Saturday, July 10, 2021

Sewing Therapy

I watched my 20-something occupational therapist, Kylie, make my splint yesterday. She traced my hand and then cut and molded the plastic in what looked like a steam table and with a heat gun. The way she custom tailored it with such ease, I asked if she sewed. She did! Said she learned to make baby quilts during 2020 when she had downtime due to the pandemic. 


We had a nice conversation. Then we went over my home exercises, which look a lot like the chicken dance.  :)


There was some bleeding when she removed the bandage to redress the finger, so I have to keep it elevated a few more days and basically walk around like I'm hailing a cab.  

[I don't know why my font size is smaller in some places and not others in this post, but I haven't the bandwidth to figure it out today. My apologies.]

One-handed sewing continues.  I sewed some more light/dark pairs together.  I ran out of 3.5-inch strips that I'd cut before surgery, but I found some my friend Marei had sent in a goody box of scraps a couple years ago.  I'm freehand cutting some of those into 6.5-inch long bricks.


Here's what's on the design wall so far.  


This is meant to be a utilitarian quilt, and it is not exactly pretty.  That's okay.  The point was to use up what I had cut into 6x9 pieces for mask making this past year and other scraps.  Secondarily, it's something I can sew easily one-handed while the other heals, and keep my mind occupied.  Sewing therapy, truly. 

Many of the novelty fabrics were given to me to make masks with, so there's quite the eclectic mix, including sugar skulls, tattooed ladies, Disney characters, red pickup trucks, peace signs, cupcakes, and Star Wars.  As a result, it will be a  memory quilt of sorts, and I'm actually kind of digging the crazy mishmash.  


Working close up with all these different prints, I was concerned about having enough light/dark contrast.  I ended up having to set aside a bunch of medium value strips because of that.  

Looking at this photo in black and white, I can see a block or two on the right side that I'll have to swap out.  Otherwise it seems to be going okay so far.


 

5 comments:

The Joyful Quilter said...

I don't know why you say this quilt isn't pretty, Paulette. I absolutely LOVE super scrappy quilts!! This one will be wonderful.

Betty C said...

This scrappy quilt looks really nice. Especially since you are mindful of the light and dark fabric placements.

Carolyn said...

I think it is pretty, but I love the scrappy quilts. I wonder how long we will all be trying to use up all the mask-making scraps? I so hope that is over.

Vivian said...

Agreed with all above, I love this kind of "kitchen sink" scrappy quilt made even better by the memories you have of the fabrics in it. Glad to see your healing is progressing well after your recent finger surgery. A few years back an incident with finger and a mandolin slicer (lesson learned: ALWAYS use the pushing guard!) turned into a quilting therapy moment when thick bandages made a good impromptu thimble for hand quilting! We quilters always say "quilting is therapy" helping with emotional or physical healing!

Kaja said...

I like the scrappy quilt too, especially the way it holds lots of memories (though maybe all that mask-making is better forgotten!) One-handed quilting seems above the call of duty, so I hope you are quickly back to using two hands.