Justice

Recently a couple of off-duty cops were caught riding their motorcycles on I-70 at 150 mph and one was fined $300. I was drifting along on an empty stretch of Rte. 79 coming into Heath, Ohio, at 46 mph in a 35 mile section and my fine is $100. Also I was caught by the cameras that Heath has installed all along Rte. 79, it's main stretch of restaurants and businesses. I guess Heath is really needing money so they have created a speed trap. Apparently I didn't speed at all the month before when Heath was just sending out warnings, but waited to accelerate when the actual tickets would be issued. Since this ticket was dated July 1st, I'll bet I could get a few more when I was just going witht he flow of traffic.
I will not be driving Rte 79 anymore and maybe that's childish of me but really -$100--That's outrageous!

Sigh...

It has been almost three weeks since I have used my Gammil quilting machine --Just when I have time to get to the shop and quilt, it's in for repairs. During most of Joe's hospital stay, I worked on one custom quilt that I put on the day before he went in and took off when he was transferred to a nursing home in Newark. The next quilt never went on due to timing issues with stitching.

I have been keeping busy with other projects -- finished 30 year old blocks into a quilt for a customer, am putting the binding on another client's quilt, and have done a few things of my own.

But I am lusting to be quilting. There are times when quilting with my longarm becomes tedious, but after all, I have been doing this for 11 years. I have changed my style many times over and still enjoy many aspects of this creative job. A client sent me a note thanking me for quilting her top and saying that I put a lot of myself into every quilt. I think she's right in that those freehand quilts are my favorite. Still, even putting on an overall pantograph that complements the style of a top is satisfying.

I am hoping I will soon get a phone call saying my Gammil is ready to come home!

Self-Healing

Every now and then, I have found that things fix themselves. All my worries about my husband's homecoming disappeared because when I visited him that day, he told me all about his morning activities and the problem was solved. He self-healed. That was really nice of him.

I find that machines even do it. Reboot the computer and it self-heals. Turn the sewing machine off and then on 30 seconds later and it self-heals. It would be great if everything worked that way but I just accept those mini-miracles and enjoy them.

So Joe comes home on Monday and we begin the recuperative dance of my not wanting to wait on him too much and his not wanting to do anything if he's not forced to. In 4 weeks he'll go to rehab at the hospital and that will help to get him back into activities. Meanwhile, I am planning breakfast and lunch menus which normally I don't because I figure if I cook dinner, that's good enough. I have been teasing him about how spoiled he is that a tray magically shows up at his bedside with a cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I will spoil him myself for a SHORT period of time, but then he'll have to start pouring Cheerios out of a box for breakfast and microwaving a frozen dinner for lunch. I realize how lucky we are and hope the self-healing continues.

In My Head

I spend a lot of time talking to myself about things that I need to deal with before I deal with them. It's practice, I think, so that when I do interact with the actual people, perhaps I won't be as angry or emotional because I have worked some of it out.

Right now as I work on embroidery blocks for a customer, I am having conversations with my husband and his caregivers. Joe has been in hospital for three weeks and now a nursing home for two. That's why I haven't written.

He is doing amazingly well and has recovered from a massive heart attack which would have killed him had he been in any hospital but OSU's Ross Heart Hospital. His care at Flint Ridge Nursing Home is also excellent! But he's not doing something that, in my opinion, is essential to acc0mplish before he comes home and they want to send him home in four days.

This is the sixth major episode in Joe's life that has required me to become his caregiver. By now, one would think, he would realize I don't do it well. The innate compassion for the sick that most nurses and patient care professionals have lasts in me about 15 minutes and then, once I know he will survive, I am like "Get over it and let's move on." Except for giving birth twice, I have never been in the hospital and never been seriously ill ever. I know I don't understand how he feels after these very painful and difficult episodes; he doesn't understand my feelings either. His two daughters and I are the ones who have sat in waiting room after waiting room, knowing he might not make it, knowing that he is so ill that the doctors have prepared us for the worst. And he survives each time, but each time it's harder as we are sure his body can't take much more, over and over again. Once life is certain; I think he should be amazingly grateful and ready to do whatever physical and occupational therapies that will get him back to his previous state. He wants to whine and not have to do anything but lie in bed while waited upon by cheerful nurses and aides.

Flint Ridge has provided amazing care, great therapy, really good food, a pleasant atmosphere, and I can't do that. I am not going to tell you what he's not doing, but I guarantee if he comes home without that skill, his life will be miserable. Matter of fact, I may not pick him up unless I know he can do it. I wonder how long they would let him sit in a wheel chair in the lobby waiting for me. (OK, anyone who knows me knows I am delighted he is well enough to come home and has once again been resilient enough to survive. I'll pick him up whenever they say. I just won't necessarily be happy about it.)

I think the resentment I feel about becoming his caregiver again is normal, and I'll deal with it -- without taking it out on him. My father has always been one of my heroes, but now I admire him even more for taking care of my mom who had M.S. and was bedridden for her last 5 years.
Mom and Dad are both gone now. I wish I could share war stories with Dad and let him know how much I understand his sacrifice.

I closed the shop for three weeks while he was at Ross Heart Hospital; now I close at noon and visit with him while he eats his lunch, return to the shop at 2 and stay open until 4, then go back to check on him before heading home. Today, I will deal out loud with the issue in my head. Wish me luck!

Venting

Most of the quilt tops I work on are easily quilted -- not all are quilts from Hell. But three problems occur more often to make the quilting more difficult.

One is the border that ruffles and waves because it was cut larger than the inner top. As the borders are sewn to the top, the quilter eases them in. Everything looks ok, but when the quilt is pinned to a frame, it's more obvious, and the fullness of the borders makes for problem quilting. Even with huge amounts of pinning, tucks and pleats usually occur.

The second is the border that is too small for the inner top, In this case the inner top has been eased in as the border and top were sewn together. It's like a cup, the borders are taut and the inner top bags down. Again, careful pinning and sometimes fluffy batting can abate the problem but even so there usually are some areas of pleats and overlaps as the quilting continues. I have even had to take a quilt off half-way through quilting and ask the customer for help.

A third problem arises when the quilt is not square -- I have had up to a difference of several inches on both sides. This makes it tough to put a pantograph on evenly, and usually if I am aware of it, I recommend having it done free hand so that it won't be so obvious. (By the way, the backing should also be square. As parallelogram backings roll onto the bar, as much as a foot in width can be lost.) Squaring up a quilt should also elimate the hour glass shape many quilts acquire with the top and bottom being several inches wider than the middle.

I know no one wants to hear it (including me sometimes), but careful measurement would probably eliminate all three problems. Measuring an inner top in three places, cutting borders to one's unique quilt top and not to what the pattern says, and squaring up quilts and backings would make any quilter's life easier.

No Problem

I just finished a quilt from Hell. It wasn't badly made or ugly, but let's just say the quilting has not gone well.

First, I quilted the wrong top and sent it off to the wrong customer who had a friend picking it up. How can that happen? Picture a 400 square foot shop with 5 tables, a longarm (5'x12"), and approximately 25 quilts waiting to be quilted plus lots of other stuff. Two quilts came in the same day and I must have switched the paper work. Oops! Not a big deal, she's bringing it back, but now I am behind as I have the original top to quilt quickly before she returns to pick it up.

It's a t-shirt quilt, shouldn't be a big deal, I have quilted these for this customer before and she does nice work. However, from row one, it's a nightmare. One problem is variegated thread on top which changes it's weight as the color variations occur. Another problem is the backing -- perfectly good muslin but the thread count must be about 2000 as the brand new needle wants to skitter across it and create what's called needle deflection. Third problem, it's a t-shirt quilt --I know I said no problem, but when the machine travels from the t-shirt fabrics to the thinner cotton fabric to the plastic type designs, all of this creates uneven tension, and no matter how carefully I watch for issues, there's a lot of start and stop, and taking out of rows, and repairing of spots, etc. I worked an extra 2-1/2 hours at the shop and went straight to Kai's baseball game which went long. It was fun and they won but I didn't get home until almost 9 pm.

The quilt went home with me to allow me to take out a row of stitching while I watched the last hour of American Idol (Adam should have won.) When I brought it back in this morning, I put the row of freehand peacock feathers back in, and checked over the back carefully to find and repair any other dropped stitches. I have declared it finished. Guess what? The customer through no fault of her own -- she's also having a bad day --cannot come to pick it up until next week.

That's ok. It's done.

Paint Samples

After writing about the re-do of the kitchen, I was remembering the many other painting projects that my daughters and I have done. Having lived in our house for over thirty years, we have painted every room twice or more. Joe always has said he is a great painter and has a lot of experience, and yet every project in our own home found him having something else to do and somewhere else to be. But Laura and Lisa have always helped, even when they were toddlers. Since I am not the neatest painter, there was always paint landing places it shouldn't. If I ran out of paint or wanted to match it, all I had to do was take them with me to the store. And when asked what color I needed, I could just point to their heads where inevitably a streak of mauve or hunter green or bright pink would contrast with their dark brown hair. They were convenient paint samples when someone asked what color I had painted the bed room or living room this time.

Paint washes out more easily now than it did back in the olden days but it still can be stubborn. Sitting next to Lisa in church on Mother's Day morning, I almost lost it when I glanced over and saw a small streak of light blue gleaming in her hair. I just needed someone to ask what color I painted the kitchen this time.