I Can See Clearly Now...well, kinda.

J

On Wednesday, August 10th I had my first cataract surgery, which brought quite a few changes to my visual world.  As a visual artist, this is both exciting and a little unsettling.

My eyes are (were) minus 9 diopters, which means I've lived in a sort of Mr. Magoo-world since I was six years old and got my first pair of glasses. But, Wednesday, through the miracle of modern technology, my right-eye became -2.25 diopters in the space of about 10 minutes, which means I can see very clearly out to about 3 feet with that eye, and kind of OK into infinity.  That is amazing to me since my previous visual clarity without glasses only went out about 6 inches.  Beyond that, my world was a murky swirl of hazy colors, which even in the familiar landscape of my own home, was often confounding.  It is quite miraculous to wake up in the morning now, open my new bionic eye and see the bedside clock, my sweet husband's face, and even kind of make out the trees and weather outside our window without glasses!

Right after the surgery, my brain went kind of crazy trying to reconcile the 6.75 diopter difference between the surgical eye and the 90-pound weakling eye.  I felt seasick and like I was walking with one leg in a ditch.  I was mentally telling myself to just put on my big-girl pants and tough it out the next two weeks until my other eye got the surgical refit.  Fortunately, my eye doc took pity on me, and gave me a contact lens for the old eye, which helped level the playing field...literally.  The contact lens is not at my exact prescription and doesn't have an astigmatism correction, but it closes the gap between the new and old eye, and helps get my leg out of that dang ditch!  It's a temporary fix, because in two weeks the other eye will get it's own little surgical miracle.

What I learned about my eyes this past month:

Even though I've had these same eyes my whole life, I did not know that minus 9 diopters is an XXL myopic prescription.  I also didn't know I that have unusually large eyeballs.  An average eye length is 24 millimeters.  At 28 millimeters, I'm again in the XXL realm.  I never wondered WHY I was myopic, and nobody in all these years ever thought to tell me...but there it is: Long eyeballs! 

My quarter-inch thick old friends.

I discovered my old coke-bottle lenses shrunk everything--well, I guess I knew that, but never really thought about it.  Turns out my glasses were a bit like looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.  The first thing I noticed when the eye patch came off my bionic eye?  My legs are a lot shorter than I thought, and my feet are big as air mattresses!  I can't yet tell the difference between a teaspoon or tablespoon without comparing them to each other--they both look big as cereal bowls, and my depth perception is off enough that I can't seem to get through a doorway without running into the door jam.

Cataracts filter your world through a warm, soft, sepia colored lens.  With my new unfiltered bionic eye I can see that my house is not as clean as I thought, and I've discovered how WRINKLED I am. Pre-surgery, without my glassess, I could only see my face VERY close up, which meant I was only looking at a couple square inches of facial real estate.  With my glasses on, if I stepped back enough to see my whole face, my glasses shrunk everything and my cataracts filtered out a LOT of detail.  But now, I can see the whole naked truth: I'm as shriveled up as one of those apple-head dolls.  

I haven't been bold enough to look at my art pieces yet, because I already know some of the colors aren't going to be what I imagined, and I fear they may look a lot rougher and less finished than I intended.  So I've left them rolled up in bags for now--you can only take so many shocks in one week!

Meanwhile, I'm sort of housebound, since I don't have legal vision for driving, and I can't run or do CrossFit for a month, which makes me a little restless, and I'm still kind of seasick.  Howard's been his usual wonderful self--going to all my appointments with me, chauffuering me around like I'm some kind of royalty, reading to me, and listening to me whine.   After the second surgery, I'll have near perfect close-up vision.  Then I'll have to wait almost a month (til Sept 22) to get refracted for glasses, and another week for the glass to come, at which time, I will finally have distance vision (yay!).  I'll then be legal to drive, and roam at will in the big wide world.  It's all good.  It's just a process that takes a little patience--and, no surprise here, patience is not one of my strong suits!

Sketchbooks and Quilting

Sketchbooks loom large in my creative process.  I have two very distinct types of sketchbooks.  The first type is my walking-around-the-world sketchbooks.  These are small-ish, fit easily into a backpack, and contain sketches of a huge variety of things--everything from garbage trucks and utility services to cathedrals and sailing ships.  I sketch mostly with fountain pens and watercolors, with an occasional pencil or ball point pen image thrown in.  I have dozens and dozens of these sketchbooks dating back decades.   I usually  have no intention of using my sketches for anything.  I just like drawing, and I like looking through my old sketchbooks just to entertain myself.  (I'm easily entertained.)  My sketchbook sketches rarely ever become quilts.

Then there are my studio journals which are large working journals where I make notes about techniques Or products I've tried, and where I sketch out potential quilts or free motion quilting designs.  When I get an idea, I guess I'm worried I'll forget it before I get around to making a quilt, which I probably would, so I make a quick pencil sketch, and later I usually make a more detailed drawing and color it.

Most of the time, the original sketch doesn't look anything like the final quilt, but it's a starting point.  For example, my quilt, Farmed and Dangerous started off with a very rough pencil sketch, then evolved to the watercolor sketch on the left, and finally, to the quilt on the right.  Now I like the sketch better than the quilt.  Farmed and Dangerous 2 coming up.

I've read about art quilters who plan out their piece in great detail before ever cutting a single piece of fabric, and then stay true to their design all the way through.  I'd like to do that, since it seems it would save time and fabric, but I tend to be a two steps forward, one step back (sometimes 3 steps back) style quilter.  

I've also heard other quilters say they go straight to their design wall with a pile of fabric and a vague idea of where they are going, and start working.  That would be cool too, but wouldn't work for me.  Even though I don't follow my design very faithfully, I still need a starting place, and for me, that's a sketchbook. 

Ella and the LaConner Quilt Fest

 "Ella" is my most recent FINISHED quilt.  It is based on a photo my daughter took in the French Quarter in New Orleans this spring.  Though the photo was in color, I was attracted to the high contrast between the brilliantly sunlit areas and deep shadows. (It didn't hurt that the subject is my granddaughter.)  I decided to make the composition in black and white to emphasize the value range, and to make the background solid black to further emphasize the value range.

The piece is raw edge appliqued and free motion quilted with "invisiible" mono-poly thread from Superior Thread on my new Bernina 770QE.  if you opt for clear thread, make sure it is not the cheaper nylon thread, because  nylon will melt when touched with a hot iron.  Mono-poly does not, and it also works well in the bobbin.  Mono-poly thread is a bit stretchy, so when loading a bobbin, it helps to fill the bobbin more slowly than usual if your machine allows for that.

I used a wool batting, and that caused a few problems.  The batting "bearded" ever so slightly, but with all that black, every little tuft of white pulled up by the needle really showed.  Some tufts  I could push back into the fabric with the point of a seam ripper, others I had to disguise with a black Sharpie Marker.  There's always something challenging, huh?

I have applied to show "Ella" at the LaConner Quilt and Fiber Art Festival this fall, but have not yet heard if she's been accepted--letters go out the first week or so of August.

I've shown several quilts at the festival over the years, and really like this small, folksy show that draws amazing entries from quilters all over the world.

I also like having a reason to go to LaConner, which is one of Washington's many cute little, 1800's vintage waterfront towns.   Sipping a cup of good coffee, looking at great quilts, and shopping for hand dyes from the show vendors, plus a swing through the local fabric shop, makes for a pretty perfect day.

The Bernina 770QE: My new Sometimes Friend

This big girl has been sitting in my sewing studio now for 6 months.  I call her Clementine, because her shoes are number 9, referring to the 9 millimeter presser foot, but more about that later. 

The old Activa work horse

After debating and equivocating for months and months, and finally slashing out $5000 to buy the 770Quilter's Edition, without the embroidery unit, I must say, I am underwhelmed.  I've had a Bernina Activa 145 for 15 years, and cannot say enough good things about that straight-forward, little work horse of a machine.  "Little" being the operative word.  When Bernina came out with the larger machines a while back, I lusted after one.  Originally I longed to own an 820 or 830, but before I could summon the courage to spend that kind of dough, Bernina dumped them because they turned out to be troublesome lemons. The company then came out with a second series of 7s--including the 770QE and 790.  I think Bernina worked out some of the bugs that plagued the 8-series, including the flawed hook system, but my 770QE is still a temperamental beast.

Initially, it takes a lot of exploring to discover all the things this machine will do.  There are literally hundreds of adjustments and setting--if you can find them--and having once found them, if you can get back to home base to actually sew.  Being a big computer with a tiny screen, functions are buried in multiple layers of programming, and not always in an intuitive way.  And like a computer, you can get weird "fatal error" messages in the middle of a routine operation.  The manual that comes with the machine is skimpy, and the on-line Bernina videos are not overly helpful, though they have lots of cute pictures of cats rolling around on quilts.  Fortunately, there is a Yahoo Group of 770QE owners.  Their email is Bernina7Series@yahoogroups.com.  Members share lots of good information and coach each other through problem solving various issues.

What I like

• The wide harp area--not as big as some brands, but still very good.
• The bright LED lights (which can be dimmed if you are working on shiny fabrics.)
• EVERYTHING is adjustable, if you can just figure out the screen and how many layers in the feature is.  With time I've learned where the main things I need are located.
• The thread cutter. It works well on my machine, but not on the machines of several of the 770QE yahoo group members and other 770 owners I know.
• A separate motor for bobbin winding--though mine doesn't work properly.  It puts in loose areas as it winds that end up producing big loops on the backside of a seam as I sew. The winding speed is adjustable, but no matter what speed I choose, the bobbin does not wind on consistantly.  It also winds the thread on in a cone instead of a stacked cylinder unless I guide the thread with my fingers. 
• The hands-free knee lifter, which has been a part of Bernina machines for decades, is great.
• The HUGE bobbins.  They make me almost forget I have a bobbin.
• The two big nobs to the right of the blue screen (top photo).  They are for adjusting the width  and length of stitches, and make changes to either easy, and instantly visible on the screen.  (Note:  The large round silver thing on the far right is a suction cup magnet that I got from Leah Day) 

Finally tore the useless little doors off this  hard to use box.

What I don't like

• Lack of serious documentation.
• The small, flimsy slide-on table.  I thought it would break just from resting my hands on it.  I bought an acrylic Sew Steady 18"x24" table (pictured above), which I like a lot.  It sits on it's own legs, and being clear, it doesn't have to be removed every time I change a bobbin.
• That Barbie's-Little-Sewing-Case thing that holds the feet and other small stuff related to the machine.  Yeesh.  It's super tippy and the design hasn't changed in years. 

What I am Ambivalent about

• The 9mm wide presser foot.  True, you can zigzag a seam the width of a sidewalk, but so far I don't really see an advantage to it.  Also, when sewing really narrow seams, which I do in some of my constructions, the feed dogs are too far apart to feed the fabric evenly, so I revert to my old Activa.  (Glad I didn't sell it!)
• The button that allows you to sew without using a foot control.  Really?  Whose cockamamie idea was that?
• The "dual feed" that is supposed to be like a built in walking foot, but so far, in my usage anyway, doesn't quite make the grade. 
• The BSR, (Bernina Stitch Regulator) that comes with the quilter's edition.  It's nice, but another piece of fussy tack with a big learning curve (and big price tag if you purchase it separately--$1100.). I've free-motion quilted for years without one, and thought I'd love the BSR, but turns out I only just barely like it, the way you like, oh say a new mouse pad.  

So I continue to work on becoming friends with my new companion.  It would help if she wouldn't crash and go completely blank right in the middle of a project, or freeze up for no apparent reason with a picture of grinding gears on the screen, or continually tell me the bobbin is empty when it is completely full--situations that are usually cured by turning off the machine for a few minutes, and then turning it back on, where upon she sews happily away for another 10 or 15 minutes before the next crisis. 

At Long Last, with a Little Help from my Bernina 770QE

I started my gull quilt, Dinner for Four, over two years ago, but lots of life got in the way.  My father got sick and died, my husband and I took a two month road trip, later we went to France for two months.  The half-finished gulls were left pinned to the wall for ages.  I bought a new sewing machine, a Bernina 770 QE In January, and that refueled my motivation.  I'll write more about my machine later.  

The quilt still isn't finished...it needs to be quilted and bound, but today I stitched the last waves to the watery background.  Whew.

I plan to embellish around the fronts of the birds with cheese cloth to make the water splash like I did on my whale quilt.

The birds. Are raw-edge pieces glued with glue stick to a heavily starched muslin backing.

  The water is turned edge strips of black and gray fabrics that will be enhanced with various threads when I quilt the piece.  I,m thinking of working metalic threads in for a watery sparkle...not sure of that yet though.  The background is not glued or stitched to a backing fabric as I find that makes it harder to keep everything flat when I quilt it.  I used a turned edge applique process for that.

 My technique for turned edge applique is to glue each piece to the next along the quarter-inch seam line before stitching the seams with a blind hem stitch.  I use washable, bottled school glue for this .  Below a section of the water is being constructed.  The pattern is drawn on freezer paper.  I cut the pattern piece out, iron it to the right side of the fabric, then cut the fabric roughly a quarter inch from the paper.  The edges that will be on top are turned, those that tuck under are left raw edged.  I dampen the edge I am turning with sprach starch by painting the spray starch on with a foam beush.  (Spray the starch into a cup to get enough to paint on the fabric.

This shows the back of the fabric being "painted" with spray starch.  The freezer paper side is face down.  After wetting the fabric with the starch, i pull the fabric to the back along the edge of the freezer paper, and iron it down.  No reversing of the pattern is needed this way, and the pattern piece can be put back in the space it came out of, and fit perfectly.

At least it can be put back and fit perfectly, IN THEORY.   Well, back at it, and hopefully I'll finish this piece before I am shuffled off to the Shady Rest.