Distracting myself

Well, this is one of those posts that's in the interest of full disclosure - or, as my mom says, The Truth Will Set You Free. This drawer contains pieced small quilt tops waiting to be quilted and finished:Wow.

On the left is my bag of bindings, then sixteen small quilt tops ranging in size from 16" x 20" to 60" x 60", one Project Linus quilt that's 50% pieced, and then two queen size quilts that are 25 - 30% pieced. Some of them are from last year, but quite a few are 2010 projects.

I guess you can tell from this that I like the piecing a lot more than the quilting. But I suppose there's more to it than that.

Sewing is my relief. As well as sewing to accomplish projects, I sew to relax and to distract myself from stuff on my mind. It's soothing to feed patches through the machine and watch blocks and then quilts emerge. And if you are working on a quilt, you have to concentrate or things will go awry. It's a nice thing to do to keep yourself from brooding on problems. And since the first of the year, I've been dealing with a new problem.

I had my yearly check-up on January 5th. That evening, the on-call doctor from the practice called me at home and asked me to come back to the office the next day for some more blood tests. "What tests?" I asked. I figured that my cholesterol, which was trending higher, was up and they were going to try to talk me into taking cholesterol lowering drugs (which I was leery of).

"We want to redo the blood glucose test," he replied. "Yours was over 300."

300????? In case you don't know, that's BAAAAAAD.

I have to say now that this was out of the blue. The results of my physical twelve months before were perfectly normal. I had seen the doctor during the summer and fall because he was watching my cholesterol test results, but they did the blood chemistry panel then and my blood sugar wasn't high.

So back to the office I went in the morning. The lab tech stuck my finger and showed me the results on the meter. 345. Oh my. The doctor's nurse came and got me and set me in an examining room. Doc came in shaking his head. "Well, we have a problem."

No kidding. And what's that "we" stuff?

He told me that I had developed type 2 diabetes, the insulin resistance kind, where your body's beta cells may be producing less insulin as you age, but the main problem is that your body is not metabolizing it correctly, allowing your blood glucose to rise. He was going to do another blood test call an A1C, which would show percent glucose levels in my red blood cells and, since red cells stay in circulation 2 to 3 months, would give a snapshot of historical blood sugar levels better than a one time test.

He also gave me a diet guide, a coupon for a free meter, booked me into a diabetes education class and wrote a prescription for a drug which you take my mouth that helps the body metabolize the insulin you make. If your body is not making insulin, this drug will not help, so it's also a way to see if it's an insulin resistance problem or an insulin production problem. You can also do a blood test called a C-peptide test to assess beta cell function, but luckily I respond well to the medication so I guess my little beta cells have not pooped out yet.

So that's my life now. My blood sugar is back in the normal range, my A1C result (which was absolutely awful in January, by the way) is almost back to normal, and I have finished the classes. I walk two miles a day on my treadmill. I've adapted my diet to the new rules, which wasn't very hard except for just about giving up bread and cutting out any refined sugar completely. I've always been a big veggie eater and we almost never eat out, so my cooking didn't really change. I don't want to downplay the difficulty of the transition; it does turn your life around. So that's why I've been sewing so much - to think about something else for a while.

It did hit me a few weeks ago that I don't get a birthday cake this year. I think I need to figure out how to bake with Splenda. I made my husband a German chocolate cake a few weeks ago (just because I can't eat it doesn't mean he has to do without) and that was difficult. Makes me realize that I'm a taster when I cook!

I have a routine in my meals, exercise and such. I check my blood sugar several times a day and I've even gotten used to pricking my fingers. I guess I had a lot of practice with all the pins I've stuck myself with through the years.

And I've lost 20 pounds since January. As my husband says, "The way you're eating, you'd HAVE to lose weight." This is not a diet I recommend.

Quick baby quilt

My mother's friend has a new great-grandson. We wanted to make a quick quilt for the new little one, and I had just the ticket. This is a Paddington Bear panel that is supposed to be used to make a soft book. I framed each page in sashing, including the cover and the back page (cropping the image and adding additional sashing to size) and asked a longarmer to quilt it in an allover teddy bear panto. I just finished the binding yesterday, and verified the baby's name for the label, which I made using a fussy cut Paddington Bear from the print on the back with an orange sashing border, which will be sewn on tomorrow.

I'm going to keep on the lookout for these panels for making books. I think it's a cute easy way to pop out a quilt in record time.

Jacob's Ladder for Jacob

Now I can show what I was making last week - for Calico Cat's new baby Jacob, a Jacob's Ladder wall quilt for his nursery. I had made the Jacob's Ladder for the giveaway, so the pattern was in mind when I read the baby's name. I decided it was the perfect quilt, and I had a new selection of blues from Connecting Threads to use. It's 21" x 27", a bit larger than the giveaway quilt, and uses seven different fabrics.

The back is pieced of 6" squares of leftover cream, brown, blue and navy fabric, which makes the perfect base for the label. There's a hanging sleeve, too, in case she needs it. I did straight diagonal quilted lines through the pieced center and outlined around the border. I didn't think this small quilt needed any more embellishment.

All in all, it turned out as cute as I had imagined, and I hope it brings a spot of brightness to his room. Welcome to the world, Jacob Henry!

Baby quilt

I found the pattern for the baby gift quilt I need to make by August. Even better, Heart of Dixie fabric shop has some of the Meadowbrook Farm fabric line left, so I can get the striped fabrics used in the blocks. This is a relief because I've been doodling designs and nothing is striking my fancy. This one is absolutely perfect. It's traditional, it's colorful, it's unisex, and it's also 50" x 66" so the child can use it even in after graduating to a youth bed.

What a relief!

Like I haven't been making enough quilts... ... ...

I got an email from a former coworker who left for a better job shortly before I retired. I hear from him sometimes, when they have life changes to share. They are expecting their second child in August, so I need to start thinking about a baby quilt for them. They don't know the sex yet.

My husband suggests I finish the "Give a Hoot!" quilt and give them that one, but I think I had better wait until I know if it's a boy or girl. His wife has a little more traditional taste, I think, and the Hoot quilt is a bit bright and eccentric, especially if it's a girl.

Most of my baby gift quilts just look like traditional quilts, only shrunk. Occasionally, I'll do a juvenile pattern, such as the tropical fish or the sailboat quilts I did for my hairdresser's twins. I did a Turning Twenty design in blue and yellow for the first child of the friend who's expecting in August. They're house-hunting, so by the time the baby's arrived they may have nursery colors picked out and I can coordinate a quilt with them.

I can't tell you how many times I've made a cute baby quilt to my color preferences, and when it's presented been told that it is the colors the parents picked for the nursery. It gets spooky. Maybe I should emulate Karnak the Great and just touch my head to his email on the computer screen and get inspired! (Sorry, had to sneak a Johnnie Carson reference in!)