Yoga and the turquoise and gold orange peel quilt

Hiya!

You may notice that I do quite a bit of quiltmaking. And that means many hours sitting at my machine and many hours of my neck bent in the same position. I tell you this little personal story in case you too have been suffering as I have.

I have had many knots at the base of my neck and have gone here and there to massages to work them out. I’d feel pretty good for a week and suddenly the ache was back.

At the beginning of this year, my neck pain had gotten so bad that I thought it was time to consult a doctor. I’m 36 years old and I was a little worried about doing damage that might have a lasting effect. Putting this off could wait no more. Plus, the pain had started to feel constant and sharp.

She gave me meds. The pain came back when I was done with them. I saw a chiropractor, but it’s expensive and I had my neck adjusted and I thought I was going to fly off the table at the sound of it my neck popping.

I’m not exactly sure how yoga entered my mind, but I knew something had to change. I was miserable.

We have Xfinity cable at our house and I found some free yoga videos. Easy beginner stuff. I started doing yoga in the mornings for thirty minutes every other day. The same three videos over and over.

I started feeling better. My muscles, my bones, even my spirit. And more than anything, my neck pain was gone.

I’m not good at exercising. I didn’t come from a family who exercises and eats all healthy foods. I struggle in these areas and always have. I love eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. 🙂 I have to force myself to ride my bike, even though I always enjoy it. It’s a constant mental battle.

I don’t know much about yoga. I don’t know the names or the words (yet) of all the poses and moves. But I do know that my body feels better and I no longer feel so blah.

I moved on from the videos on my TV box and I’m now using Yoga with Adriene videos on YouTube. It’s free.

It’s just stretching and breathing. No weird stuff. No stereotypes. Stretching and breathing.

I wish I had tried it sooner.

Prepare for picture overload

This is the quilt I was working on in my last tutorial. My latest orange peel quilt.

I was given a color palette for this one (it’s a custom order). Fingers crossed she loves it. I am just in LOOOOVE with it. The colors are owning me. And I love how the look of just a few scattered gold blocks turned out.

You get something in your head and you make all the blocks just hoping that it looks good. You don’t actually know until you put it on your design wall. Or this is how it works when you are working with scraps.

I posted the tutorial a couple of days ago here, and a few of you asked me about the raw edge applique method. You wanted to know how bad it frays. Could it hold up to repeated washing?

I took a few up close pics for you to see. This is after one wash.

I don’t even think of raw edge applique as something to be scared or worried about. It has a little more texture than other quilts, but I have several that are still holding up great under years of washing and drying.

If it does worry you, then my suggestion would be to do a tighter zig zag stitch. My experience with it has been great and I have no complaints.

The back….

I was looking around my studio for something suitable for the back. I landed on the plaid, something that I have had for quite sometime. It begged to be used. It’s by Joel Dewberry and called Tartan.

The floral is a Heather Bailey print and matched perfectly with the plaid. Like they were made for each other.

(I’m feeling some curtains in the floral.)