Once we got Atti’s official Cerebral Palsy diagnosis, we had to start a whole new round of evaluations and state agencies. We just went this week to a school nearby where they have a huge therapy gym with equipment that would make your mind boggle, and a new Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapist put him through his paces. These things take time to go through all the layers of red tape, but it looks like in about a month I’ll be taking Atti to a school twice a week for therapy. It will be for the best in the long run, they are better funded and equipped than the home therapists, but it does mean that we’ll lose the Physical Therapist that has been coming to help Atti every week for a year.
It’s a very complicated mix of emotions. I’m excited about the new place – they have a treadmill with a harness to teach him how to walk! – I think we’re going to get really good and aggressive treatment, and it will be really good to become a part of the community of disabled kids and their moms. But Jan has been in my home every week for a year, helping Atti get bigger and stronger every day, loving him and being loved by him. Atti loves to give her kisses and asks for kisses from her. She was in our family Christmas card for crying out loud. It’s a major loss to not have her nearby.
So I had to make her something and it had to be good.
But since I don’t really know when her treatment will end, it had to be quick. And since that job unpleasantness I mentioned means that Jared is leaving his current job (everything’s fine, more news to come), it had to be cheap.
I raided the fabric I had (calling it a stash is really an overstatement) and I grabbed a bunch of different types of fabric with different weights in colors that seemed to work for me. Jan is a vibrant redhead who looks fabulous in jewel tones, so I thought that would be a good way to go.
I really like quilting with non-quilting fabric. My first attempt at quilting involved knits and flannels and some fuzzy thing that I paper pieced together and I really loved the effect. In this one there’s some cotton, some linen, some stretchy red thing, and the main cream fabric is a crepe backed satin that I had left over from my quilt of hate. I just pieced them together in a very easy modern block pattern, pretty much making it up as I went.
That took care of the fast and cheap parts, but I still needed something to make it good.
I did this little embroidery in the bottom corner, inspired by all the embroidery that…oh, shoot. I can’t remember who it was. It was during all the doll quilt making of last year. Maybe Vicki at Turkey Feathers? Anyway, somebody out there was making little doll quilts and embroidering inspirational messages on them, and it inspired this. Sorry whoeveryouwere!
I sketched this out quickly and stitched it up while watching LDS Conference over the weekend, and I absolutely love it. I think it’s subtle, but powerful, if that makes any sense. And once the quilt is quilted it will really become a focal point, since I literally plan on drawing a circle around the design and then radiating that outward. I want to evoke a rippling pond to kind of symbolize how significant her efforts will be in Atti’s life.
The only trick now will be basting the quilt, since I seem to have torn some cartilage in my knee while out gardening yesterday. I am a cartoon.
Anyway, while I was stitching this up during conference, talk after talk focused on Jesus Christ and how we need to turn to Him when times are hard. I sat there stitching and thinking about His role in my life, and it just all seemed perfect. So I thought I’d share this little design with all of you as a little Easter present.
Healer Embroidery pdf Download
I’m learning photoshop publicly as I go, so if anyone has any tips on how to get some nice smooth lines, I’d love the input. Right now I’m just doing it with a steady mouse hand and a paintbrush. There’s got to be an easier way.
Change can be good. Maybe she'll still come around once in a while. I'm excited for you guys … this is going to be wonderful.I saw this the other day and immediately thought of you guys.http://vintagericrac.blogspot.com/2009/04/step-3-actual-sewing.html
That's a pretty dove!You can use the Pen Tool in Photoshop to create vector lines. It's a bit tricky to get the hang of it, but the advantage is that you can draw smooth curves and tweak them until they look exactly how you want. You can also enlarge your graphic later without suffering from jaggies, unlike when drawing with the paintbrush – so it's well worth figuring it out when (if!) you have time. Google for some tutorials 🙂
Gorgeous work! If you hold down the shape button in photoshop, you get more options, and one of them is a line tool. Click to start it, hold shift to keep it straight, then click again to finish it 🙂 Hope that helps!