Returning to my poor, neglected blog

 

Apologia: Last weekend marked the hellish return of my trigeminal neuralgia symptoms and I've asked my doctor to refer me to the surgeon in Winston-Salem who does laser surgery to bring relief from the pain.  This is as bad as it's ever been.  Everything seems to trigger the pain--toothpaste, talking, chewing. drinking cold water, walking, touching the right side of my face, etc.  Saturday, I mostly sat on the porch and tried not to move, but Sunday, I was tired of giving into the pain and decided to do some work in the studio and reactive this poor, sad blog of mine.  The baby quilt above is for the new baby of the couple who owns our favorite Indian restaurant.  I finished piecing it on Sunday.

  Dan and Steph left on Friday after a wonderful extended visit.  Anna was able to come for the long July 4th weekend and it was terrific being together with our entire family for my  66th birthday.  Anna made me a delicious and beautiful cake and we all enjoyed our meal at Lucky 32, an excellent Greensboro restaurant with fabulous catfish.

Jim is greatly improved in health.  The brace and the walker are gone, but he relies on a cane.  He is getting himself around to therapy and school and generally looking and feeling more himself.

Safety Pin Studio has seen the usual number of baby quilts as well as a t-shirt quilt for my cousin, Lynn, and the repair and quilting of an antique quilt top of hers.  Anna's new apartment sports new curtains, too.  Dan and Steph's quilt was finally finished so that they had it on their bed here during their visit and then took it back to Canada with them.

My cousin's antique quilt top was in rough shape, but since I had some experience restoring antique textiles, I repaired everything first. The poor baby below had to be completely backed with cotton to save it.  I suggested that quilting the top would help to preserve it.  Using all 100% cotton (thread, backing fabric, batting), I sandwiched  and quilted it very lightly by hand.

The weather was cooperative, so I was able to baste it on the screened porch.

My cousin knew something about the history of the quilt, so I created a label on the back to preserve that information as well.  The block pattern was churn dash, so I made a little block of my own for the label.

The t-shirts that my cousin had collected over the years were very rich visually and made a very fun quilt. Making t-shirt quilts interesting presents a challenge because it is tempting to cut them uniformly in size which means you end up with lots of empty space and the thing becomes so heavy you can hardly move it.  I'm a fan of cutting the designs out closely.  I stabilize all the shirt pieces with a woven, iron-on interfacing which makes sewing regular cotton fabric to them easier. The differences in size can be dealt with by adding pieces of patchwork.

What I was REALLY doing this weekend

This is what I was REALLY doing this weekend! Saturday's post was part of an elaborate ruse. (The binding really is sewn down on one side of the bento box quilt, though.) With the Jim's encouragement and the help of Alexis, Anna's best friend and maid of honor (and the bride of the wedding bento box) and Matt's mom, I flew to Boston on Saturday morning and surprised Anna at her bridal shower. We had a wonderful time at the shower and then we were together for most of Sunday.



Here are my two beautiful brides. Alexis' big day is next Saturday, so I have to get busy and sew the binding down on that quilt because we are flying back to Boston on Friday.

Matty and Anna

Photo by Danny Fisher 2008

This is Anna and Matty in our backyard (the scene of their wedding in the summer of 2010). Dan took it with his vintage Pentax.



I took this photo in Boston last May when Jim and I flew up to visit the kids.



This was taken when the kids visited us in early December. We managed to get quite a few wedding errands done during their time with us. Happy Christmas to you my darlings. I love you, I miss you, I kiss you.

Happy birthday, Anna!

The happiest of birthdays to you, my darling girl. I love you, I miss you, I kiss you!

A little brag, an exhortation, and some housekeeping

Photo by Dr. John Zimmerman

I have to brag a little. Our daughter, Anna, is going to be the new company manager for the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. She's worked as the assistant to the managing director, Michael Maso, for about a year and a half, but had to go for this position when it opened up. We are so proud of her and happy that both our children have jobs in the fields they want to be in during these incredibly dismal economic times.

The picture above is one of my favorites of Anna and her dad. It's from a Wabash College production of The Man Who Came to Dinner in which we all appeared. Anna's first love is directing, but she's also a wonderful actress. The play was directed by Jim's former student and current Wabash theatre department chair, Micheal Abbott who blogs at the Brainy Gamer.

And now for the exhortation...I know everyone is feeling the results of this recession, but people and organizations in the arts, and most particularly, the theatre are being savaged by it. Grants have dried up, large donors aren't coming up with the big bucks, and box office is off. This is where you can help. Wherever you live, please, go to the theatre. Most theatres rely very heavily on their box office receipts to fund what they do. Even if you can't afford to donate, you can probably afford a ticket. There is no substitute for live theatre and it may be an endangered species. If you have little children, take them to live theatre early and often. Even small towns usually offer some kind of children's performance. Trust me, they'll love it. Community theatres, college and university theatres, as well as festival and regional theatres could die if their audiences disappear. Since the livelihoods of both my husband and my daughter depend on live theatre, I thank you for your support. And since I love the theatre, I encourage you to be an enthusiastic and frequent audience member.

And finally, the housekeeping: I've gotten some very nice emails from the bloggers I mentioned in the One Lovely Blog award post and several of them have mentioned the award in posts of their own. Here's a link to Dog-Daisy Chain and A Spoonful of Sugar.

Anna's Sense and Sensibility quilt

This is my dear daughter, Anna. When we have more than a few days together, we will usually indulge in one of our favorite rituals--watching the Ang Lee film "Sense and Sensibility." In addition to the lovely story, we also adore the art direction in that film. Shortly after we had first seen it, I found a glimpse of the actual quilt that Jane Austen, her sister, Cassandra, and their mother made. I showed it to Anna who immediately said she wanted a quilt like that.

We had a wonderful time collecting fabrics for it and because I only had a picture of a little corner of the quilt, I had to devise a pattern for it. (After it was finished, I finally got a Xerox of a full view of the quilt from an Internet friend in the UK and discovered that what I thought were squares on point were really diamond shapes and that there was a flower basket center design!)

Our borders were very close to the original, though.



The back is flannel--two printed florals. A generous single size,
it graced her bed during her last two years of high school. On the label, dated
1997,I wished Anna a life that was a balance of sense and sensibility. Nearly twelve years since, I would say she has more than achieved that.