HMQG and a QOV

i'm still here....and i have a QOV start to share with you.

about the same time that i had my shoulder surgery, i put out a call for help to the wonderful members of the houston modern quilt guild. i needed help finishing the 4 remaining QOVs from my navy request last spring. well... they're coming through! this past saturday at our monthly meeting, these wonderful ladies above (and a few others not pictured) showed up with wonky star blocks. 20 of them. plus a handful of red/white/blue string blocks to start me on the next one. i am so thrilled with all of them and cannot wait to put them together soon!!

i had my 6 week check up with my orthopedic dr. this morning. he said i'm doing well, that i look great (and he complemented my glasses) and to ignore the PTs... since "they're new at this." hah! i don't think i can tell my one PT that dr. m said she doesn't know what she's doing. especially since his wife is one of the PTs there too... they do know what they're doing and they've helped a lot already, it's just the one thinks i have to move all over the place already. she thought that from day 1 of being allowed to move the shoulder at 3 weeks post-op. that was part of my problem... i wasn't allowed to move for 3 weeks and the ligament he purposely tightened was REALLY tight. so, she causes me lots of pain, lots of tears and lots of me going "oooowwwwwwwwww."

so now i'm allowed to take the sling off more when i'm home, get used to moving it to get the natural flow back when walking. no public places without the sling for another 6 weeks. sheesh. my elbow is really bruised today for some reason. but hopefully, i can start sitting at my sewing machine by the end of the week. i'm practicing typing with two hands again, but in short spurts. good thing i type fast.

i have had huge sewing withdrawals. to make up for it, i became obsessed with ancestry.com and started 3 family trees for each person in the house. goodness.

while i'm recovering...

the fine members of "bee pieceful" are making me spiderweb blocks. mine is the top left corner and the rest are what i've received in the mail so far.

i've had the blue butterfly fabric for years. i found the tag that had a date from spring 2004 on it... really. the yellow ladybug and white bug fabric were collected shortly after. there is one more i've been saving for my bug quilt - a white on white butterfly print - that will probably be used for a border. with the bug fabrics, i also sent everyone purple and aqua solids, the grey/black polka dots, a stripe and then mixed up some mottled pinks, and a couple yellows. i asked if everyone could throw in a few coordinating scraps from their stashes to give me a little something to remember them by when my quilt is finished.

i guess i lucked out this year having my month be the same month i had surgery. now i just need to be able to sew soon so i can start working on this:

HMQG is helping me work on one of the remaining 4 QOVs for that big request i had. they're making wonky stars so the quilt can twinkle. three stars came home with me at our january meeting and i'll get the rest of them at the february meeting in a few weeks. i'm hoping i can start to do basic strip piecing by then so i can get the top put together and out to the longarm quilter. maybe i can get hubby to piece the rows together for me...

PT on the shoulder itself started friday. first time my shoulder moved in 3 weeks.... ouch... today's visit was so not fun! but i can dangle my arm and move it on my own more than the weekend, so that's progress!! and i used two hands to button my pants. yippee! small steps, but ones nonetheless.

some finishes this week

ok.... so i said i'd blog about all my finishes... and i'm going to make good on that. although i don't remember if i blogged about the round robin i did, so i'm going to include it now and edit later if necessary.

first the smaller projects - bee blocks!

a little house for "bee pieceful"

this is the first of hopefully 2 blocks for sweetteamom. and i need to mass produce some little house blocks for the FB group this month. oh...i'm behind in schedule with all the QOVs!

little trees for the "scrapBEElooza" bee

greenink requested little trees for our october blocks. she is going to have a great little forest once october is over! i just might have to make tree blocks for me one day after i make all the zillion other projects.

and since i'm just going to post it now - the round robin for HMQG.

at our meeting last month, we did the first round of swapping our rows and center blocks for whichever robin we chose. i didn't blog about this now, did i? oops. i chose fi's tree center because it's brightly colored with fun prints and i knew i wanted this one first. there are infinite possibilities on what to make for a border and that just doesn't help me make decisions any easier. so for fi's block, i separated the initial block with a bold blue and then all the little HSTs to play on the leaves she appliqued. i really love this so far.

and last, but definitely not least.... a QOV top finish!!



you might remember previous postings of [k] and i working together on a QOV during monthly HMQG meetings. well folks, the quilt top is finished and i've put in the request for our longarm quilter! this QOV is a combo of civil war reproductions (the beige background and the blue border) and very modern prints and batiks (all the red). the pattern is "endless chain" from quilter's cache and i adore how it looks when all the blocks are put together. for some reason, the final look just hadn't entered my mind.

today has been fairly productive, even though i thought i'd finish most of this last night. kiddo is sick, which slowed me down yesterday, but after being home half the day today, i made up lost time. poor boo. his throat is completely swollen shut and the pediatrician tried to convince boo to have a shot of antibiotic instead of regular oral meds to get it working. boo did not go for it, so 10 days of medication it is.

BSA QOV presentation

yesterday was a special day. a long awaited day - especially if you're 7 years old.

yesterday, the man in the hawaiian shirt below came to visit den 7 for their final official den meeting for the school year. [M] shared his underwater photography experiences with the boys - he was under the impression that it was for their photography belt loops. it is, in a way, but it was more of an excuse to get him to the meeting for what we had on our agenda.




we were able to have 6 of the 9 boys in attendance. it's not often that we get all 9 at one time. they had lots of questions and [M] was so good with them. i knew he would be. [M] had printed up and bound the book he's been writing - a copy for each child. he even brought them a seashell souvenir from his dives.




upon thanking him for his time and what he shared with the den, we announced that we had a little something for him as well. a quilt of valor as a token of appreciation for his prior service with the u.s. marine corps back in viet nam. [M] sustained wounds both physical and other and is a purple heart recipient.

all 6 of the boys immediately popped up when i asked who wanted to help me.



my son handed [M] the journal i had kept during the entire process. it includes the first day when the den drew their pictures, all the sewing, opinions of the scouts when i showed them their drawings as stars, and i finished it appropriately on memorial day. the journal includes my "aha!!" moment when i knew the quilt belonged to no one else but [M].

i have no doubt this quilt of valor will be loved and cherished. [M] is the type of person who loves children, his country and the sacrifices he endured during his service. in the moments that we stood together in the above photo, you could see the pride and appreciation in his eyes and face.

it was a token well deserved and long awaited for as well. just as my mother said to me last night - i'm glad it went to a viet nam era veteran. they did not receive the appreciation or homecoming they deserved at the time.