month end - it's been a doozy!

 It's been nearly two weeks since I last posted, but it's been quite a ride.  I'll start with the bad news first.

Gabby had major surgery.

This belly is no longer fluffy, but instead sports about a 7-inch scar.  She ate thread.  Enough that it was wrapped around her tongue and had worked its way through and was almost coming out the other end.  It happened last week either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.  After throwing up quite a few times and refusing food, she went to the emergency vet at 1am Friday.  By noon Friday, the thread had been removed and she was recovering.  A week ago today, she came home.  She is wearing an inflatable cone of shame, but eating and snuggling like a champ.  She is confined to my bedroom with food and water and cat beds and everything a cat might want that cannot leave just the one room.

Here she is, enjoying a snuggle minus the cone.  As she recovers, she is more feisty about getting it back on, so the cone-free snuggles have come to an end.  She needs to leave the incision alone so it can heal, but it is healing nicely.

What could have been a very complicated, much more expensive, surgery wasn't, probably because I was paying attention to her change in behavior.  But I can tell you now that I will never leave my sewing machine threaded and unattended again.  I don't think she did it on purpose - I think she was rowdying around the room and got tangled - but I don't want to give her that chance again.  Or any other cat.

A positive is that she seems to be much more trusting and snuggly towards me.  We'll see how that goes in another few days when she is allowed to roam more of the house!

With all this going on, sewing did not take precedence, but there was some sewing before and, with the hubby taking some shifts to just hang out (or nap) in the bedroom with her, and with her healing going well, I have had time to sew since.

Since this is the end of the month today, and the last day for my self-challenge with the January sticks, how about a review of where I stand?

These were my "assignments" for the month.  I'll just go in the order they appear here.

First up, the quilt using old shirts.  If you remember, very early in the month, I hit the jackpot on shirts and bought fourteen.  I was excited, so plugged away at deconstructing and cutting and making blocks.  I think were I last left you, the blocks were finished and a layout needed to be determined.

I had help...

Once I was satisfied with the layout, I picked them up carefully and started sewing.

This is where I should have really figured out something was wrong with Gabby.  She is curled up in the hallway, not on the project.  I kinda knew something was going on, but hoped it was just a bug and she'd be right as rain the next day.  Boy was I wrong!

Anyways, I kept sewing, knowing there was little I could do with the sick kitty (sometimes you just need to wait it out a day or so) and had a top before long.  It took until today, though, to get that top photographed!

I like it, but I don't think I'll be making another from these fabrics.  My machine was struggling with the thicker seams at corners and skipping stitches.  I think the variety of fabrics and weaves and such were just too much.  I tried changing needles, but that actually made it worse (new needle did nothing, jeans needle and microtex needles were worse). I really hope the industrial-ness of my longarm will handle this better.

Today, since I decided I don't want the leftover fabrics either, and since I knew I had some larger pieces, I cut them up to make a back.  Cutting them 12.5" wide and whatever length I could get, I cleared the design floor when the hubby went up for a nap with Gabby, and have this to sew together now!

Once this is together, I'll reassess if it is large enough.  I have some smaller pieces left, but also may just frame it in with a solid to get it larger enough for the longarm.  But since my goal was to finish just the top, I'm not worried about that just yet.  I mean, I'd like to put it away with an adequate back, but longarming isn't on the agenda for this one.

So stick #1 - check!

Next up is longarming the cars and trees (actually called Bringing Home the Christmas Tree from Lori Holt's book "Vintage Christmas") quilt.

With everything going on, I more or less abandoned the idea of getting this one done.  Since it was the last one to be started (and not yet started), I made my peace with it remaining undone.  Perhaps next month?  I wasn't going to stress about it.  I had better/worse things to worry about.

But as I was lounging in bed Friday night, realizing Gabby is improving steadily, and knowing the hubby will take shifts hanging out with her (I don't think we need to be there all the time, but I also don't want to leave her locked in there for 12 hours straight with no human contact if we can help it!), I decided to make a go of it.

Saturday I started by piecing the back fabric...

Of course, I had help.  I hadn't even gotten started sewing and Finn jumped right in.  Here I am winding up the selvedge after trimming and he was REALLY helping.  (He's such a good boy!)

I wasn't sure how far along I would get, or if longarming would even happen on Saturday (yesterday), but I just kept plugging along.  If I had to leave it overnight to finish in the morning, so be it.

One of the advantages of spending too much time snuggled in bed is you get a chance to think about quilt motifs.  I had decided to do some swoopy swirls over the whole quilt.  Because custom would be insane and and overall pattern seems just fine on something this busy.

It took a LOT of thread.  Like a whole bobbin at each pass.  Six passes.  Well, that last one was a skinny one, so less bobbin, but six bobbins.  And I ran out of white thread on top on that last pass.  With a 6-inch by about 50-inch section left to go, I switched to a whiter off-white, and I'm going to guess that no one is going to notice.  I had my nose right in there and couldn't!

But, yes, you read that right.  I finished longarming!  It took about 5 hours total, but I did take a few longer breaks every time I rolled it because my elbow was giving me trouble.  Getting it stretched out and relaxed for a few minutes between rows was needed.  (But I kept busy - folding laundry, feeding cats...)

And then, after a late dinner, I used the trimmings from the back and made and attached binding!  This morning, I camped out on the couch in my bedroom, tablet set up next to me to stream some Gilmore Girls, and Gabby and I started the hand-sewing part of binding.  I got about a third done when the hubby announced his desire to take a nap with Gabby.  So I vacated and baked some peanut butter cookies.  And snagged this photo:

(And now it is drying out because it not only got snow on the bottom, but fell off the clothesline into the snow - pins holding the binding down and all...!)

I'm pretty excited that this is this close to finished.  And happy to check off another stick!

The third stick is the Lilipopo-style embroidery.  I've teased you with this in the past when it was partially finished.  It has been done for a while, but I just haven't been back to the blog to share the finish.

I have no idea what I will do with this, but it is cute and I'll figure out something.  It was a learning experience and I now own reading glasses to be able to see this kind of work better, but I'm glad I did it and will not shy away from doing more in the future if I find reason.

Stick #3 - check!

And lastly was the bag from the closet.  Some semi-coordinated fabrics gifted to me and forgotten.  There are more bags (different fabrics), and since I have fewer sticks of this variety, it will be recycled to do another project or three in the future.  But let's get to the project!

I last left you with tales of more blocks to construct, but seem to have only this one photo of six.  Perhaps these are the last six?

The finish of these coincided with the trip to the emergency vet, so this project stalled out most obviously.  The docs were super amazing at keeping me in the loop about what was happening, but there was still the waiting game.  Surgery took two hours, and I'm not going to rush that...yet you still wait by the phone that whole time, knowing no news is good news, but also hoping to hear all is well sooner than two hours...

But in an attempt to keep myself from totally panicking, I worked on a layout.

The boys knew something was up, so they jumped in to help...

This one took a while because, though every block is a different combination, there are a lot of repeated fabrics.  Eventually I called it good enough and picked it up.

I started sewing it a few days later, but didn't have the focus needed.  The original didn't have sashing, so that was my plan, but after failing to get points to line up well and generally struggling to keep my mind on what I was doing, I set it aside, only 5 blocks sewn to one another, and again made peace with it.

But as news of Gabby continued to be good, and her return home proved easier than anticipated (remember, she was feral three and a half years ago when she came to us as a kitten, and she still has tendencies in that direction), my ability to focus improved.  And again, with the hubby being willing to take snuggle shifts, I was even more able to think about other things.

And what I thought about was sashing.  These are traditional quilt colors.  And though I still don't know the name of the block, it is a traditional quilt block.  And tradition mandates sashing and cornerstones.  I had some marbled darker brown in my stash that, while I don't like it much, is perfect for this project.  So I dug it out and started cutting.  That proved to be interesting, as it was the fabric I used for the frame on my "Under the Microscope" quilt.  So it had a donut-shaped piece and another that the donut was cut from.  But I managed to get enough for all the sashing!

And enough for an outer border.  And enough for binding!  And there is a little left, though the pieces are rather triangular and not very large.

Toby is helping.  He, too, is taking on some of Gabby's duties in her absence.  (Though to be honest, I took these rows, as they were finished, and stretched them across the floor in my bedroom, where Gabby is hanging out, to give her a chance to inspect them!)

Today the outer borders went on and I have another finished top!

It's about 36x45", but since I made the sashing pieces finish at 3/4", and math is hard, I'm estimating.  I have no idea what I will do with this because it is SO not me, but the bag is out of the closet and I used up all but some marbled blue that did not go at all, despite the strips being cut to match.  The strips are in my string bin and the squares were trimmed down to go into my 2.5" square stash.  Also, I reduced my actual stash, using it for backgrounds and the sashing/border fabrics!  This one is a true win.

And stick #4 - check!

I got all the sticks done!

Considering all the past two weeks have thrown at me, I'm surprised, but also very happy.  Now I can enter into a new month with nothing hanging over my head.  Being a short month, not having to play catch-up is a good thing.

But this is not all I did these last two weeks!

Remember how I made some Valentine masks a few weeks back, and took them to share with coworkers?  Well, one of the coworkers asked this past week if she could "order" more.  Of course!  I let her select some fabrics from a batch of ten and got busy sewing.

These are the insides - and I may have cut one more for myself from one of the cooler fabrics...

Toby also got to work.

I sent her this photo with the disclaimer that these masks may or may not contain cat hair.  As hard as I try, it's a fact of life when you have four fur-kids.

And then they were done!

Since I haven't been at work since Wednesday (that may be a scheduling flaw, but I'm NOT complaining to have five days in a row off!), these are still waiting to go to her, but she was excited to know they were being made.  And I'm excited to give her something that she finds comfortable that will also help keep her safe.

(I made one of the grey and yellow daisy fabric for me too, if you were wondering.)

So that has been my two weeks.  More or less.  There have been meals cooked and cookies baked and laundry washed and all that stuff, too, but I'm sure you're not here for THAT boring stuff, so we'll just glide right over that.

Freddie wants you to know, though, that he has been helping.

And this is where the older boys (not that any are THAT old, but they're older than Toby) have been spending a lot of time lately:

Toby is much less predictable, but also more active.  These two are just happily sunning themselves whenever the winter sun manages to peek through the clouds.  Rare, but we all enjoy it.

I think my lighting has gone for more hand-binding with Gabby, so I guess once dinner is done, I will be reading.  I've been getting a lot of reading done, and it is something one can do while petting the convalescing cat, so I guess all is well in the world.

Happy quilting!

Katie