My Blog

Aren’t these blocks beautiful?  I’m not being smug – Leanne picked the fabrics out – not me    I’ve told her before how much I want to raid her fabric stash, and boy is that ever true now.  Her color choices were so great; so vivid!  These blocks are for the February edition of our bee, Modern Tradition quilting bee, with the objective being to use modern fabrics in traditional block styles. 

Believe it or not, this was my first go at a traditional log cabin, sans wonkiness.  I hope she likes how they’ve turned out    Happy Birthday, Leanne!!

If you’re keeping track of my days, you’ll quickly notice that my “29 days” haven’t been so… well.. consecutive.   I’m kind of slacking at my goal, and, and now I think I know why.  Up until now, I’ve felt like the “real” gifts have to be purchased.  Be it flowers or a card or dinner.   Why do I think that?  I wonder if it might expose a weakness of mine; ie – the better the gift, the more it cost?  Ah – epiphany, and what an ugly side.  I think I just realized how this 29 gifts thing is going to play out for me.  I’m going to either send an email or a card every day to someone.  And by card I mean on a notecard.   Because this isn’t about money spent, but about the thought – literally the thought of this.  The thought being about someone else rather than me.

So, today’s gift was spending ~20 minutes comforting someone who is really scared about her daughter – she was originally thought to have viral meningitis, and then migraines, but now they are wondering if its a Chiari malformation.  Which would require surgery.  She’s extremely scared, and I was lucky enough to be given the chance to comfort her.

I’m IN LOVE with these blocks!  These blocks were for the February edition of our Spider Bee.  Brioni did such an amazing job picking out fabrics, and fussy cutting her base fabric so well.  I *really* loved making these – and can’t wait to see the final result!

Quilting bees can be addicting.  You can see proof to the right where you’ll now see that I’m part of SIX quilt bees.  Wasn’t one or two enough you ask?  NO.  Did I need any more excuses to use my sewing machine? NO. This isn’t about logic.  This is an addiction!  But its fun, and not nearly as dangerous as drugs, or as expensive as gambling (we won’t talk about Munki Munki).

January was actually my month for this bee, and I’m still happily collecting my blocks back from everyone.  As soon as I get them all in, I’m going to whip up a few blocks to go along with it, and then put it all together and showcase it here.   YAY!  Til then, you can see what we did for Shelly, as she was the host of our February edition.  She was sweet enough to even do the tutorial for us, helping to ensure that she got some pretty great blocks back.  This is called a “cropped nine patch”.  This one was a LOT of fun to do, and something I had never even seen before!   I’m especially fond of Shelly, too, because she’s an anesthetist just like me 

Today’s gift was simple – I sent my Mom a sweet little note and some chocolates in the mail to bring her some sunshine.  I know she could use it.  I love you Momma!

This block is for Heidi; she’s our Circuit Block Party bee mama, and her month was January -the block is called the Dutchman’s Puzzle.  The tutorial for it is here.  This was my first shot at flying geese, and I loved it!  I was happy with how all the points came out.  Nice pick, Heidi! And congrats on the baby!!!!

So I resumed counting yesterday on my 29 days and yesterday’s gift was a quilt to my mother-in-law.  Yes this was her Christmas gift, and yes, its over a month late.  But its still a gift because I worked SO hard on it.  And its late because my father-in-law had very unexpected open heart surgery the week before Christmas and it threw us all for a loop.  We truly forgot that it was Christmastime for about a week.  Needless to say, most Christmas shopping/presents were completely put on hold.  On top of that, my Mom broke her ankle the week before Thanksgiving, and  had to have surgery.  We had planned for her to come up the week before Christmas to stay with us for about 2-3 weeks while she was recovering.  It was a very crazy time.

My MIL, Diana, seems to be more and more into the bold and bright colors that are often associated with the Hispanic cultures.   I spent more time than I’d like to admit at the quilt shop, with a few employees, trying out various combinations of fabric.  I didn’t want anything too pastel-y, and I didn’t want it to be too dark with greens and blues.  So far, everyone I’ve shown the quilt to has loved the color combo.  I’m super happy with it myself.  I quilted it on the diagonal for the first time, thanks to much inspiration from Ashley.  If you look close enough, you can see where my straight lines weren’t so straight.  But you wouldn’t look that close since you don’t want to get pinched.  

The binding was kept simple – there was already so much color, that I didn’t want to take away from the quilt with yet more busy-ness.   Its Kona Orange.  Seems to really tie it all in together, don’t you think?  Finished dimensions are 70″ x 70″.  The pattern was based off of the “It’s a Rosy Day” quilt from Quilt Magazine in April 2009.

… have not been such good gift giving days.   But, I have not forgotten.   I’m going to give myself the gift of forgiveness, and carry on tomorrow with my gift-giving.   I’ve been really focused on my own thoughts the last few days, and unfortunately, nothing very “thoughtful”.

Wow, I’m exhausted!  I spent all day with about 300 children.  Every year I judge a Lego-League competition, and today was the day!  I was fortunate enough to see the research presentation of a number of teams, on the topic of “smart moves” which involved transportation safety, efficiency and innovation.  And so that was my gift today – a donation of 10 hours to lots of 8-14 year olds!  It was that much more of a gift, considering I worked 28 hours within 36 between Thursday and Friday.  I’m SO ready for a lazy Sunday!

I’m writing this a day late because I worked until 11pm last night and was awfully tired when I got home.  Plus, day’s two gift meant I had to go straight to bed.

My gift for day 2 was doing a double shift for today (day 3).  Yes, I got paid for it, but I *certainly* didn’t want to do it; especially after working til 11pm, and then having to show up at 7am for a 16 hour shift.  Oh, and I have to get up early tomorrow as well to judge a Lego League competition at Georgia Tech.  I’m going to crash come Sunday.

As for my gift on Day 3 – working 16 hours has made my brain foggy.  I think today’s gift was simply saying some kind words to a new PACU nurse.

I’m still having a hard time distinguishing “doing my job” from “giving” while at work… because so much of my job IS to give to others (namely patients).  But this is about going beyond what we normally do, and beyond ourselves, so hopefully as I continue this it will be become more and more clear how to give to others while at work.  I think it will be about giving to my co-workers…