Slowly healing and new problem.

If anyone is out there, I just wanted to let you know why I haven't been on here in a while. To put it simply, my back is broken. No major problems except for pain. It's a compression fracture and probably happened when I fell backwards and broke my wrist. I have an appointment with a surgeon next month to see what can be done. I have to wear a plastic back brace that looks like armour. Needless to say, I haven't been able to sew for a very long time. With my broken wrist, I haven't been able to do any knitting or crocheting either, as I am right handed and broke my right wrist.

I also learned I have osteoporosis and am on Forteo to try and increase my bone density. It's a shot everyday for the next two years. I also found out that my arthritis is much worse and spread through more parts of my body than I thought. I'm just going to ignore it as best I can for as long as I can. LOL. Gotta laugh otherwise I get overwhelmed and don't do anything.

My wrist is starting to heal well, so hopefully I'll be able to start knitting or crocheting soon. I've been spending lots of time watching tv, surfing the internet and reading books. Gotta keep my mind busy, so usually I'm doing two things at once. LOL

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll be able to get to crafting again soon.

Allen

Been gone a while.

Got out of the hospital last week and haven't been able to sew. I fell on my face a couple of weeks ago and spent a week in the hospital recovering. I broke my sinus cavity above my right eyebrow my nose and oddly enough my little toe on my left foot. I'm supposed to go in the hospital next week to have surgery on my face. The way the Dr. explained it, he's going to cut behind my ears across the top of my head and pull my face half off. He'll replace the broken sinus bones with titanium and then put my face back in place. The only good thing about the surgery is that I'm getting a facelift at the same time. LOL. Anyway, keep me in your prayers. I'll be going into a nursing home for a few months while I recuperate from the surgery. I'll be at golden arms in Welsh, LA.  

Big 'ol Tuesday and doin some charity work.

I recently (a few months ago) decided to change churches. I was born into and raised in the Roman Catholic Church and over the years, I got the feeling that the pope wasn't real pleased witth me. He became very vocal about what he thought should happen to people of my persuasion. I mean where does he think that his church would be if it weren't for gays? No art, very few priests, very few choir directors and no cute dresses for him to wear. Anyway, I did some research and decided to join the Methodist church. I'm not turning this into a religious discussion, but I do want to feel like I belong somewhere and the people there made me feel very welcome. 

I joined the choir and another ministry where I can put my sewing talents to good use, the sewing ministry. As of right now, we make smocks for ladies undergoing treatment for breast cancer. I'd like to expand to other things that we can make to help people, not real sure right now, but there has to be more. I'll post pictures of the smocks as I make them. They're kinda plain, so I just can't leave well enough alone and have added some embroidery on the pockets. Here's my first one.

Teaching a 7 year old to sew

My friend Ida Mae, has a 7 year old grand daughter. They came over to my house a week or so ago and like most people she was fascinated by my sewing machine and asked me if I could teach her how to sew. I told her yes, I would. Age isn't the most important consideration, to me it was the motivation that was most important. I figured that we would start off with a simple project, a pillow. I had an old pillow case in the closet (can u say FEMA?) that she could use to practice a straight stitch on and away we went. It took her about half an hour to get the hang of it, getting distracted every once in a while, but I steered her back on track and soon she was sewing a pretty good straight stitch.

I set my machine up for embroidery and let her type in her name on the touch screen and watch it come to life on her material. It was a plum colored raw silk for the pillow and a darker plum for the embroidery.

Finally, I let her sew her pillow together, leaving a hole to fill it. I top stitched the edges, then let her fill the pillow with stuffing then sewed the hole closed and below is her and her pillow.

The word is Gucci

Some friends wanted some Gucci fabric appliquéd onto some clothing and this is what I came up with. Since the material was so thick, an old purse cut apart, it presented a challenge when hooping. I overcame this by using a contact stick, water soluble stabilizer. I hooped the garment, with the stabilizer on top, peeled the protective paper off the stabilizer then pressed the Gucci fabric onto it. Then it was just a matter of picking the design to stitch and away we went. I used my Bernina 200/730 for all of the sewing.

Before the storm

Another quick post. This is a picture of my foot before the 10th surgery. Yes I had 9 surgery a on it before this last one. I have started sewing and I almost have one smock finished for the ladies with breast cancer. I'm doing this as charity work for my church. I'll work on it some more after I get the embroidery work done on the stuff for Ida and Perry. Anyway here's the pic.

The big toe is infected in the joint, you can see the swelling

Shopping with gratuitous violence

Well Ida Mae and I went out shopping again today, we didn't get a lot done really. She needed me to repair a purse for her that the zipper had come off we had to get some jewelry pliers to repair it. After we got back to my house it was the work of a few minutes to get it repaired.
Anyway I have a few things from her and her boyfriend that they want embroidered so hopefully I can get started on that tomorrow.
I needed a new pair of scissors as mine have come up missing, I got a new pair of Ginghers so I could get their stuff done without having to struggle with the small embroidery scissors that I have. I'm excited to be productive again. I have spent way too much time hanging around laying on the couch, first with my toe infected and not being able to get the infection under control. Then recovering from sipurgery after they cut my big toe off. Here's a couple of pics, one just after surgery, and now healed.