Monday, May 14, 2012

{Fearless}

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Chaney's workspace looks an awful lot like mine...

It was a wonderful weekend!  Chaney gave me her Mother's Day presents... a card and a coupon book full of fun gifts like a "free" cream cheese bagel, "free" bed made, "free" kiss & hug, etc.  I hope she never outgrows these handmade gifts because they are my absolute favorite.  Well, a new Pandora charm also makes me pretty darn happy too...

After cashing in my bagel coupon yesterday, Chaney and I headed upstairs to sew.  I love how she jumps right in and starts sewing; she's fearless!  She doesn't stress about colors or even much over design.  She has become quite proficient with her sewing machine... she can thread it, wind the bobbins, put the bobbin in the bobbin case, and she always starts with her needle down. :)  She keeps asking to be able to sew without me in the room but I'm just not ready for that and probably won't be for a few more years.  That and well, it gives me a reason to always be sewing right along with her.


While Chaney worked on a pillow with a pocket {her design} I got brave and tackled piecing with curves.  I've wanted to make a variation of a drunkard's path quilt for a long time now but the curves always scared me.  I cut my pieces on my Accuquilt cutter and went to work.  I started out using pins but that got tedious really fast.  It also wasn't working all that well.

I consulted The Internet and found Nova's tutorial on piecing curves without pins.  It's a video and it is fantastic.  After watching it, I was piecing my blocks without pins and fairly fast I might add. It's definitely not speedy but it is faster than pinning.  I'm now a fearless quilter when it comes to piecing curves!

I really like my flowers and I'm doing some experimenting with low contrast background fabrics.  We'll see...

Oh, and I had my allergy testing this morning.  What food am I allergic to?? 

Nothing.  I'm not allergic to any one food by itself.  The good thing about that is that I can start eating Mexican food again.  And any other foods as well.  I'm not quite fearless but I'm getting better.

The bad part is that I'm allergic to something environmental that cross-reacts with a food.  It could be something as simple as a common fungus on a vegetable touching an avocado in a kitchen.  How do you order your dinner around something like that??  I also have a certain cell that is responsible for anaphylaxis and I have 3x's as many of those cells as a "normal" person.

The short of it is that I could spontaneously combust at any time. I joke... I joke ;) 

I'll go back for environmental tests in a few weeks but the best thing I can do long term is relax a little and always be prepared by carrying my Epipens.  So we are celebrating no food allergies tonight with Mexican food.  I'll be that girl with a margarita in one hand and an Epipen in the other... 

Thanks for all your well wishes, information, advice and assurance about allergies; it has meant a lot to me.  I'm terribly behind on emails but I'll get there.  If you have emailed me in the past few weeks and you are worried that I've missed it, feel free to forward it to me and I promise to get to it this time around.



18 comments:

Fabric Warrior (aka Amie) said...

Because living without Mexican food isn't really living at all! : )

Alli said...

I'm glad to hear that you can relax a little bit about your allergy... yay for the inventor of the epipen!

Your drunk flowers are so pretty. And Chaney's mothers' day presents are awesome! :)

A Girl said...

I love what you are doing with your drunk flowers. They are beautiful. Curved piecing always scared me to until I learned to skip the pins. What a difference. Thanks for sharing.

miamihoney said...

Sounds like a fantastic day with your little one.

Allergies are no fun! I would prefer me to have them than my son but I have learned more in the past 3 yrs than I ever cared to know about allergens. Good luck on your journey and keep that epipen handy!

Kirsty@Bonjour said...

Ha, love the thought of you with a taco in one hand and an Epi pen in the other. Classic! I wish your testing had been more definitive, but hopefully whatever combination laid you flat before won't happen again.
Love those blocks, very clever. And love the pic of C sewing, my little girl is also very interested in sewing - what age did you let her at the machine? Wondering when I should let my 6 year old have a turn?

Marian said...

I love your posts! I'm glad you aren't allergic to mexican food. That would just be awful!! Thank goodness for the epipen!!

I love that your daughter has her own space to create and how you say she dives right in is wonderful!! My 2 year old has been VERY interested in my adventures with fabric lately and I'm hoping she'll follow your daughter's creative lead!

AND I love the flowers you're working on. I don't pin either and felt it worked better too. I have been thinking about revisiting the drunk blocks and really really love what you've done - seriously inspiring. Thanks for sharing!!

Becky said...

Haha! Great visual with the margarita and the epi pen. Good news with the lack of food allergies. You've really got me interested, as I used to work in the medical field (lab), and my son has asthma and allergies. Have you heard of oral allergy syndrome? I wonder if that's what caused it... They're like a cross reaction with a person who has pollen allergies. Have you been tested for those? My son when he was little had some cross reaction. Good news for him is that he's outgrown a lot of the asthma and allergies, and the wonder drug of Singulaire has made a huge difference. If you can keep those pollen allergies under control, you can usually avoid food cross-reactions, I believe... You should feel much better once you get some meds in there to help calm things down. Thanks for the update :-). LOVE the flower block too!!

Archie the wonder dog said...

Enjoy the Mexican food!!

Becky said...

Sorry, just remembered one more thing I hope you don't mind me passing along. We learned that it's the proteins in foods that the body reacts to, and heat "denatures" them, so usually you have a much stronger reaction to a raw food. That's also why peanuts and soy are "biggies", as they're FULL of those proteins, so it's pretty safe to eat cooked food or "derivatives" ( oils, powders, etc). It may help to take an antihistamine prior to eating Mexican too, FWIW...

sandra said...

How fun to be able to sew with your daughter, mine was never interested and at 45 she still isn't interested and bring all her sewing to me. Well I am glad they haven't found any serious food allergies try to relax and drink that drink. Blessings Sandra

Katy Cameron said...

Glad you got a little girl on girl sewing time, and loving the flowers - I did my retro ones pinless, it was great! (well, other than my shoulders ending up round my ears for some reason...)

Enjoy your Mexican - a little tequila to follow up? ;o)

Chrissy said...

I am loving those curves! :-)

Elsa said...

Chaney looks great at her machine! And, love your curved block flowers, something I've been wanting to do for a while now. Thanks for the link to Nova's tutorial.
Good to know you're not allergic to any said food, not so good that it's environmental. Here's to finding out what the heck it is!

Katrina said...

My sister recently had an an outbreak... she said for her once she had the intial allergy attack, she can merely think of it and get anxiety over it and cause a "mock" anaphalaxis outbreak. The difference is she can tell if her blood pressure drops or gets higher. Lower means it's an allergy... higher means she needs to take some ativan. I hope you are able to sort it out soon! My sister had her first outbreak at 25!

EG said...

When I saw the photo I thought that Chaney was piecing curves and I was going to develop a complex!

Beth said...

Your daughter's sewing space looks exactly like my daughter's! Dolls, tiny dressform and all! Awesome!

Carla said...

Wow! Good for you for doing curves. I haven't tried that yet : )

Lynne said...

Well, I guess not actually being allergic to any particular food is a good thing; right?

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