Sun Bonnet Sue Quilt Travels to North Carolina and Back

Quilting with my friend and mentor, Karen, in North Carolina.  Last April, Karen got me started making traditional style quilts, doing the hand stitching to bind the layers.  I am still making progress on the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt and am almost done.  All that is remaining are 15 pink triangles around the edges and stitching "in the ditch" around the binding seam.  So, you are thinking that 15 triangles sounds like a lot.  I guess so, but that is how optimistic I am.  A couple good days and I could be done.

I took a break though because my friend, Les, who I am doing the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt for, doesn't have a deadline for when she wants the quilt.  The deadline was self-imposed.  I wanted to get it done before Thanksgiving, in order to give me a couple good weeks to get the next one hand stitched - the one for my granddaughter.

But here's what happened: I committed to doing the turkey for my daughter-in-law who is hosting Thanksgiving this year.  She is a vegetarian so it makes sense that someone else should offer to do the turkey, so I did.  And I offered to make the mashed potatoes, a butternut squash dish and a cranberry dish.  And another turkey got added in there as well.  As I sat quilting in the RV, and it was Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and I'd not really even decided on recipes, much less gone shopping.

And not only that - I had bursitis in my left shoulder and was in a lot of pain.  I think it was brought on by being hunched over for hours at a time quilting, tensed, as I pressed and pinched the fabric with my left hand while pushing and pulling the needle through the layers with my right hand.  It got so painful that I couldn't reach my left hand straight out in front of me without pain, such as to turn the radio station.  I couldn't lift it to fix my hair without pain. I was having trouble sleeping, i.e., rolling over was difficult.  Not to mention that I like to sleep on my left side.

Add to that some more whining: both my hands were messed up again dating back to a motorcycle accident I had several years ago where the backs of my hands slammed into and broke my side mirrors.  The glass and impact cut up my hands, severing some nerves.  After all these years, they were both almost back to normal.  Normal, being that I never thought about them anymore.  Never had pain or tingling.  I could wave at people without my middle through little finger on my right hand dropping forward.  But now it is back.  I don't have the droopy fingers but I have bright bouts of pain as I try to put on my coat or do anything that causes the little bump that has resurfaced, to be touched (like reaching my hand under my pillow at night.)

And I'm not finished whining yet.  The dry winter air caused the calluses on my left hand finger tips to crack and bleed. If you haven't ever hand quilted, calluses get developed due to getting poked with the business end of the needed, feeling for and guiding the needed through the layers.  So I realized I was putting tiny blood spots on the back side of the quilt.

....and I was developing a cold.  Dave and I almost never get sick, but yet here I was, sick.  I think it is due to stress.  And believe it or not, even though I am not working at a job anymore, and can do pretty much whatever I want, I was pushing so much to get this quilt done on a self-imposed schedule, that I became stressed and caught a cold.

So I packed it up and put it away for a few days.