Ready and waiting for action…

Question January: What happened in my sewing room? Answer Not a lot 😕

Over the past three weeks I’ve been learning to more or less live in the moment. My Dear Mum was admitted to hospital on 12th January. She’s been treated for a series of knock-on medical conditions and needs further medical intervention before she’ll be well enough to return home. On a practical level, each day since Mum’s admission has been a round of hospital visits and giving support to my Dad to ensure he can live semi-independently at home. On an emotional level… Well! You may be able to imagine all the ups & downs with associated stress that we’ve all been experiencing as we try to navigate this new phase in our family life. There is some forward planning involved but for the most part ‘taking each day as it comes’ has been the way we’ve been managing so far. At some point soon we will have to try and rationalise some activities or we’ll all be suffering burn out. Entering the fourth week of Mum’s illness makes me think it’s time to get beyond the ‘it’s temporary, we’ll muddle through’ mindset but it’s so hard to step out of the situation and get an overview!

Anyhow! I have been so thankful on lots of levels. Family – myself, my brother and my parents all live within a 2 mile radius of each other and the hospital is less than four miles away; my husband can work flexible hours providing a daytime ‘taxi’ service throughout the week; and our children and friends are providing kind prayerful and practical support. Sewing – my sewing room is set up so I can pop-in for just a few minutes at a time to pat some fabric or do a little bit of stitching. Work – Viv, owner of Purple Stitches, has been so understanding I haven’t had to worry about not being available to work; and I’m so glad I made the decision to pull away from making my sewing a business – there are no scheduled teaching or selling commitments  which means sewing truly is a break from everything that’s going on.

To the sewing I have done…. There’s been a little bit of progress here and there on a project I started at the beginning of January. I had made fairly speedy progress with the cutting and piecing of an Elizabeth Hartman pattern, ‘Cats In Space’. When Mum fell ill I think I’d pieced all the separate elements so I must have been at the stage of putting them all together with the background fabric. Once pieced, I pin basted the quilt top to a backing of fleece, deciding not to include a layer of wadding as the fleece is fairly thick and my plan was to quilt using a mix of walking foot and free motion stitching. I’ve just about completed the walking foot quilting using a mix of echo stitching and stitch in the ditch.

Walking foot quilting and a glimpse of the fleece backing.

I used a variegated thread to echo quilt the stars – in an effort to make them twinkle

I’m planning to switch to FMQ to stitch a fairly open loop-the-loop pattern over the background. This will be the first time I’ve tried FMQ with a fleece backing…

Not sure when I’ll be posting again but it’s been lovely to take a little time out to be back here with you.

Happy Stitching!

Allison