Exercises

Thank you all for your good advice on free motion quilting. I practised, not a lot but some. It started to look like this:


I'm not very keen on any kind of exercising. It made me think that I usually learn by doing, so I started quilting the actual, biggish quilt. I even remembered to use my reading glasses instead of the normal ones with a reading area in the lower part of the lenses (I usually look above these lenses to write). Keeping my shoulders relaxed and all. My lovely machine has a longer arm than usual sewing machines; the needle is about 10" or 27 cm from the machine body, so there is more space for the quilt when you are working further away from the right edge. This doesn't mean the quilt would move easily there, so no question of smooth movements. After a while I started to wonder why the machine sounded different. Then I noticed that my shoulders covered my ears almost completely. Dropping them down helped for a while, but soon I was quilting in a difficult spot, and there they were again! I also clenched my teeth together, so my jaw was all stiff after the work. Luckily I hade a massage appointment on Thursday, which leads to my other exercises.

Pip from Meet me at Mike's has asked people to Move it like Mike. I walked with her International Walking Team last year until I hurt my knee. Now I'm on better medication and better understanding what a traditionally built woman of my age can and can't do, so I joined in. I earned two points of the weekly three required, when I walked to the massage and back.


I think I earned an additional moral point because it was raining; see how my hood is dripping after I was back home. The shoulders are relaxed again, thank you, and I didn't catch a cold because I changed into dry clothes and had some hot tea. The quilt it quilted, the binding is machine stitched, so there is only hand sewing left to be done. Pictures will come after the work is done.