Sunday Stretch for Sewists #21 - Melting Heart

This pose is known in Sanskrit by Anahatasana.  Say it slowly, emphasis on ahh (what you feel after doing it😉: Ana--hah--tah--son--ahh....  Asana, the last part of most yoga pose names, simply means pose.  This is also known as puppy pose; see Yoga Journal.

Bernie Clark states in his book, p. 246 "The Indian yogis noticed a correlation between our bodies and our heart. Don't be surprised if, during a deep yoga practice, emotions start to surface."  I often say in my classes that we have issues in our tissues; therefore, applying tension to deeper areas of our bodies such as within our hip joints, or in this pose, within our chest, spine, shoulders, arms, can stir up emotions, past memories, and thoughts. I love what Sarah Powers says, and I'm paraphrasing her, that the beauty of Yin is that we can allow these emotions to surface, we can experience them fully, without feeling the need to act out because of them.  And then.... (my own words), the magic happens: this deep-seated emotional baggage can leave the body, over time, probably not in one 3-5 minute hold however(!) and, you are then lighter, happier, more at peace.

Lake Erie, from my new vantage point, a few days ago

This pose inverts and 'melts' your heart, which, in the Daoist beliefs, is considered the supreme manager, overseeing all the workings of the body-mind. Sarah Powers writes, "Its radiance spreads out to every cell and expresses itself in our creativity, interactions and capacity for communication." Here's to a healthy heart and healthy heart chi (energy).

After hours of sewing, you may feel tight in the shoulders, along the arms, perhaps a stiffness in the wrists and definitely in the hips and knees, usually a tightness or stiffness across the pecs and collarbones... Sound familiar? Anahatasana can help with all of this.  Yup.  So get out of your chair, fold a quilt for under your knees and come down onto all fours. If you have trouble getting back up, do this by your sewing chair so you can use it to lean on to help you get back up.

Stage 1 Once you are on all fours, walk your hands forward, keeping them shoulder-width apart if possible, coming to rest on your forearms at first, keeping your bum high in the air and over your knees. Think of a right angle formed at the back of your knees by the backs of your thighs and your calves.  Maybe this is where you stay, letting your belly relax and hang, feeling an arch in your lower back. Toes can be tucked under or you can rest on the tops of your feet. Head can be in line with your spine, or perhaps you can rest it on one forearm. Breathe slowly, counting to 3 or 4 on the inhale and the same slow steady count on the exhale. Always come out of this pose on an inhale.

Do you see our new granite countertops?! ADORE!! Toe-kick under the cabinets still needs to be installed (and ordered from IKEA) as do the side panels to finish off the ends of the cabinets. Oh, and the backsplash tile too...  Oh, and install the dishwasher now... Just a few 😉 more items for MacGyver!

Variation: You may like to rest your upper body on another rolled up quilt or two, and this modification may allow you to extend your arms. You may either rest on your forehead (Take your glasses off! Ask me how I know...) or on your chin, but that is fairly hard on the neck.

Send your butt backwards; here mine could go back a little more.

This pose works into the upper back, the shoulder blades and across the front of the chest. So, see if you can stretch both of your arms right out, palms flat, fingers spread for good energy flow. However, as I mentioned, you may find you need to rest your forehead on one forearm, leaving the other outstretched; just remember to switch arms at the halfway point. Relax your spine, your belly, and you will feel how this starts to tug on the tissues across the front of the chest, along the upper arms, mainly in the triceps, (back of the upper arms), the shoulder heads, and between the shoulder blades.

Hold for 2-5 minutes. Careful. Maybe at first just 1 minute per outstretched arm is enough. This pose could put strain on your neck, so be mindful; any pain or too intense sensations, back off, or try resting your forehead on a block, cushion, or an extra rolled up quilt. Same with tingling in the fingers or hands: this could indicate a nerve being compressed, so lower the arms to the goalpost position, or perhaps skip this and try Fish pose, which is similar for opening the chest. Any pinching in the back of the shoulders, adjust your arm position as noted.

If getting down onto and back up off of the floor is an issue for you, don't give up!  Don't give up on keeping trying to get down and back up, because it is so good for your body, and don't give up on doing a variation of this pose. Try this in a doorway:

I learned this from a massage therapist. Here, you put your arms on either side of the door, goalpost position, and slowly lean forward into the doorway without moving your arms. You won't quite get the backbend you get by doing Anahatasana, but you certainly do get a lovely pull across the front of your chest and a bit of a bend in the upper spine as your shoulder blades come towards each other. It doesn't look like I'm leaning much, and it certainly didn't feel like it, but holy Hannah, it sure felt strong in the arms and shoulders! Watch the head position; I am, ahem, leaning a little too much with my head here! It's not about your head going forward! Sorry about that, but there, you see I'm in need of tweaking all the time too.

Remember that Yin yoga works with the meridians, the energy highways in the body, those same meridians and trigger points used in acupuncture and acupressure. Therefore, a little pressure into your pointers will hit a trigger point on the Large Intestine meridian, into the thumbs, the Lung meridian, the pinkies, the Heart and Small Intestine meridians.
After you've held the pose for 2 to 3 minutes (work up to 5 over time), then either rest back in child's pose or lie down on your belly. If you've done it standing, maybe sit down and be still for a minute or so, noting sensations, breathing.

Ahh! That's better!  Have a good drink of water, and you're good to go for some more sewing!

"C' Boss!" Cows Quilt

I can't type that phrase, "C' Boss!" without hearing my Auntie Irene hollering, early in the morning, and around suppertime, the lilt in her voice, going up on the 'CUH?' sound, and and emphatic on the 'Boss!' (a perfect fourth, if my musical background serves me still) Seeing, in my mind's eye, the cows come up from the pasture to the barnyard for milking, round ribs bulging side to side out over their dainty hooves as they plod along, udders swaying. My aunt turned 75 in December 2015. This quilt is for her. This might be the longest post I've written, fair warning.

DrEAMi! Linky #6

I nearly forgot about the July DrEAMi! for July, so I am interrupting my post in progress on the Cows quilt, which should have been published yesterday but wasn't, to write this up and get it posted for you to link up. I'll leave it open all week, as usual. Please feel free to add a link from June if you had a Drop Everything And Make It! moment during that month, since there was no DrEAMi! in June.

Can you have AtDrEAMi! moments? (About to Drop Everything And Make It!) I believe you can...LOL. Within the next day, I am having one, and within the first half of this coming week I am having another. What? Scheduled DrEAMis/DrEAMies (whatever the plural would be, or DrEAMi! moments, there that's easier!)... Well, a fast and simple project is going to be made today using this PURR-fect or ROAR-fect fabric I snagged at Sew Sisters Quilt Shop Free Shipping within Canada sale last weekend (and it arrived on Wednesday, like super-fast shipping despite a huge influx of sales, love it):

Update: Here's the finished product! Whipped it up Saturday night. It kind of suddenly took a bit of a curve, and I'm totally fine with that.

From cutting to finish, it took 45 minutes! It's the Roll It Up! pillowcase on All People Quilt -I've made the pattern many many times. I suddenly had the idea to stitch Brady's name down the navy blue band. Wrote it in chalk pencil, then FMQ-ed it with Sulky rayon.

And a baby quilt using these beauties:

Both projects are under a very tight deadline, which is why they both are DrEAMi! projects; however, the lions and tigers fabric is very definitely a DrEAMi! as when I spied that, I knew a certain Leo whose birthday is tomorrow needs something made with this fabric. This little Leo's grandpa is going to visit him this week.  The other is for the Fall issue of Modern By The Yard, Benartex's e-zine, so it's less of a DrEAMi!; however, I am having to set other projects aside to get it done for the deadline to have it sent for photographing.

Since this has turned into a bit of a fabric ogling post, thought I'd just mention two quick things available at Connecting Threads (that is an affiliate link as are the ones below).  The first is that wide backing is on sale for 8.96/yard US. Even with the exchange, that is a terrific price. I bought some on their last sale for my other aunt's quilt, and have been happy with it, but I will let you know how it quilts and washes up. The second is that Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts has just released her second line with them and I actually like it more than her first!

At only 6.96/yard I do believe some will be coming to live in my house. Love that pale green with the red, reminds me of Allison Harris of Cluck Cluck Sew colours. Psst! They have her fabric too... And remember they ship free at some pretty decent minimum purchase amounts. As always, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for purchasing through my links and supporting this blog, the writing of which makes me so very happy.

If a class is what you feel like cuddling up with on a Saturday night, then know that Craftsy has a TON of them on for less than $20. They also have a pretty good clearance section, just sayin'...

Temptations! Now, let's see what DrEAMi! moments you've had these past couple of months, those squirrels, like that lions fabric that you just HAVE to drop current projects and make right NOW!

A Quilting Motif and A Longarm Technique

As you know, I'm working on quilting the Cows quilt. I have four heifers left, a few churn dashes and the barn. Well, I also have to finish the other half, or two-thirds more like it, of the border.  As is usually the case when I quilt a quilt, I have a very, I mean very, vague quilting plan in my head.  Once the quilt is loaded, it starts to talk to, sometimes whisper to, sometimes cajole, me.  Such was the case with this one.  I had no idea how I was going to quilt the churn dash blocks, also known by several other names, including Hole in the Barn Door. Most à propos for this bovine bedcover. Once loaded on the frame, I had an idea...

"What the heck?"  you're probably thinking, or maybe, "Ooh, love that fabric," or even, as Tish said when I sent her the yellow cow all quilted, "Those swirls are awesome!"

Here is how you quilt this block in one pass, ditch stitching and all! AND this can be done on either a longarm or a domestic machine! Use a ruler or your walking foot.

1. Start here. ('well duh')
2. Stitch to point 2 (probably still, 'well, duh,' but just in case...) the centre of the inner 'box'
3. Stitch a square in the centre of the purple rectangles, which in my case, for this 12" block, is 1" in from the seam line. Go all the way around until you wind up back at point 2.
4.  Stitch out to point 4.
5. From point 4 stitch another elongated 'v' shape (we're doing dot to dot à la Angela Walters in case you haven't noticed) ending at point 5.  Which is really point 1. 😉
6. Stitch in the ditch (aka SID) over to point 6. Note my attempt at dotted lines to indicate SID!
7. Stitch in to point 7, which is the top right corner of the box you stitched in step 3.  Repeat from step 4 for all four corners of the block, ending back at point 1!

Then I SID along a floral seam line to an inside corner, stitched in the ditch all the way around the inner square, and did the swirl filler in there, then went back out again and continued the swirl filler for the background around the outside. I'm using Superior Threads So Fine colour 403 which blends nicely with both background and all the churn dash blocks.

A LongarmTechnique for Continuous Quilting

About a year, maybe more, ago, a reader asked if I could explain how I advance, then back up, then advance a quilt on the longarm. This was when I was doing Dayna's quilt, Shoot for the Moon, and trying to get as long a pass as I could at some of the intricate designs on her quilt.  I found myself doing this for the outer border design for this quilt.  I am self-taught, other than watching online videos and Craftsy classes by Leah Day, Angela Walters, and Natalia Bonner, oh and Jamie Wallen Youtube too, and none of them talk about this, so it's just me. If you think that "GASP! This is just not done!" well, I do it, and it works fine. 😁

For the top section of border, it was easy to start on the left side of the quilt, about 15" down from the top left corner, quilt up to the corner, across the top border, and down to the same starting point on the right side of the quilt. I did the border after I'd quilted the first row of cows and churn dash blocks, so I advanced the quilt and continued down the border for another 15" or so (I have an 18" Avanté). This meant I could quilt longer without breaking thread.

1. So now I am at the point where I have quilted two more rows of cows and churn dashes and I want to do more of the border. First stitch in the ditch between the border and the background of the quilt. Also stitch 1/4" in from the outside.

2. Next, advance the quilt, and SID as you just did. You can see I was able to stitch all along the red churn dash and about half way into the barn block. Do this SID on the border on the opposite side of the quilt as well.

3.  Then, back up to where you started the ditch stitching (first pic).  At first when I wound the quilt backwards, I freaked because the quilt sandwich, in its entirety: top, batting and now backing, got wound up on the belly bar!

Yikes! I thought something bad would happen...but it didn't!  So starting at the point where I was in photo 1, I switch now to my mauve thread, and continue the border motif over the course of that length of the border, advance the quilt to photo 2 spot, and continue doing the border up to being level with the barn.  I'll stop there.

4. Then I go over to the opposite side, in this case the left, back up the quilt again to the photo 1 spot, but on the left side of the quilt, and pick up where I'd left off on that border, quilting down until I'm level with the barn block.

The barn block is in the bottom right corner, so once I've finished quilting the last two rows of the quilt, I'll be able to pick up the border motif about the level of the bottom of the barn roof, quilt down to the bottom right corner and across the bottom, and back up to meet where I left off on the left side of the quilt!

It's not as wonderful as doing the border in one continuous pass like you can with a DSM or sit-down quilt machine, but you can get fairly lengthy passes.  And it is wonderful not to have the weight of the quilt to manipulate through the machine.

Having a dedicated quilting machine means I can still piece if I feel the urge...

Blocks 103-105. Clockwise from top left: 103: Helen Smith Grant - Captain of her husband's ship when he took ill, she navigated rom China to Montreal in the mid-1880s, as well as taking care of her children. The family settled in Victoria, BC, where, in 1895, Helen became the first and only school board trustee in Canada. 104 - Lois Irene Smith - Canada's first and foremost ballerina, idolized by Karen Kain, she established the Lois Smith Dance School in Toronto. 105: Helen Irene Battle - first woman in Canada to earn a PhD in marine biology. I used a fish print for one of the centre background triangles and a shell motif embossed on an ivory fabric for another.

I made block 106 this morning, so as of writing this post, I am only two blocks behind in the 150 Canadian Women QAL!  I aimed for one block a day this past week, and I've done it, so if I can keep that up this coming week, I should be all caught up by next weekend. Yay! I also worked on a couple of my RSC 2017 projects, which I'll show you in another post.

Linking Up
Cooking Up Quilts
Free Motion by the River

I Like/Love #6

I checked back to see what number this I Like/Love post should be and I realized I missed #3, and that it is mostly written...ha. I wrote it when I was in Florida, but with the move I guess I did not publish it! Will do that.  Next time. Here are some positive thoughts of mine:

1.

It started with this beefsteak tomato I spied this morning.  I did not intend to write a post today, but when I saw this bright red jewel, well, maybe not quite red yet, right by my side door entrance, plucked it carefully (should've staked this poor plant, had no clue it would get this big and heavy with fruit), and marvelled at it, a rush of gratitude came over me, and I thought, 'I need to write this.'  So I love tomatoes.  Love.  In all varieties, colours, forms and dishes. Growing my very own takes this to a very personal level of love and appreciation.  I didn't eat it for lunch, because I want it to ripen a little more, but I sure will, one slice covering a slice of bread for a most-anticipated toasted tomato sandwich.  I get gorgeous delicious homegrown tomatoes of all varieties at the little stand down the road, within walking distance, so that is why I just planted one plant.  I am pretty tickled at my first fruit.

2.

I like writing.  Well, duh.  I always have.  I also like designing (sneak peek at an upcoming pattern to be tested yet and written and released), and I like pretty and interesting notepaper. I'm writing to Brady on a regular basis, and also sending him little packages from time to time. He LOVES walking around the corner to get their mail, but he expressed with a sigh and roll of the eyes, that he rarely gets mail; it's usually his mum.  I've decided to change that. And I'm enjoying writing to him, by hand.  The first letter went on those dinosaur notelets.  He was pretty pumped, "Nana, we can be penpals!" Those words warmed my heart.  I sent him another yesterday on the teddy bear notepaper.

3.

I love reading.  Always have.  I come from a long line of bookworms, both daughters are readers, and so is Brady. Whenever we are together, we read a book before bedtime. Last September we read Little House in the Big Woods. In November it was Owls in the Family, which we finished last month (he didn't want me to finish it on FaceTime).  Then we read The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  He loves the Wimpy Kid books and has zipped through the first eight.  Now he is reading Matilda ("it's taking longer to read, Nana; the pages have more words on") and I couldn't remember it, so I got it out of the library to re-read and then we can discuss it. Which I did, first couple of chapters, in yesterday's letter! And wouldn't you know it: Matilda loves to read!

4.  I love libraries.  When I went in to pick up Matilda, put on hold, I wandered over to the quilt section, and snagged those five books.  I'll let you know my thoughts on them.  All recent.  Fresh colours!

5.

Speaking of fresh...I am loving our evolving new kitchen! How blessed am I to have such a talented husband who can not only design, (with my approval and wee tweaks), assemble, and install the IKEA cabinets, drywall, run waterlines, but also can even MacGyver one cabinet a little to make things all fit!  See the handle-less one on the left side of the dishwasher, which is not installed yet; needs to run plumbing yet methinks. Soon! Well, that end cabinet was 3/16" too wide to fit, so he had to 'rip' that amount off one of the side panels. How he did it and still has the beautiful melamine finish on both outside and inside of both sides, I have no idea.  Magic.  We moved the sink to where you see it now, although that is the old sink; the new one goes in when the granite, which you see on the left of the photo, gets installed...next week! I wasn't sure about not having the sink under the window, but I had an idea, which is doable: a stained glass window over the sink, letting in light from the porch on the other side of that wall!

6. I am loving the sultry humid and hot days of July and August, and on into September, apparent in the above photo by the moisture you see on that window, and the visible greenery beyond.  I am not loving the fact that our AC has quit.  At least we are able to sleep because we have a little window unit, so I like window AC units!

7.  I really like Seth Godin's blog. Julie of Pink Doxies put me onto him. I get his posts by email so I never miss one. Some I skim, some I read more than once, and some I read aloud to MacGyver, like today's post about 'dumbing it down'. His last few sentences resonate so deeply:

"Everyone owns a media company now. Even media companies. And with that ownership comes a choice, a choice about the people we serve, the words we use and the change we seek to make.

It's only a race to the bottom if we let it be one."

My blog is my media company. I choose to be positive, helpful and hopefully inspirational. 😊

 I'm off to the hot upstairs loft now to work on the Cows quilt.  Yay for fans!

Linking up with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Colour

A Tragedy...with a Silver Lining

Little did I know that when I finally sat down, a year after the fact, to write about this tragic event, the Fort McMurray forest fire of 2016, nicknamed "The Beast", inside of which is a feel-good quilt story, that I'd have experienced a tragic loss in my own life.  My dear friend, Linda, who faithfully reads my blog even though she does not sew a stitch, sent me this story several months ago.  She read it in a publication she gets called "Our Canada".  I kept meaning to write about it, but never did.  Now it's time. Interspersed with the words are the few blocks I've picked away at, more inspiration and awe from strong Canadian women, and Cows.

As I write this, forest fires are again raging, 155 right now in British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province.  It shares a border with the state of Washington, in the USA.  Fires are also now crossing into Alberta, province of my birth, where the bulk of our family lives.  This year the fires are mid-province, right now in Kootenay National Park, west of Calgary.  Last year they were in northern Alberta, forcing one of the largest evacuations in Canadian history, the entire city of Fort McMurray, approximately 88 000 people.  Many people returned to find nothing left; many people have not returned and do not plan to.  This link takes you to a timeline of the events.

Another way to heal: enjoying the peace, serenity and greenery of our very private back yard. Thank you to so many for your kind and caring words on my previous post; if I haven't responded it's because you are a no-reply blogger, and I have no email address for you; please know I thank you from my heart.

Back

This is the hardest post I've had to write. I've put it off all week.  Thought of a few sentences. Had a few random thoughts. Did the photos. Left it.  Unsure what to say.  For the first time in, oh, forever, I think, I don't feel much like writing.  Both my daughters have commented about missing reading my posts. A very close blogger friend had good advice: don't wait too long or you may never go back. So here we go.

Some things are constant in life:

'my' lake this week

Some things are not.