Post surgery day 1

Yesterday I went under the knife once again--and I hope this is the last time I do!--to fix my very painful thumb and the middle finger that was increasingly triggering as the years went by.  In case you are thinking this, that finger isn't triggering because I've given it to so much! It's just an arthritic condition, I think, not overuse flipping people off.  So, a lovely pic of my right hand all casted and wrapped up for the next 2 weeks.  Not too much pain but I'm unable to flex my fingers very much so I've resigned myself to no sewing for awhile. Or much fine finger activity at all for that matter. Being able to type this post I find amazing!  

I'm going to tell  you about the quilt I made up for the guild's charity project this year. We decided to make quilts for the students at the local university who come from warmer climates and who suffer when the cold weather strikes--sometime in late Sept or early Oct usually.  I didn't like the pattern that was chosen by the charity committee so had decided not to participate this year--these activities are all optional in my guild--until I got to talking with some friends and Pat showed me a pattern that I thought would be perfect.  

I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,478 two and a half inch squares that I've cut from scraps over the years, and the quilt pattern was based on 9 patch blocks made from that size square.  So that used up some of the patches I had stored--but there's still thousands of them to be used up in other projects, I swear!  

So, these 9 patches were to be set on point with a pieced sashing in between. I found a couple of fabrics in my stash that I thought would work for the sashing, even tho one of them was a "Why in H--- did I buy that fabric!" but it worked and I was able to use it up.  Then for the border, I used another "Why the H---" fabric that I thought was really ugly but seemed to work just fine in this quilt.  Below is the quilt top laid out on a bed. . .

this is the "ugly"  gray/green of the final border. . .

some of the 9 patches . . .

candy bars

snowmen

guitars

In the end, I only had to purchase fabric for backing, and used up a ton of squares and two really ugly fabrics that I'd had forever, and the overall effect of this quilt was rather Middle Eastern, I think.  I hope whichever student got it stays warm all winter long.

Enough typing--my hand is getting sore.  Til tomorrow . . .