New dog bed!

It's not a quilt, but I'm pleased with the way it came out. I'm
filling it with fabric scraps and bits of batting, but I don't have
quite enough to fill it yet. Rags likes it pretty well as is, though.

Paintbox Quilt-A-Long - Blocks finished!!

The real Paintbox Quilt-A-Long has us making 80 squares. But since I got behind and then ran out of different batik fabrics to use, I decided to stop where I was. That ended up being 64 squares.

In the original version, the blocks all are separated by sashing, but because of my catastrophic cutting error, some of the blocks have black borders on two sides. Some of the blocks don't. I was going to use black sashing, but that wouldn't work with black borders on some of the blocks. I tried it just above and below the blocks, separating each row, and really didn't like it. I liked what it looked like without sashing much better.

I have the blocks all sewn together in rows and my goal for tonight is to get this part of the top completed. Next, I decide whether I'm going to put a border (or two) on it, or leave it as is.

I won a contest!

I won a free yard of fabric a couple weeks ago from Sew, Mama, Sew. I meant to post about it, but then my laptop broke and by the time I got it back, I had forgotten about it.

I chose this lovely mushroom fabric. The current plan is to make a grocery bag out of it, but the plan may not come to fruition for a while.

Allergies, resolved?

My father came up to visit yesterday. We talked about allergies. He's allergic to aspirin and so is at least one of his siblings. I knew that... the part that I'd forgotten about is that he's allergic to aspirin derivatives when applied to the skin. For instance, shampoo with salicylic acid (aspirin is a compound called a salicylate) gives his head and shoulders hives.

I don't take aspirin because I thought I might have that allergy. I had nasal surgery a number of years ago to remove a family of polyps; they may have been caused by an allergy to ibuprofen. Ibuprofen and aspirin both belong to the family of NSAID painkillers. Apparently there's some sort of inherited condition that predisposes a person to be allergic to NSAIDS, develop nasal polyps, and have something else happen that I've forgotten about it. It obviously runs in my family.

Hypothesis 4: Salicylates applied to the skin in a personal hygiene product.

Supporting Evidence: Detailed above.

Experiment: I crushed up a baby aspirin and mixed it with a little water to make a paste. Then I applied this to my inner arm in one of my home allergy tests.

Results: About 10-15 minutes later, after I rinsed the aspirin residue off my arm, I developed an itchy rash in that area. It went away after another 10 or 15 minutes, but for the next hour of so I had vague itchies around various parts of my body (salicylates can be absorbed by the skin and cause a systemic reaction) and my tongue felt weird.

Based on this result, I went around the house looking at labels to find anything containing "salicyl-" ingredients. Lo and behold, one of the lotions that I really liked and was using all the time contained benzyl salicylate. Also, my California Baby shampoo has willow bark extract in it. Willow is what aspirin was originally derived from.

None of my other lotions seem to be problematic, but I'm going to stick with the California Baby lotion (no willow bark) for a little while until I get another lotion. My dad says he uses Aveeno and has no problems with it.

I'm also going to keep going on the hypoallergenic diet just in case there's a food aspect as well... but the foods that contain salicylates are numerous and varied (and include most fruits and vegetables), so if I'm allergic to it in food I'm just doomed.

Allergies

I've decided that the cause of my itchiness is not the baking soda I was using to wash my hair. Itching didn't seem to change whether I used baking soda or some other random food product. This means that 1) I can use baking soda again and 2) I'm allergic to something else.

I had purchased California Baby shampoo, which is supposed to be hypoallergenic and mild and such. I've used it the last three times I've washed my hair. I think I'm going to trade off between that and the baking soda. So hair washing problem: solved.

This leaves me with a larger, more difficult problem - what AM I allergic to?

Hypothesis 1: Laundry detergent.

Supporting Evidence: We use a granular detergent and I know that it doesn't always rinse completely out because I've seen granules at the end of wash cycles. We have a teeny, tiny washer so it's possible that I've been using way too much detergent and putting in too many clothes to prevent full rinsing.

Experiment 1: Change laundry detergents and start double-rinsing everything. Also, add vinegar to the rinse to help remove old detergent build-up.

Results so far: Inconclusive. Some things after double-rinsing didn't seem to make me itch, while other things still did. It may take more than one laundering to fully remove any build-up of old detergent, so this experiment is still in progress. My three-or-four-times-laundered PJs don't seem to make me itch much.

Experiment 2: Do a home allergy test by applying a paste of old detergent to the skin of my inner arm.

Results: Small amount of redness and itching apparent. There was definitely more than the new detergent or vinegar, my control.

Hypothesis 2: Food.

Supporting Evidence: None, except that the rash doesn't seem to appear in the areas I would expect if it was an allergy to laundry detergent. I would imagine that the rash would be worst in areas that are closely contacted by clothes (waistband, underwear, socks), but that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. I've also never had an allergy to any other foods before.

Experiment: Eliminate all the usual suspects as far as food allergens. This includes dairy, wheat, soy, caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, and basically any other food that's fun to eat. Here's a complete list if you're interested.

Results: I started the diet on Thursday, so it's been 5 days so far. Basically this is how we ate over the summer: lots of veggies, with rice and quinoa as the major grains. I haven't had any major cravings, although I would like to eat some things that aren't on my list (yogurt is the biggest one). No major changes noted.

Hypothesis 3: The degu.

Supporting Evidence: I'm allergic to rats and mice; degu are also rodents.

Experiment: Home allergy test done by rubbing a degu on the skin. I vigorously applied Vu to my stomach, including some small scratches with her claws.

Results: There was a small amount of redness and itchiness, especially around the scratches. However, it's hard to say whether this was due to the degu-ness of the application or the scratches themselves.

Being an excellent scientist, I'm doing all three of these experiments at once so that I can change as many variables as possible. I'm working on the theory that I can take everything out and get rid of the allergies (the goal), then add things back in one at a time until I figure it out. It was way more important to get rid of the itchiness than to do a well-designed experiment.

Complicating interpretation of the results is the fact that I've started to take allergy meds. I wanted to sort of rest and reset my immune system with the idea that maybe it will stop over-reacting to whatever the allergen is once stop taking them. I'm going to take them for a week, while continuing with the hypoallergenic diet and change in laundry detergent / technique. After a week, I'll stop and see if the itchies come back.

River quilting

I had this idea in my mind that I was going to quilt feathers all around the border of my River Quilt. I read about quilting them and practiced on some crappy scraps of fabric. Then I drew out a feather on one section of the border and quilted away!

The quilting isn't marvelous, but I was pretty darn pleased with the quality of it. Most of the lines went where I wanted them to and the stitches were somewhat even (trending towards too small because I was moving very slowly). It took me probably a good hour to do roughly a foot and a half of feather. Here's what it looked like:

Once it was done, I decided that I didn't really like it. It wasn't the quality of the quilting, it was just sort of distracting running through the pink border. It made the pink sort of muddier and I didn't like the way it looked. You can decide for yourself:

I spent the next couple of hours ripping out the stitching for the feather. I'm going with a simpler quilting design that doesn't go through the pink border.

Finish!

I finished hand-sewing the binding onto my blue quilt on Monday, but my laptop was out of commission so I couldn't post pictures about it until today.

Here's the entire quilt so that you can admire the wide variety of totally random fabrics that went into it.

And here's one including my helpful quilt holder.

I quilted it in little spirals, which I thought looked sort of like wind or water and were therefore appropriate for a blue quilt. It's the biggest quilt that I've quilted so far - roughly 60" x 80". It wasn't that bad to manipulate through my machine during free motion quilting, but it sure did use up a lot of thread! I had to go buy more half-way through quilting it because I ran out.

I waffled on the binding for quite a while. I considered about 8 different fabrics and finally narrowed it down to this one and a solid blue one. The solid blue one was just too boring. It's a pretty bold choice of binding for me and I'm not sure that I *love* it, but it was good to try a binding that stands out. I like how the red-and-blue brings out the bright colors in the other fabrics, but I don't have a very good picture that shows the binding in relation to the whole quilt.

Construction details:

Piecing thread: I was doing this as a leader / ender project, so it's pieced with whatever thread I was using for the "real" project I was working on.

Piecing needle: variable for the same reason.

Batting: warm&white cotton

Quilting needle: size 75 quilting needle

Quilting thread: blue variegated Signature size 40 cotton thread; same thread as for the river quilt. This is why I ran out half-way through.

Tension: increased to about 6.