full is a mixed blessing. It's a lot of kids, but it also means that I won't have to do any middle of the night admissions.
Hold on. I'm going to go make one more decaf coffee for something warm to sip on.
Okay, I'm back.
I went into the kitchen and made a large decaf coffee. Got to try to keep my psyche on an even keel, caffeine-wise. It could get ugly over the next four hours. Sigh.
Saturday:
It's just after 5:00 a.m. on Sunday morning I just made another cup of coffee to try to make it through the last two and a half hours of my shift.
This has been a week. I thought about calling in today because I got very little sleep and woke up with a headache, but I powered through and just came in and worked my shift. Am still working my shift. For two hours and fifteen minutes longer.
It's cold tonight and I went out and walked around for awhile to shake myself awake. Cold and caffeine. And now I'm watching Craft in America: Quilts on youtube. It's interesting but I'm too tired to really focus on things. I did do some sketches of figures for the shadow quilt that are based on a quilt made in the late 1890s by Harriet Powers.
It's almost six a.m. now. Only another hour and a half. I made the mistake of getting another soda from the vending machine in the employee breakroom. I need to stop drinking it--though I can use the caffeine just to power through these last ninety minutes--but if I do that, I'm going to be a shivering wreck by the time I get home. I'm going to have some more water and a bit more of my weak coffee instead. Sigh.
I put the soda away in the employee fridge. It will still be there weeks from now, despite the sign on the fridge warning that everything gets tossed weekly. (Like, seriously? Who takes on that responsibility? No one I know. There have been times when people open the fridge and it smells like something died in there weeks ago. Nasty. Stinks up the whole office.)
So I started another episode of Craft in America. This episode is called Threads.
An hour...I can make it an hour, right?
And back to the present:
I'm making some baked chicken for lunch. I woke up hungry today and already had two breakfasts (some fake fish patties and a sunflower butter and strawberry sandwich). It's noon now, though. Time for lunch, right?
And tonight is my night to stay up as late as possible so that I can "flip" my days/nights and sleep all day tomorrow to work tomorrow night. This coming work week is going to be a bit of a gauntlet as I agreed to trade shifts with someone who wanted Monday off, so I'll work my usual Thursday and Saturday and then Monday. Ugh. Doesn't that sound fun?
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