Be careful what you wish for

Yesterday was a much better day, mentally. I think my mental health is in a good place, but I felt out of sorts on the weekend. Bored perhaps? So I vowed to shake things up a bit. Well - that happened - more than I would like! Just give me a minute and I'll tell you what happened.

We had our Zoom meeting for the Monday sewing group. One of the ladies wasn't on the call as she was trying to get in touch with a dentist who could prescribe her some antibiotics for an abscess on her gums. What amazes me is that we're now able to do things like this without actually leaving the house. I'm not sure the details, but I do believe she found a dentist to prescribe the antibiotics. Why can't we do things like this in real life? It would save so much wear and tear on people, their schedules, the traffic, etc.

So, after I told the group why this person wasn't on the call, someone asked, I wonder how it works for dental emergencies. No idea.

After the call and to "shake things up", I went to Harvey's to get hamburgers for lunch. I splurged and got onion rings and fries. I really wanted the onion rings. Every once in awhile, I have a craving for them. I ate the onion rings in the car on the way home.

I sat down to enjoy my hamburger and WHAT JUST HAPPENED??  I always eat the fries first and then I took the first bite of hamburger and knew something was wrong. Horribly wrong. One of my dental implants fell out!!!!  You have got to be kidding!!!!  Now, what do I do? Is this a dental emergency?

I did finish the hamburger which wasn't all that great as it was cool. Oh well. But what a pain to eat or drink without that FRONT tooth. I called the dentist's office and of course, got voice mail. They would get back to me, but if it was a REAL emergency, there was a number I could call. I called it just for the heck of it. I just wanted to talk to someone. Someone to share in my misery! No answer! Well - what if it had of been a real emergency??? 

The dental receptionist called me later in the day. It's not enough of an emergency to meet in person. Well - to my well being it's an emergency!!  It appears that Vaseline is a good temporary cement for this kind of thing. We must have Vaseline in the house. Nope - we do not. I guess because we never use it, I got rid of it. I might take another look this morning. BUT - I did find two medical masks (all nicely sealed in their own plastic bag) and a bag of gloves. Now, where did we get those???

I wanted excitement and a change to my routine, but I didn't want that. I'm off to the drugstore this morning to find some Vaseline. I can't believe I threw that small container that we had out. I'm thrifty and I'm certain I wouldn't have done that. Oh - I know one place I didn't look. We don't have a lot of stuff in the bathrooms, but we have enough. That needs to be sorted through. Ditch the out of date products and keep the rest. Let's just say that it's going to be a while before I need to buy floss.

Speaking of floss, I'm going to blame this incident on flossing. I never used to floss daily and no issues with implants falling out. Now I floss daily and look at what happens!!!!  😊😊  I'll be teasing the dentist about that!!!

I guess I'm just going to have to be careful until I can see the dentist. But keep that in mind if you have implants and one of them falls out. By the way - it's just the crown that fell off, the metal part is still intact.

I signed up for the Make a Mini (Quilt Canada) where we are paired up with someone and need to make a mini for them. I'm paired up with a lady from Alberta. I've been struggling with what to make for her. Even though Quilt Canada has been canceled, we're going to keep to the deadline. They need to be in the mail by June 1. ACK!!!  I can't figure out what to make for her. I mentioned it yesterday on our Zoom call as two other ladies were working on their mini quilts for the exchange. Then when I took the girls for a walk in the afternoon, the idea just dropped into my head.

PHEW --- I'm all set. I'm so relieved. I knew that would happen. You just can't force things and sometimes, it just takes verbalizing the problem to get it out. Yahoo --- now in addition to a potential trip to the drug store, I need to get to the hardware store today. Those yellow finches were back and I need to get them some food.

I'm so glad for the increased focus. Instead of setting aside things that I don't really want to deal with - I just pick the next task and get on with it. That also means dealing with the clutter. If you sort something, then put it away. Don't leave it - it becomes clutter. I have to say that I'm surprising myself that I've had this much focus to continue to do this. It's mindless, but I guess my brain is finally telling me that it's time to get it done!

Anyway, in the clutter clearing, I came across this quilt top. It was for a magazine and the top was done, but I had to remake it. I won't go into details, but this is the second top. It was literally rolled into a ball along with the leftover fabrics. The second quilt got published.

A "found" quilt top

 The binding was even made. All that was missing was a backing. Now I could have whipped into the backing area and found something, but there was a LOT of yardage pieces. Why not see if there is enough to make the backing for the quilt. And so in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, I put the backing together.

The quilt backing

It took 8 pieces to sew together and it worked and there was JUST enough. It was as if it was meant to be. I love when that happens.

And now the quilt is in the "to be quilted" pile. This should have been done years ago when I made the second quilt, but it got tossed aside because something else was more important. I was really good at that!

Ready to be quilted

This is all that's leftover. The bits from the strips that were cut to make the quilt. They are now filed in the appropriate scrap box. Yeah!!!! One less thing cluttering up the studio.

Scraps that went into the scrap box

I also finished that little doggie quilt that someone had given me. The one with the cuddle, the flannel, and cotton. I replaced all the flannel with cotton. I was contemplating whether to make it larger or not. I decided to check my fleece backings to see what I had and that would determine whether it was made larger or not. I found a perfect piece, EXCEPT for a wee notch cut out of one side.

Well, I could just stitch something in that notch and make it work. So I did.

A repair on the backing

I cut a piece that fit and butted them together. With a WIDE and tight zigzag, I stitched the patch in place. It worked like a charm.

Then I went to cut the binding. Oh, you're kidding me. I can piece those eight pieces of fabric together to get a quilt backing, but I can't cut strips the same width for the binding! I had a chuckle about that.

Attempting to cut binding strips

I didn't have enough of one fabric so I used two and I had just enough, even with this miscut. Oh boy!!!

Now, this little quilt is also ready to be quilted.

Ready to be quilted

 I wanted to quilt something different yesterday so I threw it on the long arm. I decided that it didn't need batting since the quilt is so small. It's 30 by 36. I just used the thick fleece for the backing.

Community project - quilt - DONE

The little patch on the back is barely noticeable. One more thing out of the way!!!! The quilt is trimmed and ready to be bound, hopefully, later today. I have a LOT of binding to do.

The little patch on the backing is barely noticeable

 I quilted it with a dog paw pattern. It's very cute and hopefully brings some warmth to some small person.

Dog paw quilting pattern

This quilt top has been hanging out on the cutting table for the last couple of days. It's been finished for a long, long time. The big question is does it need a border?

Does this quilt need a border?

I still have some of the blue and green used in the quilt. Here's what it looks like with green. 

A green border

And here's what it looks like with the blue.

The blue border

Personally, I like the blue for the border, BUT, I don't have enough fabric. That should tell me something right there. No border and pray that there's enough blue to make the binding. Stop agonizing over something that I can't change. That fabric is old and I probably don't even know the name of it to search for more.

Just get it done and move on!!!!

I also found some other blue and green fabrics with the top. Of course, NONE of them are exact matches, so why are they there? These need to go back into the fabric stash. Although I might keep them together as a bundle. That combination looks pretty yummy - what could I make with those three fabrics? Well - not - starting anything at this point!!!!

Yummy blue and green fabrics

I was looking for another small quilt to quilt so I loaded this one that belongs to me. It's small, but I loaded it on the long arm. Why not?

The small quilt on the 14-foot table

And it's done as well. I found a piece of batting that just the right size in no time, thanks to the labeling of the batting pieces. A huge time saver if you haven't done that yet.

A Christmas wall hanging - quilted

I more or less scribbled on it with the long arm. It was a lot of fun and it didn't take too long. The scribbling was in the background, then I got to stitch in the ditch around the shapes on the tree.

The detail of the quilting

The binding was made for this one as was the label. Can you read the date on the label? 2009. Seriously??? It took me about two hours to stitch some very dense quilting on that piece. Why didn't I find two hours in the last 11 years to finish that? No worries - it's done now. All trimmed and ready for the binding and label to be stitched in place.

Ready to be finished

I've been doing a lot of trimming and cutting and look at the scrap bin. A tad overflowing.

The overflowing scrap bin

So now I have this to face today. The little doggie quilt is ready for binding.

Doggie quilt is ready for the binding to be stitched on

I made the binding for that Quilts of Valour quilt that I quilted the other day so that one is waiting for binding as well. Someone donated this quilt top, but I can't remember where it came from. Thanks - it's almost done.

Quilts of Valour quilt ready to be bound

Look what I found in Studio B? An ORANGE letter E. I replaced the gold letter E with the orange one. The gold one is now in the giveaway box.

An ORANGE letter E

If I'm going to have these little trinkets, they had better be in someplace that I can see them or they need to be tossed.

Speaking of tossing, I went through a small stack of cards and got rid of all the notifications for quilt shows. There'll be new cards as new shows are planned. Holy - what a shame - there were a lot of shows and all of them got canceled.

Quilt show cards - tossed

I've been madly sorting scraps. But have I made a difference???  This is what the pile looks like this morning. I watched one more episode of The Quilt Show while sorting.

The pile of scraps to sort through

This is what it looked like when I first tossed them on the table. Hmm - doesn't look like anything has been removed. I know that most of you would just take this and toss it in the garbage, but mindless little jobs like this are very therapeutic to me. So when I'm in the nursing home, I just need a bag of scraps to keep me busy! I'll just sort them by day and at night, someone can put them back in the same pile and I'll resort them the next day!

The pile of scraps, the previous day

I'm running out of time. I'll share the photos of the Dream Big panel tomorrow. I took them, just no time to talk about them.

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!