Learning to know my limits

The quilting by hand in small portions is a delight. It will take longer but I will be able to do it, if I remember not to try to quilt more than my hands can take. There are no new pictures yet, because it still looks pretty much the same as last week. It is strange how at a more mature age most people will notice that their best by -date has expired a while ago and the guarantee for almost any body part has ended by the 50th birthday. The first sign of this are the sounds I started to make when I pick up something from the floor or put my shoes on. Or reach something from the top shelf. They are not to be found in any dictionary, they don't exist in literature and I have no comics in English, but I trust you have heard (if not made yourself) these sounds and know what I mean. "Ähh" is my favourite in Finnish, and "huh huh" after I climb from the cellar to computer, about 35 steps. Then came the time when I started rubbing my hip or knee in the evenings when watching TV. Now I'm at the point when I have to control the use of my hands; if there has been many household chores, I must choose reading instead of sewing. I'm glad I still have the freedom of choice. And because I got my glasses at the age of 20 to help me stop the right bus instead of every bus, I now can still read and sew without glasses.

To cheer up this ageing whine I'll show you two pictures of one of my favourite techniques nowadays. Here you see the fabric I used as the top layer:

And this is how it looks when stitched and slashed and made to a chenille surface:

The plaid pattern nearly disappears when the bottom layers become visible too. The dark areas especially noticeable on the little rug on the right (once across and the other a curved line from the bottom right corner up to the left corner) show where the pieces of a red cardigan don't meet. When the thick red layer is missing, the dark brown and plum coloured layers are more visible. These two I stitched with a chevron pattern, on the left the points are up and on the right they are down. I just wanted to see if they look the same with different pile directions. I enjoy making chenille pieces, because I never can tell what it will look like after I have finished with the cutting and washing.