Quilt Plano

The Plano Quilt Guild's show was this weekend! What a wonderful day!

My husband and I met Ellen, Abby, and Abby's friend Jane at the show. Ellen and I also ran into Sharon, who we had met at the Garland Quilt Guild meeting earlier this month -- it's a small world! We saw so many beautiful, incredible, inspiring quilts. I can't begin to decribe them all!

Then we shopped. I wasn't even planning to buy anything but I just couldn't help myself! I met Michelle, who designs fabrics and quilt patterns in a Southwestern style. I loved everything in her booth! The designs are gorgeous and unique and I want to make them all. I ended up buying 2 applique patterns -- 1 features blocks that look like Mexican tiles, and 1 features a variety of different Southwestern-style crosses. Then I ended up buying some solid fabrics from another vendor so I can get started on the Mexican tile quilt.

We also stopped at the booth for England Design Studios, which also had patterns and fabric for sale. The patterns all have a naturalistic style -- we were especially drawn to the bird patterns -- and are made using a technique called picture piecing. It's similar to foundation paper piecing except you don't have to sew the pieces to foundation paper. I'm not sure how hard it's going to be but I just had to try it, so we got a pattern and fabric kit to make a small bird feeder wallhanging.

Plus I got a Norman Rockwell Santa Claus panel (no idea what I'm going to do with that), a kit (including backing!) for a cute Christmas wallhanging, a set of fat quarters from the Katie Jump Rope line (also no idea what I'm going to use it for), and some yellow fat quarters for a baby gift I need to make.

And then we bought Ellen an early Christmas present -- a lovely old quilt. I don't know anything about how old it is or where it came from, and it has a few tears and 1 unfortunate coffee stain, but it's pretty, and we liked it, and Ellen liked it, and it was affordable, so we got it. I don't have a picture of it because we already gave it to her -- nothing like instant gratification! -- but maybe she will post a pic of it.

And then after all that I managed to get a ton of sewing done on 1 of the 5 surprise gift quilts I'm working on. Plus I washed and ironed some of the new fabrics. So I did manage to do some sewing in addition to all the shopping!

Weil Week 2

We're starting our second week with Dr. Weil. Our action items for this week include:

• Get information about a water-purifying system. Dr. Weil is especially adamant about avoiding chlorinated water.
• Eat fish once this week.
• Eat broccoli twice.
• Eat more whole grains.
• Try a soy product (I'm thinking edamame rather than tofu....).
• Drink green tea (we've been doing this already but I'm going to buy more tea for us to try at home).
• Keep taking the vitamins & supplements.
• Walk 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
• Visit a park or other natural space.
• Take a one-day "news fast" -- no reading, watching, or listening to the news for an entire day.
• Continue meditating 5 minutes a day and add a 1-minute meditation exercise.
• Buy fresh flowers (we were supposed to do this last week but didn't get around to it).

So far, so good. Everything on this week's seems pretty do-able!

Weil Week 1 Update

Here's how we did on our first week of Dr. Weil's health plan:

• Getting rid of unhealthy food: We still have a few salad dressings made from oils other than olive, and we still have diet soda, but we are doing pretty well otherwise.
• Eat salmon 1 time: Done
• Eat broccoli 2 times: Done
• Take vitamins and supplements: I skipped them one day, but otherwise done.
• Wak 10 minutes a day, 5 days: Done
• Meditate 5 minutes a day: Started out good here but haven't done it lately. Turns out I need to find a different time to meditate, because meditating right before I go to bed just puts me straight to sleep.

We're ready for week 2!

Sampler Block #4

It's finished! This is the aptly named Basket and Birds block. The basket is pieced (more tiny triangles!) and the birds and flower are applique.

This was my first foray into applique. I fused the birds and flower to the background and then handstitched around them with a blanket stitch. I really like the fabrics in this block but I had to borrow the dark green for the flower stem and leaves from Ellen; my growing stash of 30s fabric does not include dark greens!

This block seemed to take absolutely forever to finish, but I eventually started to enjoy sewing by hand. Now I want to do more hand sewing -- and it turns out that the September block of the month for the Garland Quilt Guild is an applique pattern using 30s fabrics... That just might be the perfect (small) project to start for those times when I'm away from my machine and want something to sew!

Guilded

I went to the Garland Quilt Guild's August meeting last night with Ellen and Abby. Ellen joined last month and invited Abby and me to come with her this month. The guild ladies were all so nice to us -- I met Cheryl and Marie and Hope and some other sweet ladies whose names I can't remember.

It seemed like everyone was working on some hand-sewing project or other during the meeting; Abby was embroidering these labels, Ellen was embroidering a cute quilt block, Hope was sewing paper-pieced Grandmother's flower garden blocks, and a lady at the next table was knitting. I definitely need to bring something to do with my hands next time! I've never embroidered before but now I want to learn!

Ellen was lucky enough to win a door prize -- a gift certificate to a local quilt store. Ellen was also brave enough to share her happy quilt during the show-and-tell portion of the meeting. The guild does a block of the month each month, too. You make the block (see the instructions for September's block here) and bring it to the meeting, and one lucky person wins all the blocks for that month! One of the show-and-tell quilts was a block of the month quilt that one of the girls had put together after winning the blocks. It was beautiful! I probably won't do the block for next month, but you never know.. I might! I do happen to have plenty of 30s fabric, which is what we're supposed to use for September's block...

The main part of meeting was a presentation on applique by Pebble Rehm. She had brought several absolutely gorgeous quilts to show a variety of different styles and techniques, including a Baltimore album quilt, a Hawaiian quilt, and a Jacobean-style applique quilt. I'm just barely starting to learn applique for my sampler quilt (I'm nearly done with the first applique block -- pictures coming soon, I hope!), and I was really inspired by Pebble's work. All in all, a fun evening!

8 Weeks with Dr. Weil

I started reading Andrew Weil's 8 Weeks to Optimum Health last weekend and thought I might give the program a try. I'd heard of Dr. Weil before (I already had the canine version of the book, 8 Weeks to a Healthy Dog by Shawn Messonnier, and I've been using some of Dr. Weil's mind-body techniques for a stress-management program at my internship). When I ran across 8 Weeks at Half Price Books, I thought I'd give it a try.

Dr. Weil is my kind of doctor; he went to medical school and learned typical "Western" medicine but he has also studied alternative methods and believes that the best medical interventions are the least invasive ones that work. Plus, he believes that true health involves the mind and spirit as well as the body, and so his program incorporates both mind and body.

This book outlines an 8-week program, with different "projects" for each week. At the end, you are supposed to be much healthier than when you started. My husband is willing to humor me (for the moment, anyway), and so we started with Week 1 on Sunday.

The program starts out with small changes: In the first week, you are supposed to throw out unhealthy foods (those with transfats, any oils besides olive oil, artificial sweeteners, or artificials colors), eat broccoli, eat salmon, take vitamins and antioxidants, start walking 10 minutes a day, and do 5 minutes of meditation each day.

We started out with a trip to Whole Foods for vitamins and supplements. My husband, gazing at the infinite variety of expensive supplements, said, "This must be a health plan for rich people." We selected a variety of different health-inducing supplements and a 6-pack of beer to wash down both the vitamins and the sticker shock.

We have been taking the vitamins, walking, and meditating. We had our weekly serving of salmon, and we have broccoli on the menu twice this week. My husband is not yet willing to give up diet sodas (and I did have a diet Coke with lunch, although my goal is to cut back to one soda a day). We have both started drinking green tea (which isn't on the itinerary until Week 2, but I like tea anyway so I was happy to start early).

We'll see how this goes...

More Reading, Less Sewing

This weekend started with an after-dinner trip to Half Price Books, which meant I spent most of my time curled up in one comfy spot or another, reading.

I have 4 new (old) books:

• Andrew Weil's 8 Weeks to Optimum Health
• Melody Beattie's Beyond Codependency
• Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear
• Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living

So far, I've finished The Gift of Fear (it's about personal safety and predicting violent behavior -- a must-read, though a bit scary), started 8 Weeks to Optimum Health (more on that later), and skimmed Beyond Codependency (not really impressed with that one, but I heard about the author at my internship and thought it was worth a try).

I'm looking forward to starting Full Catastrophe Living, even though I don't really know what it's about; I'd heard of that author from one of my grad school professors and that was the only book of his I could find at Half Price.

I did get a little quilting done around all the reading. I cut out all the fabrics for 1 of the 5 (FIVE!) quilts that I need to have finished before Christmas, and I hope to start piecing it this week. I'm still working on washing, drying, and ironing all the new fabrics I got last weekend, plus I'm nearly done with block 4 from the sampler quilt (remember that one?). And I've got another knitting date coming up this weekend! Definitely keeping busy around here...