It is now two days after my second cataract surgery was performed. Now that things have begun to settle with my second eye I am happy with the results. Above you can see me stitching with an arrangement I devised. No, you are not seeing double. I am wearing two sets of glasses, and channeling my inner Ben Franklin. The bottom glasses are a set of drug store reading glasses that my husband bought a while back. He does not remember the strength of these glasses. Though I am holding the work at a distance for the sake of the photo, I actually stitch with my work about six inches from my eyes. The reading glasses allow me to thread a needle, and to do fine hand stitches because I can bring the work close enough to see detail. Unfortunately, my corrected near vision focuses much farther away than my preferred sewing distance. It is a distance appropriate for reading, but not sewing.

The fact that I am going to need glasses for stitching made me initially question my choice to correct for near vision. I’m going to need to have a pair of progressive glasses made with a strong reading prescription along with my distance prescription just so I can stitch and watch TV. If I had corrected for far vision I could simply look over a standard set of drugstore readers while stitching and watching TV.

I do, however, really enjoy being able to read and use my iPad without glasses, so I guess I will just work around the stitching problem. It is important for me to be thankful for the good things that came out of my surgery. My color perception is improved. I can read comfortably. I have more light coming into enlarged pupils of both eyes. My whole world is brighter. While I had little interest in seeing at a blurry distance I now put my glasses on more often because they help me see even though they are not really the right prescription yet.

Reading glasses are helping for now with stitching. However, even with the reading glasses threading a needle requires real effort, and is a bit hit or miss. It takes me three or four times as long to thread a needle now than when I had cataracts in both eyes because then both eyes were focusing very close to my eyes. My needle threading skill might improve as my left eye catches up with my right eye, however. I certainly hope so.

I am considering purchasing a special set of glasses from Craft Optics. I observed a friend using a set of these telescopic glasses at a quilt retreat, but she was using them for machine sewing. These glasses are like those worn by surgeons. If you have watched Grey’s Anatomy you’ve seen them used, especially by the brain surgeons. I wonder if my doctor was using them during my cataract surgery.

I’ll do a follow up post in a couple months after I have all of my sewing solutions in place.

I have twelve panels remaining from my Embracing Horses collection of fabric created by Laurel Burch. I decided that I needed to cut into these last twelve panels to create more large hexagons for my Blue Star Quilt. Notice how nicely the individual panels were packaged by PM Quilting. I bought every panel that they had, and have been hoarding them for a long time.

I pressed my panels on my work table, then cut them into sections. I made two layer stacks of the large horse section of the panel. I then cut into those panels to extract the birds from the design. I used the three inch hexagon template for this extraction process.

Below is a viewpoint that makes it clear that I was able to obtain twelve of each bird. These pieces are already glue basted to paper pieces. The pieces will be joined to make three inch hexagons. I had created blocks previously using these cuts, so they are not new designs. I will end up with four hexagons using each bird. Three of them will be combined into a single Large Hexagon using three other complementary blocks. The remaining three diverse bird hexagons will be combined into another Large Hexagon. This strategy is in keeping with the way I have occasionally used three matching hexagons along with three other complementary hexagons.

Here are all the little birdies.

 

 

I noticed a couple weeks ago that I had not posted in two solid months. That’s not like me, but I attribute my lapse to one thing. I’d been quite consumed with worry about my upcoming cataract surgery. Now that one eye is finished, and the second eye is a week away from being done, I’m ready to write about this adventure.

This topic is definitely quilt related because there is nothing more important to a quilter, especially a hand stitcher, than her vision. My vision has been severely compromised for a few years; more so than I would care to admit even to myself. So if you have been admiring the glory of my hand sewn Glorious Hexagons, you can be even more in awe of my work than you already were.

For the past three or more years my world has been getting increasingly smaller. I have depended more and more on my close vision in recent years because I felt that I could at least see things within three feet of my face. Distance vision was another thing altogether. I could see about as well without my glasses as with my glasses, which was not very good at all. My cataracts had gotten bad enough that adjustments in my prescription did nothing to improve my vision. My last new set of glasses was purchased over a decade ago. I stopped wearing my glasses except to see my computer screen or to drive, which I had little business doing. Around the house I mostly didn’t bother with glasses at all. I read on my iPad without my glasses. I never turned on the TV. Instead I watched all my video on my iPad. Needle threading and sewing took place about six inches away from my face. That’s where things were almost sharp.

I continued to drive because although I could not read road signs I could see well enough to get around locally during the day. I knew where I was going. I had given up on driving at night altogether. The cataracts prevented it, but it was made even more impossible because my irises were stuck in the shape of tiny little pin holes. My pupils could no longer dilate because they had been glued to the lenses of my eyes as a result of over 20 years of severe inflammation caused by a condition called iritis.

I think most people are a little afraid of cataract surgery, but I was absolutely terrified. It is bad enough to know that your eyes will be cut into when you are awake and aware, but I had the added burden of knowing that my irises were going to have to be scraped from my lenses before they could be removed.

In May I ended up choosing dates for my surgery. I chose August 1st and August 22nd. I wanted to give myself time to prepare myself mentally for the ordeal, and I also wanted time to make the decision of whether to focus my new lenses for near vision or far vision. I had to chose because I was not a candidate for lenses that could change focus, nor could I chose one eye near and one eye far because my surgeon would only do that for someone who had proven their ability to adjust by wearing contact lenses.

My first instinct was to choose near vision because I am a hand stitcher. My surgeon told me that people who have been nearsighted from an early age, such as myself, sometimes choose to maintain the status quo and focus for near vision while accepting the fact that they will need glasses for driving, TV viewing, and far vision in general. I ended up second guessing myself, however. I asked the opinion of members of the Glorious Hexagons group on Facebook if any of them had chosen near vision and were happy with their choice. I wanted to hear that it was a good choice. After getting a great deal of conflicting input I decided to go with my first impression for the simple reason that no one who corrected for near vision reported being sorry for doing so, while some who corrected for far vision wished that they had not done so.

Here are the glasses that were doing me very little good while I still had cataracts obstructing my view. After my first surgery, on my right eye, I find myself using them more often because even with only one eye corrected I am getting some use out of them. I can read road signs again at least.

Here are the eye drops that I am required to use. I had to start them in the right eye a week before the first surgery, and I will taper off the last drop through November. I have to use it for a lot longer than most people would due to my propensity for inflammation.

Ted had gotten a calendar from a gas station that he takes our vehicles to. Neither of us had used it, but it proved to be the perfect size for me to document the use of my eyedrops. Today it is especially useful because it is the first day that I have had to use drops in both eyes.

These are the sunglasses I was required to wear outdoors for the first week following my first surgery. They fit over my regular glasses.

This angle makes it more clear that the glasses can fit over regular glasses. I will probably continue to use them even after I don’t need to.

This lovely piece of plastic gets taped over my eye for the first week after surgery any time I take a nap or go to bed at night. This prevents me from rubbing my eye in my sleep. It is hard enough to keep from rubbing my eye while I am awake.

I am at a bit of an awkward stage right now with my close vision. My left eye is focusing about six inches from my face, and my right eye is focusing about twelve inches from my face. This is about as annoying as you might imagine. I can barely thread a needle. My best eye is my right eye, but holding my work that far away from my face while doing hand stitching feels awkward. The interference from the left eye is annoying, and if I close it I have no depth perception. I am hoping that the addition of depth perception from the second eye will help with needle threading, and close stitching, once the second eye has been corrected.

In the mean time a good friend from my local quilt guild has sent me a special pair of glasses on loan, the sides of which can be focused independently. I tried them briefly, but don’t think they are going to help much with the needle threading or stitching, though I certainly did appreciate the gesture.

In a little over a week I should have a better idea of what kind of special lenses I might need for stitching. If I am lucky I’ll get used to holding my work farther away and I won’t need any special corrective lenses for close work.

Reading will be a dream, and using my iPad will be fantastic.

We have an old tube type TV that is probably about 22 inches in size. I turned it on for the first time in years, and exclaimed to my husband, “Honey, I can see the TV!”

I had been planning to arrange the large hexagons of the blue star quilt with chocolate triangles to set off the shapes. I think I am leaning more now towards a more compressed setting of just the large hexagons next to each other.

I laid out the large hexagons with blue stars that I currently have finished on my front porch. Below I show a few views of this random configuration.

After seeing how nice this configuration looked I decided to lay out what I have so far on my queen sized bed.

The final configuration is going to yield areas along all four sides that will need to be dealt with in terms of design.

Along the left and right sides I will have a zig zag shape that will need to be filled. I might throw in a hexagon and then edge the area with chocolate or a subtle brown print.

Here is a close up of that idea. I’d be inclined to add chocolate triangles on both sides of the added hexagon to finish things off before adding the border.

The border of the top and bottom is actually more troublesome and will take more thought.

I don’t really have a well formed idea of how I will deal with this space yet.

I am inclined to piece something subtle with brown solids in the area down until the halfway point of the bottom two hexagons. Then I’d add a border fabric.

It is a long time before I will need to make this final decision. In the mean time I intend to make a few more large hexagons with blue star centers so I have many to choose from in creating the final configuration. I’m at a very awkward stage now with my vision, however, since I am halfway through cataract surgery. I have one eye finished and one eye yet to be done. This makes stitching very difficult, so I will be setting it aside for a couple of weeks.

I’ve been busy making more large hexagons with blue central stars, and here they are:

I’d like to make a few more of these before I start putting together the first quilt.

I used my 20% off Birthday coupon at Pennington Quilt Works last week. Here is my haul.

When I got home I showed my relatively small bag to my husband “bragging” that I had spent a little more than $100.00 for my haul. He asked incredulously, “Is that all you got?” I said, “Yep.” In all fairness, the large Tula Pink shears retailed for $39.00.

I really wanted to give him an understanding of the fact that this hobby isn’t cheap. I spend my own money on my habit so he can’t complain.

While I was at the store I decided to look for a gray thread for handquilting to complement my Glorious Hexagons work.

I found a great color that appeared to be designed specifically for my needs.

The creation of large hexagons is coming along very well. I now have 50 of them and it is just about time to start putting them together.

As an aside to those interested in blogging, I created this post in the WordPress app on my iPad. This is the first time I have created a post on the iPad. I did it because my desktop is located upstairs and I hate to turn on the air conditioning in my studio just so I can use the computer. I have a workflow for processing blog images that involves Aperture on my desktop, so I’ve not been blogging recently given that I don’t want to use the desktop, and that is where Aperture lives. The use of Aperture is definitely slowing me down, and I’m thinking of finally starting to use Photos so I can access all of my images on all of my devices.

I have a laptop and you might ask why I didn’t do the post on the laptop. The reason is that doing so would have required me to email the photos from the iPad to the laptop, so I chose to work on the iPad instead. I did reopen the post on the laptop after publishing to polish the text. That’s what I’m doing now.

I guess it is about time to ditch Aperture. Yet, as a compromise, I wanted to try editing in the iPad from my photo stream and then composing a post on the iPad. It seems to be working even though the WordPress App does not appear to be very feature rich.

I realize that this is the first blog post in over two months moving forward I hope to do better.