Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Pat was up before his alarm went off this morning. When my alarm rang there was no way I could drag myself out of bed and, since Pat was already up, I shut the alarm off and slept until my normal wake up time.

That left me in a bit of a rush to get my coffee and some breakfast before heading out for a physiotherapy appointment. My elbow was hurting really badly about a month ago. I went for x-rays and, when nothing showed up on them, the doctor set me up for some physiotherapy. It was almost an hour of pain as the therapist contorted my arm in as many directions as possible trying to figure out where the pain was actually centered. He was finally satisfied and gave me a series of exercises that will strengthen the weak spots. I’ve been doing the motions off and on all day as I switch between projects. This morning’s ibuprofen has worn off and my arm is aching again tonight but he warned me that would likely happen.

So what exactly were my projects for today? Since I didn’t get any work done on my photo book this morning I spent an hour on it this afternoon. It is so nice going through the pictures again – it brings back such good memories.

I made the labels for the two door hangers and got them stitched to the back of the pieces. I also made a label for Emma. Her quilt is still in the pile of hand stitching but it will be there when I’m ready for it. I’ve just about finished the hand stitching on the Community Quilt. I’m still unsure about the quilting. I’ll finish off the binding tonight and then see how I feel tomorrow. As much as I’d like to hand it in at the meeting tomorrow night, I want it to be as good as I’m able to make it.

I am using pieces of the extra string blocks as binding for the quilt and I was having some trouble making the corners lay flat. Then I remembered at one of our Guild demos it was mentioned that you can use a hammer to force a seam flat. I got out my trusty hammer and, believe it or not, it worked like a charm. Sadly in my hammering I missed on one stroke and hit my finger – but it was worth it!

I’ll finish off my binding tonight and, if there is time, I’ll do some more research for my photo book.